No. It was a road switcher with four wheel trucks from maybe the late 60s, certainly the 1970s. I was given a model of it in the early 80s when I begin to think about a layout and talked about it some. Couple or three people gave me models, diesels, and this very unusual road switcher was one of them. Think B 29 or B 36 faceted glass nose. That's what the front of this locomotive looked like. It was the weirdest looking thing I've ever seen on rails. 

I never unboxed any of them. Really should have. I didn't understand that I could've had a 2x8 switching layout using the three or so road switchers I had. I had that peculiar locomotive, an Athearn SD9, and  an S2 and RS2 or something by Atlas. Plus a dozen  or so freight cars that had survived 20 years in the attic.  All burned up in a fire.

My model might have been a bachmann.  It's probably 30 yr since I last saw it.  It was Chessie.  Never ran it, it was a gift.  No space for layout back then.  I think it was an EMD engine.  Can't remember for certain.

No one knows yet what the diesel was with the B–29 cockpit for a cab? I had a model of it years and years ago, was lost in a house fire.

I saw those KCS shovel noses on a trip to New Orleans as a kid.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/EMD_MRS-1

"Military Road Switcher". Haha. I like it.  A great idea too late for practical use.  Homely, I have to say.

About the truly most homely diesel I ever saw, I can't remember the name of.  It looked like a GP7 but instead of a short hood it had a cab that looked like the faceted glass nose of a B-29.  Someone knowledgeable remind me what it was.

I don't pay much attention to diesels.  Easy to miss.  Diesels make modeling less than popular roads pretty easy. Standardized models for only a couple of manufacturers, as opposed to the many customized steam engines over the years. Diesel modelers might well say that there's lots of variation in hatches and fans and stuff like that, and that's true, of course, but the generalized profile all these engines makes it quite easy to superficially model just about any railroad you're interested in. Since I don't follow diesels, I don't know, but the Santa Fe CF7 was a real odd duck, and I'm not sure if anyone has ever made a model of it.

Unfortunately, for model railroaders like me who follow less popular roads like the MP, Bachmann is in the Model Railroad business to make money, not to grant the every wish of me and everyone else like me.

The models offered by Bachmann, and just about every other vendor, seem to be prototypes from roads that serve the most major major population centers, essentially the metropolitan Northeast and Chicago. This makes sense, because that's where the most people interested in model railroading are going to be concentrated, not in small towns and small regional cities throughout the country. There's only a couple of Bachmann models defying this logic, which are the mogul, based on a engine from a 100 mile long midwestern short line, and a Wisconsin central diesel, from a relatively small regional carrier, not well known outside it's immediate area. 

Fortunately, for Missouri pacific steam modelers like me, over the years Bachmann has offered several engines that, while not precise molecular correct models, are very reasonable stand-ins that have made me happy for a very long time.

1. The spectrum consolidation, while a little heavy for a Missouri Pacific 2-8–0, has overall lines and details very Missouri Pacific like. I have four of these engines lettered as the imaginary MP 180 class, right above the MP spot class engines numbered 1–173.

2. The spectrum consolidation was offered as Missouri Pacific 92 many years ago. It appears from time to time on eBay and I finally got one about two years ago. It's very cleanly and prototypically lettered. It's a little heavy for a spot class engine, but again, who cares. A very accurate brass model of a spot class was offered many years ago, but they run like coffee grinders, and are unusable for any kind of operation or anything at all other than a mantel piece placeholder. On the other hand. Bachmann steam engines run like clocks once the DCC CV settings are correctly.

3. The Bachmann USRA mikado is almost dead on for an MP 1300 class. I have one done up as the 1304, with multiple added MP specific details, such as an oil bunker for the tender, number boards by the stack, and a hinged stack cover.

4. Bachmann offered a USRA light 4-8-2 years ago, dead on for the MP 5300 class as-built and before their heavy rebuilds in the late 1930s. Bachmann's MP model is very beautifully lettered. A purist could argue that the numerals on the cab side are a little big, but who care, I don't. It's a beautiful engine that took me a very long time to locate.

5. Bachmann also offered a Spectrum light USRA 2-10-2 back in the days of yore.  There were several variations for different prototypes, and the Seaboard Air Line one was very close to some of the MP 1700 class engines, including a Boxpok center driver acquired by some during shoppings. I bought one to repaint for the MP, but my Gulf Coast friend cried out, how can you paint over something that says "through the heart of Dixie" on the cab?  So I never did, and it is still in my roundhouse as a Seaboard engine, although really too large to run my branch line.

6. The Russian decapod is an incredible offering. The Bachmann one is in its second run now. I've loved those engines ever since I saw a photograph of an MP one way back when I was a teenager, switching in the Anchorage, Louisiana yard across the Mississippi River from Baton Rouge.  The MP engines vary  some from the Bachmann model, especially the running board configuration, but I don't care. The 8 MP decapods were numbered from 941 to 948. I've lettered two of mine as imaginary MP 940 and 949, just outside of MPs numbers as if they could've been a couple of extra engines.  I have five other decapods operating on layout, but the MP ones are my favorites.

Some might argue otherwise, but for someone who is modeling a marginally popular railroad, I feel like I've been showered with riches untold.

Yes.  I'm not familiar with that locomotive, but many of the Bachmann tenders seem to be a little lightweight as well.

Speaking of the Nickel Plate Berk, I have occasionally thought of getting one and trying to modify it to a Missouri Pacific 1900 class, the ones that were converted to 4–8-4's during World War Two. Five of them survived as built on the International-great northern down in Texas, but according to an account written by an engineman, they were rough riders, and not well liked by the crews. 

Clean all the wheels.  And thoroughly clean the little phosphor bronze tender truck wipers.  Remove them and thoroughly rub clean with a pencil eraser or something similar.

The wheels, both locomotive and tender, may be made of some alloy that oxidizes heavily fairly quickly.  Moisten a paper towel, very lightly with some goo gone.  Run the tender back-and-forth on that and onto the dry part of the towel, pushing it from side to side to make sure you get the flanges also.  And marvel at how much black crud comes off on the towel. Then, another piece of lightly moistened towel, put it in front of the locomotive on the track and slowly run the engine up on the towel until all the drivers are on it. Then spin the wheels, pressing lightly from side to side and lightly down on the wheels, but not enough to stall the engine. And again, be amazed at how dirty those wheels were. I wouldn't be surprised that if you do this cleaning, it'll solve your problems.

We are talking about a Rivarossi locomotive, but all of the above applies to Bachmann steam engines as well.  Diesels, don't know.I don't have them, and never will.

One thing to remember about model Southern Pacific moguls is that over many long years since the 1960s, there's almost continuously been some HO scale version of it offered. IHC did the last one in the 90s or so but it was a continuation of a fairly crude one offered earlier in the 80s by somebody else. There are lots of them on eBay at any time, but the many crude details and the huge flanges that won't run or anything else except code 100 rail make it not very desirable for anyone really except the train set bunch.

So, I believe there's an opening here for Bachmann to produce a very salable model steam engine. The Southern Pacific was the Pennsylvania railroad of the west coast, and all the way along the southern U S all the way to New Orleans as well. There are thousands upon thousands of SP model railroaders who would buy this engine. And others beyond that who would buy this relatively generic model to convert to something else similar.

An M-4 mogul or a C-9 consolidation.  The present consolidation is a Harriman engine based an Illinois Central prototype, the C-9 was also a Harriman engine. They are very similar. A few detail revisions plus the addition of the medium oil Vanderbilt tender, whic Bachmann used to sell, would make a good C-9.  But the mogul is really what we should see someone offer in plastic. They are similar to moguls formerly everywhere, unlike the present oddball one Bachmann offers. Again, the medium oil Vanderbilt tender would serve well behind such an engine, so all they have to do is make the engine. 

With all of the molecular attention to prototype detail being lavished on the new Pennsylvania K4 and New York Central Hudson, it would be nice to see a real Southern Pacific mogul issued, instead of merely relettering  the present mogul.

Bachmann steam engine tenders have had holes in the tender floor, and other provisions for sound, for quite a long time now.  There are lots of older ones that pre-date the on board sound installation period, before the mid 2000s, they do not have such holes in the tender floor. These engines are seen all the time on eBay, some sellers have enough understanding to photograph the bottom of the tender clearly enough that you can see the holes if they are there. Engines that have the floor holes are referred to as "DCC ready," meaning that the decoder and speaker will largely be a drop-in process.

I always tell people.  Beware of used model locomotives.  You don't know what kinds of abuse they may have suffered. Being run at 150 scale miles per hour for years, being used to brain the little sister, there's just no telling what they've been through. Most people also don't understand that repair parts for these engines are almost always not available. Bachmann is a real exception to this, but few others, good luck, they won't be there.

Jeffrey, your mail trains were nonstop expresses between two of America's largest urban centers. They are bound to be very different from the little plug locals running through the agricultural south that I knew growing up. No.5 was a lifeline to our little farming and oil field community of 15,000, and even more so to the yet smaller towns that lined the route between New Orleans and Houston.

Number 5 was a remnant of a former name train called the Argonaut that had run all the way to the west coast, until the late 50s when it was cut back to Houston, lost its pullman car, and lost its name. After that, the train became an almost entirely head-end car consist- mail storage cars, express reefers, a couple of railway post office cars, and one or maybe two coaches at best.  These mail train stops were the bread and butter of Railroad passenger service, an every day workaday event in almost every small town in the country, until 1968 when the railroads lost their postal contracts, and the ability to financially keep passenger trains above water, which led to the founding of Amtrak, a few years later.

We actually rode Number 5 to Houston a couple of times before it was discontinued, once in the Pullman, while it was still on the train (a story in itself), and the other in a coach with broken air conditioning, attesting to the fact that the railroad was trying to run the passengers off of the passenger train so they could discontinue them.

We called it the mail train.  Because it was, one or two coaches behind lots of head end cars.

I'll never forget the finely tuned dance and workaday drama of the handling of No. 5's mail at the New Iberia depot.  Before the train arrived at 2:12, old-fashioned baggage carts with big spoked steel wheels, some loaded with canvas mail bags and some empty, would be rolled out alongside the track, under the long passenger umbrella shed that is no longer there today. Somehow the agent always got the cart within an inch or two of where the engine would pass.

You'd hear No. 5's readily identifiable smooth distinctive 5-chime air horn faintly float in on the wind from the east.  On days at home we could hear its approach from the house as well.  After interminable moments you'd hear it again, louder now, and you'd finally see the mars light swing into view around the curve at Center Street and enter the paved-over street trackage of Washington Avenue, invariably right on time, rolling beneath the ancient oaks, passing the parish courthouse where ten years earlier the 5-year-old me had watched Mikados stomping and squalling past with westbound freights.

As the train crossed Jefferson Street and negotiated a gentle S curve right before reaching the platform, you'd invariably see that the engine was a single Alco PA unit, classically running out its last miles on a plug mail run, although we didn't know that.  The PA would majestically roll past, slowing, with cadenced bell ringing.  A classic head end consist followed, heavyweight baggage cars with very cool express reefers and boxcars mixed in, steam hissing from between the cars. 

As the railway post office cars smoothly glided by, you'd see the doors already opened with a clerk standing in the door, and others visible behind the barred windows.  Somehow the train always stopped with the open door right at the perfectly placed baggage wagon.  With  precision smoother than any fine classical ballet, the inbound mail would quickly be stacked on the wagon, rolled away, and immediately replaced by the cart loaded with outbound mail.  Just as quickly, the loaded canvas mail bags disappeared into the car. 

The clerk would signal to the conductor that the mail transfer was complete.  In the steam engine days, the engine would have completed water top off at the water column at the west end of the platform.  Since  the few outbound passengers had already boarded the train, the conductor gave the highball to the hogger.  Two airhorn shorts signaled the almost imperceptible start of the train.  Crossing signals sounded for Corrine Street, then Hopkins Street.  The rear end red mars light, suspended from the accordion gate in the doorway of the rearmost car, slowly disappeared around the long gentle curve to the west, passing the barely visible West Tower on its way out, and following the complex pole lines on their westward march.

With the dramatic intensity winding down as the airhorn of No. 5 faded to the west, the carts with the loaded mail bags were rolled to a waiting postal vehicle and the bags loaded for the ride to the post office.  But, like a hidden bonus track on a record, one last dramatic detail remained.  No.2 eastbound, the Sunset Limited, was due at 2:37.  This train didn't stop in New Iberia at the time.  The depot agent walked down to the east end of the platform and hung an outbound mailbag on a mail crane.  No. 2, on the end of its run from the west coast, would often be late but when it was on time you'd hear the airhorn to the west, where No. 5 had gone into the hole ("siding") for the meet, and you'd watch the train regally roll in behind MU'd EMD FP units that always handled the train, the bell majestically clanging a slow tempo. The mailbag would be snagged onboard by the RPO, ending the daily drama of the US Mail coming and going from New Iberia Louisiana.

Oh what a time to be a young railfan there.  We didn't know what we had until it was gone, No. 5 making its last run in late 1963.