MTH offers the first three-rail model of Baldwin’s DRS-12-8-3000, a unique diesel dubbed the Centipede (due to its number of wheels). In the meantime, Lionel offers its own version of America’s King of the Steamers, the Union Pacific 4-8-8-4 Big Boy.
MTH’s Centipede: More diesel than you thought anyone could build
In the early postwar era, Baldwin, North America’s largest steam locomotive manufacturer, sought to secure its place in the vast diesel locomotive market. Seaboard Air Line RR officials needed a locomotive with a long wheelbase that allowed for fast operation over a variety of rough track conditions. What Baldwin offered them was the DRS 12-8-3000, which was essentially a de-evolution, of the no. 6000, a failed 6,000-horsepower diesel project. It was a diesel equivalent of a 4-8-8-4 (a 2-D+D-2 in diesel terminology) with two sets of unpowered, two-axle trucks under the front and rear and two sets of four powered axles.
Each A-unit was rated at 3,000 horsepower and measured 911/2 feet long (more than 180 feet long when mated). The locomotives could be geared for 120 mph. Baldwin’s two-unit Centipede matched the horsepower of any three rival diesels.
Seaboard officials were intrigued and received the first of 14 Centipedes in 1945. They were initially reserved for passenger service and high-value perishable goods trains. The National Railways of Mexico ordered 14 and the Pennsylvania RR 24. The Union Pacific even ordered two, to be numbered 998 and 999, but canceled the order before the locomotives were delivered.
The Pennsy’s first Centipede arrived in 1947. All were initially semi-permanently coupled 6,000-horsepower pairs and served the line’s finest passenger trains until the early 1950s. The engines proved to be unpopular, and they were removed from fast passenger service. They ended their days working freights and in helper service.
Four feet of fun
With many diesels there just isn’t a lot of detail to reproduce; they’re all sort of flat. You have some hatches here, some radiators there, and either a high nose or a low nose. The Centipede is different. The look of the engine is so unlike anything else on the market (then and now) that you almost believe that someone made this one up.
Each unit has a “cute” little baby face with sharper angles than an EMD F3. The long body has doors and see-through side vent screens. Near the rear, the body turns inward. The top of the carbody has notches near the cab, and the Pennsy-style radio antenna that runs along most of the roof of the lead unit looks dyn-o-mite!
Each unit has a headlight, directional lighting, and illuminated and partially decorated cabs with figures and brake stands. Each also features illuminated number boards and marker lights, and each a rubber diaphragm on the end.
The running gear is awesome, with an A-A duo totaling 24 die-cast metal axles, 48 metal wheels, and die-cast sideframes nearly as long as each unit’s plastic body. This gives new meaning to the phrase “get ready to rumble.”
As for decoration, the Pennsy’s Tuscan paint scheme with five gold stripes is flawlessly re-created.
Beauty isn’t only skin deep. These babies pack some serious equipment within. Each unit has two can motors and two smoke units. Yup, that means a total of four motors and four smoke units. Time to hook up that basement ventilation fan! This engine can move cargo and generate smoke.
In the care and feeding department, this is a long and fairly heavy engine set. Including the over-sized O gauge couplers, the A-A duo measures 461/2 inches long (186 in O scale feet), compared to the 183-foot-long prototype. The A-A combination weighs 15 pounds, 3 ounces. These dimensions can make placing the engine on the track tough.
A drawbar and a plug/receptacle (mounted to rigid arms) join the two units together physically and electrically. If you don’t have good lighting or a good eye-level view of the tail ends of both units, it’s a challenge to mate the pair. Traction tires don’t make for easy “pushability” either.
Once the A-units are mated, you’ll find it awkward to man-handle them around your layout room, so if you want to move the Centipede without uncoupling the units, you may need an extra set of hands.
On the iron road
This is the first diesel with trucks worth watching, lap after lap. I found myself racing to the next curve on my layout just to be able to watch the massive trucks roll around a corner or clatter through a switch. The Centipede glided across a variety of track as gracefully as a ship on the sea. Straight track, O-72 curves, level track, bumpy track, it didn’t matter.
The trucks gently carried these barges through all the hazards of a home layout, only once derailing, due entirely to operator error (too much speed on a downgrade curve). Even then, only one truck derailed and the loco kept chugging along till I could halt it!
Performance was superb. The engine accelerated smoothly, no matter how many freight cars it pulled. The four can motors were quiet, and I experienced no spurious horn blasts or bell ringing.
Low speed averaged 12.8 scale mph, and high speed averaged 91.8 scale mph. The drawbar pull was an impressive 3 pounds, 15 ounces, equal to more than 180 modern pieces of rolling stock.
The amperage draw is of note: Although in your mind the Centipede is a single diesel, don’t forget you are powering four motors, four smoke units, and a sound system, so the amperage draw is higher than that of a single-unit diesel. The Centipede averaged 2.8 amps during low-speed testing and 4.0 during high-speed testing.
As for ProtoSound, the startup engine noises are nice but the running or cruising sounds are a bit generic (after all, there aren’t any of these Baldwins left to record). I wasn’t knocked over by the horn or bell, either. I did, however, especially enjoy the rev sound as the train approached a slight upgrade, followed by the squeal of brakes as it reduced speed once again on level track. This is just about as good as it gets!
The Centipede features remote-control ProtoCouplers on the nose of each unit and, as previously mentioned, four ProtoSmoke units. Together, these four units generated levels of smoke perhaps unseen since the height of the Industrial Revolution. Gas masks or air filters may be needed if you don’t have good air circulation in your layout room. On/off switches are located beneath the unit!
The most important question a prospective Centipede buyer should ask, is “Where will I put it?” Once you get it coupled and on the track, you may find yourself wanting to leave it there. For good. So factor in re-working your right-of-way to include one extra-long storage track for this Baldwin!
The bottom line for the MTH Premier Line Centipede: go big or stay at home. Any other diesel is just small potatoes.
Lionel’s Big Boy: Modeling the mightiest steamer of the UP
There isn’t much to say about the Union Pacific Big Boy that even fringe hobbyists don’t know. It is a legendary locomotive, a million-pound behemoth capable of pulling incredible loads. In the annals of American railroading, these engines have no equals.
Designed to provide speedy and powerful traction over the Wasatch range, west of Cheyenne, Wyo., the Big Boys made a significant contribution to the military effort during World War II and the Korean conflict, speeding priority military and civilian cargo over UP’s mainline.
Unassisted, these engines could pull a 4,200-ton train up a steep grade at 25 mph, and on flat land they could equal the company’s 4-6-6-4 Challengers in speed. Alco built 25 Big Boys in two batches, 20 in 1941 and five in 1944. They served the UP until 1962.
The Big Boy is a popular engine, with Williams offering brass versions in 1987-89 and 1995, and MTH producing Big Boys for its Premier line in 1997 and 1999 (as part of a dealer appreciation program) and its RailKing line in 1998.
Lionel’s Big Boy could well be the new standard with which to compare new Lionel locomotives. The Big Boy also confirms that the company made a smart move when it looked to a Korean manufacturer for its new motive power. This Big Boy is a superbly detailed model that runs well and looks good. It even outdistances the firm’s exemplary Allegheny (CTT February, 2000). In fact, I’ll go so far to say that this engine looks substantially better than the Allegheny and remember, the Allegheny looked great.
The Big Boy has stand-out detailing, including a terrific front deck with a UP number shield, headlight, train number boards, and illuminated marker lights (add-on rather than cast-in markers would have been nicer). There are also little features like steam valve handles painted red to help them stand out. The boiler is flawlessly cast metal and is painted an attractive black and gray combination.
The boiler has several stretches of add-on piping, twin smokestacks, and plenty of pop-off valves. You can open a small hatch and the front coupler is exposed. This looks pretty darned sharp.
The cab is fully fitted with simulated controls and gauges, crew figures, and firebox glow. Ever want to know how steam engine crews stay dry? There is a neat simulated weather curtain at the rear of the cab.
All of the articulated engines that we’ve tested have been eye-catchers for one big reason: The two sets of drivers with their rods and hardware moving back and forth, in and out of sync, can be hypnotizing.
The running gear on this baby is the three-rail equivalent of Ethel Merman. They’re both big and bold, and put on one heck of a show. Whether the Big Boy is running with a heavy load or without any cars in tow you’ll find yourself watching the flickering silver metal and have an ear tuned to the sound system.
The running gear looks sharp, and the engine sounds utterly fantastic.
RailSounds is certainly up to the job with this steamer; however, I did notice a bump or two. As with the Allegheny, there was a wee bit of sputtering from the sound system during start-up when using an MTH Z-4000 transformer, and for no obvious reason, there were a few spurious whistle blasts on one curve of CTT’s test layout. Otherwise, sound performance was top notch.
Although the bell tended to get a bit lost amid the other sounds, the whistle is a world-class effect worthy of the Queen Mary pulling up to a dock in New York.
Lionel’s technical wizard, Bob Grubba, informed CTT that the whistle is from a Union Pacific 800-series 4-8-4 Northern. After capturing the sound, Lionel digitally enhanced it to closely match that of a Big Boy. The final product was compared to old sound recordings of a Big Boy in action. Watch out world, you know that this isn’t some wimpy Challenger approaching the grade crossing, but The Real Thing.
Kick the tires and light the fires
In a nutshell, Lionel’s Big Boy will test the limits of your layout! Including the tender’s oversized knuckle coupler, the engine is 341/2 inches long (138 feet in O scale versus the prototype’s 128 feet). The Big Boy weighs a mighty 20 pounds, 7 ounces.
Lionel provides a warning card suggesting that owners not run this engine over weak trestles. It’s a valid warning that certainly falls into the “read and heed” category. Chances are that if this engine fell through a weak bridge, it would do more damage to your layout than to itself!
The engine shows quite a bit of dexterity. The front driver set pivots, and in a practical use of prototypical details, steam lines on each side of the boiler double as braces to re-align the boiler as the locomotive exits curves.
But watch those curves. Art does imitate life. The original UP designers discovered, during the Big Boy’s development, that under certain track conditions two Big Boys passing one another would only have 51/2 inches of clearance to spare! They modified the engine’s design and sent track gangs out to make changes to various parts of the right-of-way.
Like the prototype, this model will really snake around curves, but watch out for that swinging boiler! It could be fatal to plastic track gangs or even structures placed near the track. Forewarned is forearmed!
The engine effortlessly glided around my home layout with a 22-car train in tow. At one point during testing I had a 44-car train behind the Big Boy, but the mixture of couplers of differing vintages just wasn’t up to the challenge!
The speed range is good and fairly prototypical. Acceleration and deceleration are smooth. Using an MTH Z-4000, the Big Boy’s low speed averages 9.9 scale mph while its high speed averages 80.4 scale mph. Drawbar pull is a very impressive 4 pounds 4 ounces, equal to roughly 200 modern pieces of rolling stock. It has a notably slower low-end speed than the Lionel Allegheny and boasts 11 ounces more drawbar pull.
In the Command-mode performance was fantastic. The constant 18 volts ensured that a steady stream of smoke poured from the engine, and the various Command functions and sound controls performed well. Note that if you are not using Command-control with a steady 18 volts, your smoke output may be somewhat lighter.
Over the course of the testing, we racked up 10 or more hours of running, usually with the Big Boy pulling a heavy train. The only problem worth mentioning is two spurious openings of the tender coupler. And really, that’s not shabby at all.
This engine may not be good for your self-esteem, however. Be prepared to have your ego bruised if your track isn’t level or if it is less than straight. With a locomotive whose shell is longer than that of your typical steamer or diesel, you may note the bobbing and weaving of the boiler as it rolls along stretches of uneven track! To paraphrase Shakespeare, the problem is not in the locomotive, but in the track layers ourselves!
It will be tough for Lionel to surpass the level of detail or the performance of this locomotive. The Big Boy may indeed set the new standard against which all other Lionel steamers will be judged. So, if you like capital “B” big steam locomotives, Lionel has created an engine just for you.
I have been wanting one of these since reading your article in the May 2000 issue. I found one, brand new in the box and even though it is PS1 not PS2 and it is expensive, (Close to the price when new eight years ago), I bought it because it is impressive and will look great heading up eight K-LINE 21" Pennsy streamliners which have been in the boxes for three years just waiting for this Baldwin Centipede to come on the roster.I needed to re-read the article to convince myself, swallow hard, and part with a lot of cash for essentially an eight year old, new locomotive with PS1.
Great!