THE STORY OF THE A2a-class Berkshires of the Pittsburgh & Lake Erie Railroad is a pretty sad one. In the waning days of steam operation, the company decided that it needed to replace its World War I-vintage H7-class 2-8-2 Mikados with newer power. The railroad didn’t believe there was a viable diesel on the market […]
IF THERE HAD BEEN a locomotive in the movie Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, Gene Wilder, who portrayed the title character, would undoubtedly have been at the throttle of this strange-looking beast. Appearing for all of the world like three shoeboxes set down on a steam locomotive chassis, the L5 was a failed experiment […]
NO, THIS ISN’T THE review about the blue Erie 0-8-8-0. While this Triplex locomotive shares much in common with the 0-8-8-0 (blue boiler, Erie Railroad, same O gauge manufacturer), it’s got even more wheels – 28 in total! A Baldwin Locomotive Works engineer created the Triplex to balance the costs (in men and machines) associated […]
WOW! LIGHTNING HAS struck twice in one year. In the July issue we reviewed an F3 set by Williams that was the spitting image of a postwar Lionel F3. Now there’s a new addition to MTH’s RailKing line that visually also has quite a bit in common with a postwar Lionel F3. Why should MTH […]
LOCOMOTIVES COSTING $1,000 or more seem to capture all the attention today, so we went down to our local hobby shop to find some locomotives that didn’t have “Rockefeller” as a last name. We found three moderately priced diesels that model three notable periods of U.S. railroad history and reflect three periods of O gauge […]
AN O GAUGE GP7 diesel for a mere $49.95. Yup, you read that right. “But wait,” you say. “Where’s the fine print?” Well, this is a physically large O gauge road diesel locomotive made for little hands, and priced right for gift giving. But rivet-counters beware: This model isn’t for you. The target audience for […]
REMEMBER THE Visible V-8? When I was a kid, I begged and begged my mom and dad to get me one for Christmas. The Visible V-8 was a clear plastic model of an automobile engine. It was big – 14 inches long. And it worked. In the original version, flashlight batteries hidden within a “car […]
I’LL BE HONEST. When I saw the box with “GP60” written on the label, I sighed. Geeps may be the most modeled diesel in the O gauge world, and here was another. Then I took the Atlas O model out of the box and said out loud, “Holy smokes, this model is stunning!” Once again, […]
PERHAPS THE MOST lasting symbol of the electrification era of American railroads is the Pennsylvania Railroad’s GG1 locomotive. To steal a phrase from a 1930s boxing movie, the GG1 electric is the “Winnah and still heavyweight champeen” of prototype American electric locomotives. Like the New York Central Hudson steamer, the hobby will most certainly see […]
OKAY, KOKOMO isn’t exactly on the right-of-way of the Chicago South Shore & South Bend Railroad, but I’ve got your attention, right? Well, I hope so, because Weaver has produced a first-rate model of a remarkable locomotive that soldiered on in relative obscurity, deserving of a better fate. The General Electric 2-D+D-2 was one of […]
ROARING INTO VIEW from those thrilling days of yesteryear is the latest re-creation of a postwar icon from Williams Electric Trains: the Alco FA set. Williams continues to reproduce popular trains from Lionel’s past at prices substantially lower than mint-condition originals. The latest example is a reproduction of the Alco FA A-A diesel set that […]
Readers may recall how dazzled I was with Atlas O’s superb GP60, painted in Santa Fe’s blue-and-yellow freight scheme and reviewed in the May 2005 issue. Well, that issue was still warm from the printing presses when we received two more sturdy additions to the CTT locomotive test fleet: the powered Atlas O GP60M and […]
