Quote from: talkingqhead on July 29, 2007, 10:36:07 PM
The results are in !!!  It's it's just what we all been LOOKING for, another   Lima Bershire [kanawha].

Yeah...odd that a Berk hasn't ever come up on one of these wishlist threads, yet that's what we wound up with. Guess Bachmann doesn't pay any attention to us after all...

I saw the announcement for an S-2 (sorry, a 2-8-4 to you C&O geeks), and I was a little puzzled.  P2K nailed the NKP engines, and they've been around long enough that all of us NKP guys have all we need for ourt fleets (seven, in my case).  Unless Bachmann does something like REALLY ramp up the leve of detailing on this new model, I sort of doubt that it'll be a hit. About the only thing going for it will be the street price, which should be about half that of the P2K model.

Although I'm always glad to see another NKP steamer come onto the market, I was hoping that Bachmann would come out with something that hasn't already been done. A nice H-5 pre-USRA Mike , for example.

And now to answer the question...

According to the 1937 IC steam diagram book, the 2900-series tenders were rated at 12,000 gallons of water and 16 tons of coal.

Hmmm...where to begin with this one...

Quote from: ATSF5700BOB on July 17, 2007, 08:48:21 PM
Bob Rule, Jr. mentioned something about 0-4-0s, 0-6-0s, 0-8-0s, 2-6-0s. He also mentioned something about being rail road specific, and prototype specific steamers.
I agree with rail road specific steamers. However, unless you go to brass models (and he trails off here....)

The era of completely generic models is LONG dead. Nobody wants a completely freelanced freight car, diesel, or steam engine. Based on how modelers are spending their money, we all LIKE an engine or boxcar to be a prototype of SOMETHING, even if it's not necessarily always lettered correctly. The tooling costs are the same for a prototype-specific versus a generic (and fictitious) steam engine, so why wouldn't a manufacturer make an engine that's at least very close to something that really existed? The customers are saying that they prefer these sorts of models...with their dollars.

Quotenot even Mr Bach-mans' new connie in HO scale  is not rail road specific

Actually, you're wrong: it is prototype-specific. At least it's about 80% prototype specific for about 100 2-8-0s that ran on the Illinois Central, one of the largest railroads on the planet (and I need to do a little more research, but I think that the engine is a standard Harriman heavy Connie design, which makes it appropriate for the SP and UP as well)

And you're missing the point about "prototype specific" models. A model should be (as I've noted above) as close to possible to SOME engine that truly existed in real life. The Bachmann Spectrum 2-8-0, that most modelers call "generic", isn't really generic, and fits the criterion of "prototype specific" pretty well. In fact, the 2-8-0 was Bachmann's first Spectrum line steam engine, and EVERY release after that one has been prototypically specific to at least some engine that really existed.

Quoteunless there are engines that have a small package of parts to add on to the locomotive.

Prototype specific doesn't mean "superdetailed". An Accurail six panel, single sheathed, composite boxcar model IS prototype-specific (it's another IC model), but it's detailing is crude as compared to a resin kit or an Intermountain boxcar. It's up to the MODELER (and this is MODEL railroading) to add any missing details. Heck, even brass engines can use some added or corrected details by my standards.

QuoteI model A.T.S.F from  1950 to the BNSF merger in 1995. Any time that a certain  manufacturer has made a model of a Santa Fe steamer, the engine number boards are left off the engine.

Not true. Check out BLI's ATSF 2-10-2, 2-10-4 and 4-8-4. They all have the train number boards on them. Even Roundhouse's old metal steam kits came with a (crude) number board casting.

QuoteAlso, on the back and sides of most of the tenders, except for the slope back switcher, the numbers are not on the tender, along with the fuel/boiler capacity. The other mistake most manufacturers have made is decaling the locomotive cab sides with numbers, instead of a small A.T.S.F.      The old Model Die Casting/ Roundhouse before Athearn acquired them has a 2-8-0, rail road specific, but not modernized.

None of these omissions or inaccuracies make a model "not prototypically correct". They make the models badly or inaccurately lettered, but that's something that a MODEL railroader can easily fix.

QuoteI am not in the market for Harriman style locomotives, either. I suggest if Bach-man Industries comes out with any more steam locomotives, and everyone is crying out for railroad specific steamers, that Bachman Industries at least include a small package of parts that is railroad specific to that particular railroad/ locomotive that the locomotive is modeled after. 

That's not going to happen. As modelers have been voting with their dollars for high-quality prototype-specific models, they're also voting for RTR "no assembly required" models. The numbers of us MODEL railroaders who actually add aftermarket (or even add-on) details is shrinking pretty quickly. Bachmann's not going to bother with wasting their capitol by adding a huge baggie full of all sorts of detail parts to cover dozens of prototypes. That's what Bowser, Precision Scale, PIA and Greenway are for.

Thanks for the leads guys. The books will especially come in handy as a preliminary resource.

Gene: it's worse than that. I've spent hours pouring through the Google results for Harriman, and the best stuff I've found to date are vague third-party references to "Harriman" engines on the steamlocomotive.com site. There's NOTHING out there about these engines, and that's pretty depressing!

I just visited a HUGE O scale home layout with something simiar to what you want to do. The owner is very interested in 1930s modeling, but most of his operators are younger and want to model the 1970s. His staging areas have a carrying capacity of 4000 (!) cars, and the layout operated well with about 2500 on the layout at any one time (either on sidings or in staging ready to come into play). So he's planning on staging both eras trains in the staging yards, and will trot them out as the scenario dictates. He figures that it'll only take him a couple of hours to replace older cars with newer ones that are parked in the visible areas of the layout.

To me, this seems like the perfect idea: build your staging yards as large as possible, with vastly too much staging for the size of the layout. That way, it's easy enough to park trains from multiple eras in them, and take out only which trains you want to run on any given day. That way you can still play "It's my railroad, I'll run whatever I like" without blowing any sense of reality. You can run 1930 one hour and 1989 the next.

Quote from: andrechapelon on July 09, 2007, 09:35:02 AM
Ray, are we talking Harriman lights, heavies or both?

Both the UP and SP had "light" Harriman Mikes and Pacifics, although in the case of the Mikes, I believe the boilers were identical. The light Mikes had 57" drivers vs. 63 for the Heavies.

Andre

See? Right there you've provided me with someting useful: I didn't even know that there was a light and heavy!

All original IC Mikes had 63" drivers, so I'd assume that they were the heavies, which is what I, as an IC guy, am more interested in.

OK guys, time to put our money where our mouths are...

I'm willing to bombard Bachmann with a "real" request for Harriman steam, specifically the Pacific and Mike, two engines that we modelers would like to see and which would fill out their rosters nicely. I've helped several manufacturers in the past (including Bachmann) and am more than willing to help them out now.

Sending a manufacturer a "real" request for a model involves more than a short email asking for a specific model. While those types of emails DO help the effprt greatly, manufacturers generally need more. With the tight budgets and millions of other things that manufacturers need to do on a daily basis, intense research on any one specific prototype (or family of prototypes) is LOW on the priority list. If we were to step up to the plate and hand Bachmann a single, unified document, full of facts, figures, photos, plans and histories, the chances are MUCH better that we'll eventually see what we want to see out of them.

But there's a problem. While the USRA engines have been written about at length, the Harriman -Standard plans have been virtually ignored by the hobby, at least in any sort of cohesive, unified way (there's no "Harriman steam engines" book, for example, while there are a few for the USRA steamers).  There's a rumor floating around that one's in the works, but it may be years before we actually see it.

I've got LOTS of data on the IC versions of the Harriman steamers, but that's all. So what I need is data, or at least information on where to FIND data. Initial rosters are the best, especially road numbers, since I'll be able to start backtracking from there. Any published plans or the information on where to find those plans will greatly help too.

Tracking down what's a Harriman engine and what's not will be an "interesting" task, to say the least. To that end, please only send data on what you KNOW to be a Harriman-design engine; too many "Well, it sorta LOOKS like a Harriman" comments will only confuse the issue.

I'm asking that you send ME the data, and not Bachmann, since I'll be able to sift through the data and compile it into a single, unified document that will be quick and easy for Bachmann to look through, giving the project a better chance at realization.  Some of you may have seen a similar request for data of mine float through the NYC world last month, looking for H-5 Mike data: that project is almost ready to send out (and I'm thinking about sending it to Bachmann, so you'd better be snappy with data before I blow it with a different engine!)

Please feel free to post data here, or to send it to rtbsvrr69@yahoo.com. I'll let everyone know when/if I have enough to send to Bachmann, and will make the package available to anyone who's helped fill in the blanks.

Thanks, and here's hoping!

Quote from: SteamGene on July 03, 2007, 08:43:49 PM
Sour Rails,
On a mixed freight, you can have any standard gauge car you might imagine.  However, with a normal train, most of the cars will probably be home road.  After that, yu will have cars from roads close to it.  Finally you will have cars from distant roads.  So, using Nickel Plate and a 20 car model pike train, ten cars will be NKP.  Six or seven more will be from the list I gave you earlier.  There are those who say any freight train should have at least one NYC and one PRR among them.  The remaining three or four might be Maine Central, Western Pacific, Milwaukee Road, FEC, Southern, Rutland, etc.
Gene

Actually Gene, that line of thinking about freight cars really doesn't work.

Freight cars are around for one reason: to make money. "House cars" (boxcars) were the most common single car type in the steam era, with over 600,000 in the USA and Canada (in 1950). Boxcars made the most money when they were OFF home rails, so railroads endeavored to load their cars up as quickly as possible and fling them at another railroad at interchange. Other roads were doing the same, and at the same time were getting empty foreign-road cars off their rails as fast as possible due to per-diem charges. So all of these boxcars rolling around the country were in a constant state of flux, where they could go anywhere (the quickest path off your own rails isn't necessarily towards the road that owns the boxcar).

Boxcar fleets weren't consistent. Some roads had five, some road had tens of thousands (66,000+ on the CN alone). The 25 largest railroads in the USA and Canada owned 80% of the boxcars (out of 250 common carrier roads), so the logic that "half of your boxcars should be home road" doesn't wash. With cars from everywhere being sent everywhere, the basic statistics state that the bulk of the cars on your layout should reflect the fact that some roads completely dominated the boxcar pool. If you're modeling the Morristown & Erie, an eastern shortline with a whopping seven boxcars, a 10 car freight shouldn't contain five M&E cars. It should have maybe one, with two Pennsy, two NYC, one Erie, one CP, one ATSF, one B&O, and one Southern.

Trains also performed specific jobs. On a mixed general merchandise train it WOULD be common to see cars from everywhere behind the engine. But L&N coal drags show endless strings of L&N-only hoppers. Fast reefer strings from Chicago to Buffalo should be made up of only two or three meat packers. Texas gulf trains on the Katy should be dominated by GATX tank cars. A proper mix of cars on a model railroad should try to reflext BOTH the national house car pool and the specific "jobs" some of the trains performed on the chunk of railroad you like to model.

In the case of the NKP, a road that I'm "fairly" well acquainted with, most house cars that rolled on the NKP were NOT home road cars. The NKP had an overall freight car fleet of 35,000 cars. 22,000 of which were boxcars. These cars were "encouraged" to haul merchandise around the country, hitting home rails as infrequently as possible. The NKP was a bridge road: it made more money hauling loaded cars from one railroad, across theor own rails, to a second railroad, than they did by moving "originating loads" from an industry on their rails to a foreign connection. Because of this VERY few cars rolling across NKP mains were NKP-lettered.

Got all that? 

Hmmm...it doesn't look like I have any pre-Peoria WH data.

Have you contacted Art Griffin and asked him about the HW cars? He's possibly THE go-to guy when it comes to pre-WWI freight car paint schemes.

Goood grief Lanny; you sure cranked out that 908 quickly! I may have to send mine to you along with some "trade goods"!

As for P2K's IC 2900, it's OK, but nowhere near perfect. They didn't take most of my advice, so the "prototype specific detailing" really isn't. The model is essentially a stock USRA heavy 2-10-2 lettered for the IC, rather than a true 2900 (which wouldn't have required much in the way of changes, but they were working with a VERY tight budget). At least they took all of my lettering advice: to date it's the ONLY correctly lettered IC steam model to ever hit the market!

Davy,

When did HW lease the cars? They don't show up in my 1930 ORER. Who did they least them from? I might have a few photos.

I just went through 400 reefer images (I have thousands of freight car photos digitized, so it takes seconds) and I didn't find any HW lettered reefers.

I'm modeling the NKP's Peoria Division, which carried the bulk of HW's eastern shipments of booze East. From at least 1930 to 1960, HW shipped their product in plain, UNmarked MDT (NYC) reefers. Booze was a high-tarriff, high cost commodity, and they didn't WANT to advertise their product on cars, since it'd get stolen quickly. In the 1930s MDT cars were generally deep yellow with plain lettering. In the 1940s they were white with a small red & blue stripe along the lower edge. By the mid-1950s, the cars were again yellow or orange, and always plainly lettered.

Quote from: SteamGene on June 23, 2007, 01:24:34 PM
Very nice, Lanny.  Why did the IC bother to place the pumps on the pilot deck?  Surely tunnel clearance wasn't much of a factor and the pumps surely didn't have to be enormous, even for a large Consolidation.
Gene

Hi Gene,

When the IC rebuilt these engines in the early 1940s they moved the air pumps to the pilot deck for one reason: balance. Weight distribution is pretty important to an engine's overall performance, and especially it's repair schedule. In general, it's desirable to have as much weight hanging over the drivers as possible, but not when that weight is improperly distributed. If one side of an engine weighs more than the other (and those two pumps weight almost a ton by themselves) that side of the engine will wear more than the other, meaning that the replacement time for the tires, bearings, and even drive rods will be sooner than on the other side. And since you replace all of those things on both sides of the engine at the same time, that means the railroad will be "wasting" the bearings and drivers on the opposite side of the engine.

Frugal railroads (and the IC was VERY frugal) don't like to waste anything, so they moved the pumps to the deck. The IC was also a fantastic steam designer (they're VERY under-appreciated by the steam fan world, which tends to focus on "superpower" engines, very few of which could match the performance of their home made 2800 series 2-10-2s or 2600-series 4-8-2s, both technically "pre-superpower" engines), and probably realized some performance advantage by adding the pumps tot he pilot.

Quote from: ebtbob on June 25, 2007, 06:41:40 AM

        This topic is one of the ones that has been around in some forum,  er,  form or another since I came to this forum several years ago and always draws a lot of ideas.   
         The one problem that many of us face is the fact that we not only talk about wheel arrangement,  but also railroad specific and that is where,  I fear,  our hopes start to diminish.   As was stated,  I would love to see an N&W 4-8-0 but there is a wheel arrangement that many U.S. railroads did not use.   The same would go for my dream of an EBT 2-8-2 in On30.   Manufacturers like Bachmann need to generate sales and to go railroad specific,  unless it is Pennsy or Santa Fe,  probably will not yield the desired results.

That hobby business model is no longer valid. In the "bad old days" of the hobby (say 1960 through 1990) the commonly accepted wisdom was that only "generic" models would sell, since they weren't prototype-specific. You wouldn't be "insulting" anyone by only offering N&W hoppers, or PRR boxcars, or SAL steam, and could readily decorate the models for any and every roadname out there, and everyone would be happy, since the car wasn't correct for ANY of them. That line of reasoning gave us generic Mantua steam and horrible Tyco, Bachmann (old Bachmann) and Life Like rolling stock.

But these days are different. If a model isn't specific to SOME prototype, it won't sell. Modeler's tastes have become accustom to prototypically correct rolling stock and (especially) engines, and generic won't fly. Most manufacturers these days will even produce models that are VERY narrow in scope. Intermountain and Red Caboose are doing this in a big way by coming out with rolling stock that's appropriate for ONLY one road, and they're selling well. Branchline has taken a prototypically correct "generic" 1944 AAR boxcar design and has tooled different ends, doors, roofs, and even brakewheels to match specific prototypes. Even Bachmann has come out with proto-specific steam models with all of their new releases.

BLI showed the industry that it IS profitable to come out with VERY narrowly defined models. When they came out with the PRR T-1 they didn't sell it with ATSF lettering, because they knew that the engine would stand on its own merits and sell out, even if it was of a peculiar prototype. They've shown us with a dozen or more models that this new business model does work with engines as well as cars.

So Bachmann CAN come out with proto-specific steam models in the future. And it's not like the industry's run out of prototypes that can correctly be decorated in multiple paint schemes. The Harriman line of engines came in more wheel arrangements than the USRA engines, and they haven't been touched since MDC in the 1970s. Some Lima and Alco superpower can be used for several prototypes, especially the early Berkshires. And all of the large steam manufacturers had large catalogs of stock designs. So we're nowhere near tapped out of good models to produce!

QuoteLet me suggest that there is probably a market for some of the following.   How about an 0-4-0,  0-6-0,  0-8-0,   2-6-0,  or 2-6-2?    Now I realize that someone already offers one or two of these wheel arrangements,  but that does not mean that more than one manufacture cannot offer a product also.

I think that except for the 0-8-0, all of the above are great choices. Bachmann has become a hero in the hobby by focusing on smaller, more typical steam engines, rather than on the huge and comparitavely rare "show pony" engines. The 0-8-0 is the only engine they'd lose their shirt on; P2K did suck a perfect job with their USRA 0-8-0 (the most popular single engine design in the USA) that no one will be able to touch their market share with that wheel arrangement.

Hmm...well, looking at the Bachmann catalog, about the only thing they don't make is a Heisler, an 0-4-0 and an 0-8-0.

But Bachmann SHOULD come out with a few new engines. Their Pacific is a Pennsy-only engine, their Mike is Chinese, and their Moguls and Praries are really nothing more than REALLY badly done USRA 0-6-0s.

I feel that Bachmann should come out with, in this order:
1) Harriman-Standard 2-8-2
2) Two truck shay
3) Harriman-Standard 4-6-2
4) Brooks 2-6-0
5) Harriman-Standard 4-4-2
6) NYC H-5 class 2-8-2
7) Richmond 1870s 4-4-0
Harriman-Standard 0-6-0
9) 52" drivered 2-8-0
10) 20-30 ton Heisler

There. That should cover all the bases.