TO CROSS THE Rocky Mountains, the Union Pacific railroad was always looking for the next big thing. This eye toward innovation gave rise to such notable giants as the 4-8-8-4 Big Boy, the 4-12-2 Union Pacific, the massive DDA40X diesel, and the turbines. In 1952, the Union Pacific received the first of 10 4,500-horsepower turbine […]
J.L. COWEN WOULD probably smile at what Williams Electric Trains has been up to. Amid the scramble to seize the high end of the marketplace, company President Jerry Williams and Marketing Manager Larry Harrington are focusing on producing simple, well-made trains with a postwar flair that won’t break the bank. Starting with a copy of […]
FINALLY, ALL OF THOSE grand, O gauge passenger trains have an equally grand destination: Ace Trains station canopy. Ace Trains is a British company that makes tinplate reproductions of classic Hornby-style O gauge locomotives and rolling stock. Ace’s station canopy kit, distributed in the United States by Weaver Models, is its first structure. And what […]
OKAY, WHAT DOES THE typical American railroad buff know about British railway history? Tick-tock, tick-tock. Time’s up! Still drawing a blank? Then read on. British railroads have an exotic history just like American lines, but in an appropriately condensed land mass. Dozens of 19th-century railroad companies built a tangle of lines with fast passenger trains, […]
AMERICA’S MORALE took quite the beating in the turbulent 1960s and early ’70s. As the nation’s 1976 bicentennial approached, many Americans expressed indifference to a celebration. But not railroad enthusiast Ross Rowland. Rowland, in the best tradition of comedian Steve Martin, had a “Wild and Crazy” idea to celebrate America’s birthday. Taking his cue from […]
I WAS A LITTLE surprised at the heft of this thing. Unlike the other operating accessories we’ve reviewed in this issue, this one packed a surprising 8 pounds, 7 ounces. Why? The diner itself isn’t a cheap plastic repop of the body of some old Marx car. No sir! It’s a genuine K-Line extruded aluminum […]
IN THE 1950s Lionel’s New Jersey factory cranked out tens of thousands of F3 diesels, and, in the decades since, Lionel has reissued its hallmark diesel dozens of times more. F3s were no more a stranger to MPC, LTI, and LLC-era catalogs than to Bob Sherman’s gloriously drawn postwar catalogs. But this new Lionel F3 […]
THE PENNSYLVANIA RAILROAD’S famous 4-4-4-4 Duplex drive T1 locomotive, designed by Raymond Loewy, epitomizes the rakish, spaceship look of industrial design in the late prewar years. If the locomotive’s outline looks familiar it should: its shape has been reproduced on thousands of calendars, artwork, and even non-railroad-related advertising. The Pennsy ordered two prototype Duplex-drive locomotives […]
TWO HEADLINES IN a supermarket tabloid: “Elvis returns to Graceland” and “Lionel makes all-new Standard gauge trains.” Which do you believe? A few years ago, the answer would have been neither. But hold on to your blue-suede shoes. While a living Elvis isn’t back at Graceland yet, Lionel indeed has made all-new Standard gauge trains: […]
IN MY MIND, the pinnacle of diesel locomotion is the General Motors SD40-2. Back when I would trudge through snowbanks in Wyoming and North Dakota to snap pictures of trains, it was the SD40-2 that got my heart pounding, rather than endless streams of GP-whatevers. The SD40-2 is big and burly. The long fore and […]
ANYONE WHO HAS mixed toy trains and toy soldiers will appreciate Thor from Marx Trains. Thor is a nifty little sheet-metal throwback to prewar-style military trains that enabled countless kids to develop junior league tactical skills that proved we were wiser than the Kaiser. Marx built Thor in the tin lithograped style. The printed sheet-metal […]
A COMMON, IF UNGLAMOROUS feature of prototype railroading is killing weeds, the eternal foe of good track and roadbed. I’ve seen this task handled by everything from crews walking alongside a hi-rail vehicle with spray tanks on their backs to railcars equipped with what looked like small flamethrowers. MTH’s Premier Line is first to offer […]
