WITHOUT NEW YORK CITY’S Penn Station, there wouldn’t have been a need for the DD1 electric locomotive. And without the shoeboxed-shaped DD1, would Penn Station have been such a success?Nearly a century after the creation of both the station and the locomotive, it’s an interesting question to ponder. The DD1 was born of the need […]
THE MTH RAILKING MODEL of Electro-Motive’s SW9 switcher is a nice-looking, universal locomotive that is great for starting out in the hobby. It also makes a terrific addition to a larger fleet. By sharing an almost generic body with other models from the EMD catalog, the SW9 fits right in on a layout set anytime […]
AMONG THE MOST MASSIVE locomotives on North American rails just about 100 years ago was the 0-8-8-0. Surprisingly, 85 locomotives with this wheel arrangement were in service in the early years of the 20th century. Surely the most interesting of them all were the Camelback, or Mother Hubbard, 0-8-8-0s run by the Erie Railroad. The […]
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 […]
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 […]
MTH’S “PAY AS YOU ENTER” Standard gauge trolley is a reproduction of Lionel’s prewar no. 9 trolley – that’s pre-World War I, not II. Lionel first produced its no. 9 trolley way back in 1909, just one year after two fellows named Orville and Wilbur were granted a patent for a flying machine. The no. […]
MTH’s HO scale Pennsy K4 4-6-2 Model Railroader has just received a production model of MTH’s first HO scale locomotive, the Pennsylvania RR’s K4 4-6-2 passenger steam locomotive. While we are in the process of putting the new engine through its paces for a future review, we thought you’d like to see the new model […]
GROWING UP ON the east coast of Florida, I found Rocky Mountain electrification to be a pretty arcane subject. Whether the locomotives were those large, boxy things that evoked the pages of Tom Swift and his Electric Locomotive, or streamlined, dual-cab models that suggested they were some sort of super funky F units, these unusual […]
