K-LINE’S O gauge Big Boy locomotive is made for John Q. Trainguy or Susy Q. Tinplater: the operator with a tight-radius layout and an equally tight budget, but who longs to operate trains at the Big Boy level. MTH and Lionel in their RailKing and LionMaster lines have used selective compression to build articulated locomotives […]
I HAVE A CONFESSION to make: I have a bias regarding steam locomotion. My favorite steam locomotives have the wheel arrangements 2-8-2 and 4-8-4. Everything else is “too big,” and the rest are “Weak Willies.” My bias began to crack with the MTH Premier line 4-4-2 Atlantic steamer (CTT, May 2001) and that crack has […]
I’VE PROBABLY evaluated more than 100 locomotives for Classic Toy Trains, but I can’t recall being as pumped up as when I popped open an orange and blue Lionel box and pulled out a black and gray New York Central SD80MAC. Yes, yes, I know. Despite being a die-hard New York Central fan, I am […]
WITH A LIST PRICE OF $649.95, the no. 31902 Pennsylvania K4 Freight Train set is by no means a child’s basic starter set. It’s an outfit for the grownup who wants to jump back into the hobby, but doesn’t want to go the entry-level $150 “New York Central Flyer” route. Included in this “return to […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
