WOW! MTH has raised the bar yet again for the level of detail on a die-cast metal steam locomotive. The MTH Y3 locomotive commemorates a notable U.S. Railway Administration standardized design from the World War I years made famous by the Norfolk & Western. In the article “The USRA 2-8-8-2” in the January 1985 issue […]
SOMEWHERE IN THE ANNALS of toy train history, a tiny celebrity steam engine got lost in the crowd. When it was found, it somehow got lost again. In 1999, MTH began producing an O gauge die-cast model based on the Baltimore & Ohio’s C-16 “Docksider” steam switcher. The biggest surprise was that this is a […]
THANKS TO MTH, hobbyists around the country are coming up with clever ways to integrate subways and elevated transit lines into their layouts. The latest entry in the subway sweepstakes is a set of O gauge R-36 cars. The first of 424 of the eye-catching blue-and-white R-36 cars began arriving in New York City in […]
SURE, EMD’S POPULAR GP7 and GP9 diesels sealed the fate of steam power. But often overlooked is Alco’s contribution in the battle against steam, the RS-1 road switcher. Atlas O has built a scale-sized model of Alco’s first real road switcher, the RS-1. Noted New Haven railroad historian J.W. Swanberg once wrote that the RS-1 […]
SEVERAL YEARS BACK, Lionel’s then czar of engineering, Bob Grubba, tantalized Lionel Collector’s Club of America conventioneers in Minneapolis with the hint of a new track system. When hobbyists asked him if it would be a solid rail system like that of Atlas O, he smiled and said, “Think more along the line of Super […]
IN 1996, THE FIRST MTH RailKing articulated locomotive – the no. 30-1107 Union Pacific Challenger 4-6-6-4 – rolled onto tinplate track and created quite a stir. Regardless of its reduced dimensions, no manufacturer had ever offered an articulated, die-cast metal steamer for the small layout, tight-radius crowd. Its success heralded 1997’s Allegheny 2-6-6-6, 1998’s Big […]
CAN THERE EVER BE too many O gauge Santa Fe F units on the market? Probably not. General Motors cranked out these diesels by the thousands, and both the high and mighty lines, as well as scores of railroads you probably never heard of, used these trusty machines. As with New York Central Hudsons, the […]
K-LINE’S UNITED STATES Railway Administration light 2-8-2 Mikado commemorates the 625 steam engines of this type built for U.S. railroads during and shortly after the First World War. The United States entered the war on April 6, 1917, and that December President Wilson placed U.S. railroads under the control of the railroad administration (USRA). In […]
MOUNTAIN RAILROADING is a tough job in North America. In the last century both the Great Northern and Milwaukee Road utilized electric locomotives to master this beastly job. The grades of Washington state’s Cascade Mountains were a tough nut to crack for the Great Northern. The first Cascade Tunnel was built in 1900. At an […]
WAY BACK IN 1965, I showed Joe, my next door neighbor, my prize birthday present: a James Bond Shooting Attaché Case (made by MPC, no less). Joe, a grownup insurance salesman, opened it up, smiled, and said, “Boy, Bobby, you could commit mayhem with this!” Opening the box for the Operation Iraqi Freedom train set, […]
AMID A SEA OF limited-edition, $1,400 locomotives, why should anyone be interested in this modest steamer? Well, first, it is designed to run through curves as tight as O-27 – and there are still plenty of operators using O-27, O-31, and O-54 curved track. Second, the tooling is new. This isn’t a lame attempt to […]
WHEN I FIRST SAW the ads for the LionMaster Hudson, I presumed that it was launched in response to K-Line’s similarly priced, scale-sized Hudson (CTT, July 2003). Not so. While all new like the K-Line Hudson and featuring TrainMaster Command Control, Rail Sounds, Odyssey speed control, and a wireless tether, the Lionel model is the […]
