Krupa, Miller, both Dorseys, so many others. . .I don't know if you've done any checking on YouTube, but there is a host of other material on the big bands there, including assorted "soundies" (short films, much like what we would call a music video today).  If you haven't done so, check this out by going to YouTube, and typing in the name of the band or performer (say, Doris Day) in Youtube's search slot, and assorted things will show up.  Click on a playlist, and you can play a whole sequence of "Doris Day" or whatever does turn up.  Pick the playlists carefully, sometimes you'll get a "tribute" to some performer by a current one (i.e., Christine Aguilira's version of "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy" instead of the Andrews Sisters'.)

Great soundtrack for a layout set in the 1940s. . .especially if it features early streamliners. . .

At the risk of getting way off topic (these trains don't even have wheels!), I also found this other variant of a "jet train;" I do have to say the afterburner/JATO bottle sequences are spectacular. . .

http://jalopnik.com/355087/aerotrains-will-blow-you-away

Now I wonder if we'll hear from a monorail crowd. . .

More high speed action--by a J3a numbered 614:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rmKYGEicP4&NR=1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrrPGQMwXxM&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AhGoR1cpdrM&feature=related

I like the way things used to be. . .

Enjoy.

Came across these video clips while looking up something else, and thought they would be appreciated here, too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXr6RZCIR2A&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0AGYIVjNIg&feature=related

J3a-614 is on film, too:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrrPGQMwXxM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0R9PkVB244&feature=related

Enjoy.

Came across these video clips while looking up something else, and thought they would be appreciated here, too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXr6RZCIR2A&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0AGYIVjNIg&feature=related

Thanks for the responses; they're appreciated!

A little more looking revealed that the jet RDC has actually been offered commercially in N-scale!  That's weird, considering the prototype only existed in this form for a few weeks at most before being coverted back to a regular RDC, and certainly not doing anything in regular service.

http://blwnscale.com/Kato%20NYC%20Jet%20RDC.htm

http://www.katousa.com/Kobo/E-NRDC-Jet.html

I recall an article (I have it, I think it may have been Railroad Model Craftsman, or maybe it's the Mainline Modeler issue mentioned above, but I only have 25 or so paper boxes filled with magazines--would take a while to find it) about building this RDC.  Like the prototype, the author used engines from an airplane (model); the scale wasn't exact, but was close enough.

http://jalopnik.com/359202/new-york-centrals-m+497-jet-powered-train

http://www.americanheritage.com/articles/magazine/it/1999/2/1999_2_63.shtml

Another NYC preview, same music, mostly earlier footage, including steam and the Aerotrain:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Ol5q7JXK2E&NR=1&feature=fvwp

I'll have to stick these in the Hudson thread later on.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXr6RZCIR2A&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0AGYIVjNIg&feature=related

Enjoy.

I just put in a new post on a real Jet Train; there's a music sample there you will appreciate.

Jet Train has a video of a couple of rocket dragsters that are the inspiration for his name.  At one time, though, there was a real jet train.  At the end of this video preview (featuring a great big band sound track--almost as good as the blue grass I go in for) is a short clip of NYC's jet powered RDC, a high-speed experiment on the eve of the Penn Central merger:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFSiOfzWWCg

Someone did a model in N-scale, wonder what they did for the sound effects:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqAKMbqlI7U

Someone else tried it in N scale, too--with real jet power!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJ5l_LHexdM

Someone--I believe it was the late Jim Findley--tried the same thing in HO scale with an Athearn RDC, and had even more spectacular results, as recounted in Model Railroader at the time.  He tried it in his house while his wife was at the grocery store.  His first try didn't do anything but smoke up the basement, so he disconnected the drive, and this time the rocket pushed the car right along--derailing at the first curve (NYC had chosen a good, straight stretch for their tests) and launching the car out the window--where it hit his wife's station wagon in the door just as she was coming home.  It was a one of Athearn's old metal RDC's, too.  His wife did not appreciate the experiment, particularly the nice dent she got in her car!

Didn't somebody--Athearn, Tyco--offer a propeller driven rail racer at one time?

Have fun.

Rye,

That music on your YouTube channel--Argh!!!

I had (and still have) a rebellious streak in music myself that drove my parents bats at times, but it took a different turn from yours--old-time stuff!  I was "country when country wasn't cool," taking a liking to what are now classic country performers like Johnny Cash and Hank Snow, loved the idea we had a live radio show in Wheeling called the WWVA Jamboree that was nearly as old as the Grand Old Opry in Nashville on WSM.  Later, when country got too modern for my taste in the later 1970s, I "discovered" a throwback called blue grass.  Surprisingly, blue grass is a relatively modern form, dating from the 1940s, was primarily "invented" by Bill Monroe as he searched for a distinctive sound for his own band at the time (and he thought some of the country sound was getting too "modern" then!)

Funny thing--Johnny Cash in his early years, and the Seldom Scene in the 1970s, were considered revolutionary in their fields at those times!

A sample or two from a favorite band of mine, the Seldom Scene; one clip is from the 1970s (and sadly the band is not the same, especially since John Duffy passed away at the relatively young age of 56):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nk9vhhGyRyo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m180ipearwY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-Q-PhU8I-I&feature=related

While on the subject of vintage sound, check out this video of Mike Dodd's now dismantled New River Division of the Virginian Railway.  For atmosphere, Dodd found an old 1950s radio and had a friend record a "broadcast" from 1954 that he had run into the radio from a CD player. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmAT6p1cb9k

http://www.mdodd.com/virginian/index.html

http://www.mdodd.com/virginian/sound-module.html

I wonder if anyone else has appropriate background sound (which could be just music, and my blue grass is certainly appropriate for any Appalachian railroad)--and I wonder what the appropriate sounds would be?

This is from some fellow in California who is also a C&O man; great sounds from just the trains:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2B6xxDRJAM&feature=related

If you're hoping to "recreate" part of the G&D, you may want to consider a second Russian Decapod to simulate the Jim Findley's Tioga Pass connecting service.  Findley would have used a Frisco version of the engine, as that was all that was available from Pacific Fast Mail at the time:

http://www.gdlines.com/GD_Galleries/locomotives/slides/Tioga_Pass_right_1.html

http://www.gdlines.com/GD_Galleries/locomotives/slides/Tioga_Pass_left_3.html

Other comments:  I wouldn't worry too much about Varney-Bowser cast rods; if John Allen used them, they would have held up well enough.  They don't have tor transmit thrust like the prototype does!

Took a look at your Christmas display videos as well,  Did I see an AHM 0-8-0 (Indiana Harbor Belt prototype) among the engines on a passenger train?  This also would have been a nice display in the Model Railroad Showcase promotion Martinsburg's Main Street organization used to run.

Enjoy, and good luck at finding work again.   

You're quite welcome.

My own becoming a railfan and model enthusiast dates back to about your same age (4-5), growing up in a house in Wheeling, W.Va. adjacent to the B&O at the south end of the city.  The location was adjacent to an early intermodal facility (just "piggyback" then) which used "circus" loading (backing trailers onto a string of flats with an old tractor (trailer) unit).  I remember the beat-up tractor as lacking front fenders and headlights, only two axles (common then in the east).  The flat cars were a mixture of converted 40 and 50 footers and early long flats, all in either railroad markings or Trailer Train's early red scheme.  Steam was gone by then, power was F-units, GP7s and 9s, and EMD and Baldwin switchers (remembered mostly because they sounded different).  I do remember we still had a single passenger train running then (research indicates it was discontinued in 1960).  Color schemes for all of this was the classic B&O first generation blue and grey (F-units and the boiler-equipped GP7 on the passenger train) and blue with Roman lettering (freight GPs and switchers). 

My mother had spent part of her childhood in this same house (which predated the railroad in Wheeling by about 10 years, and never did have central heat), and she recalled when she was a girl that the piggyback yard had then been a stock yard, and she would look through holes in the fence at the cows--she was a great animal lover--and the cows looked back at her.  That was entertaining for her in the 1930s.

There were also old movies on the tube back in my own childhood, among them Cecil B. DeMille's "Union Pacific," "The Great Locomotive Chase" (on the Walt Disney program--this would be early 60's), and old silent stuff, like the Keystone Kops and Harold Lloyd comedies (Lloyd may well have been the greatest stunt man of all time--look him up if you aren't familiar with him, some of what he did was amazing.  Personal favorite, "Speedy," in which Lloyd has the last horsecar franchise in New York City, and he has to keep his car running in spite of efforts to cause him to loose the franchise.  Trolley routes were valuable then!)

What would one of my posts be without links?

My favorite road:

http://www.cohs.org/

Why we still like big steam, in this case on the N&W:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zV8rA3UE-lc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LF-6FKD0pr0

From Kalmbach's website for Classic Trains:

http://www.trains.com/ctr/default.aspx?c=a&id=607

http://www.trains.com/ctr/default.aspx?c=a&id=608

http://www.trains.com/ctr/default.aspx?c=ss&id=18

Enjoy.

Rye,

I think the cylinders look fine; the "prototype" of G&D No.34 would have had 50" drivers vs. the 63" or higher drivers of the SP prototype 4-6-0 the Varney model is based on, and would have had the effect of increasing the tractive effort with a given cylinder size and boiler pressure.

This formula, expressed as best as I can with the limits of a computer keyboard vs. a manual typewriter,  is (85%PXbXbXs)/D, or 85% of the boiler pressure, multiplied by the square of the cylinder bore (or the bore multiplied by itself), and multiplied again by the stroke, and the whole business divided by the driver diameter.  A smaller driver diameter thus does not reduce the piston thrust as much as a larger wheel does, subject of course to another formula, the factor of adhesion (typically taken as 25% of the weight on the drivers for steam engines).

Evidence of at least the visual "correctness" of No. 34 may be taken by comparing it with an engine that would have been of comparable overall size, N&W's M-2 4-8-0, which had 57" drivers:

http://www.nwhs.org/archivesdb/detail.php?ID=11742

http://www.nwhs.org/archivesdb/detail.php?ID=817

http://www.nwhs.org/archivesdb/detail.php?ID=819

http://www.nwhs.org/archivesdb/detail.php?ID=820

http://www.nwhs.org/archivesdb/listdocs.php?index=rs&id=193&Type=Picture

The Reading I-10 (basis of the Vaney model and Bachmann's old 2-8-0), as I recall, was a very large 2-8-0 weighing something like 150 tons, comparable to similar large engines on the Delaware and Hudson and the Western Maryland.  I would assume G&D 34 would weigh about the same, but would have two more axles to spread out its weight.  It would be a locomotive meant to run on relatively light rail compared with that of a contemporary (1920's era construction) front-line coal drag engine on the Reading, so the machine is not totally implausible.

You've mentioned that you are relatively young (21 or so), and I was wondering how you got interested in modeling steam and in the G&D.  The image us old fogies (I'm 54) are "supposed" to have of younger pups is that you are into computers, I-pods, ear-pods, etc., and other degenerate activities like bad music.  You don't seem to fit that bill--and for that matter, neither did I back in the 1970s!

One of the SS&S's engines survives at the New Jersey Museum of Transportation.

http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.php?id=157009

http://www.njmt.org/archiveshistory.htm

I don't have it, but a neat little history of this line was published, titled "The Comp'ny", by H. Temple Crittenden, who also wrote "Maine Scenic Route" (Maine's Sandy River & Rangeley Lakes).

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=h.+temple+crittenden&x=14&y=18

Scroll down to page 5 and check out the Shay from West Virginia that keeps the 2-6-2 company.

http://www.njmt.org/docs/history/history1.pdf

Other photos:

http://www.railpictures.net/showphotos.php

Enjoy.

Central Valley trucks were great, and the arch-bar truck they sold was of a shorter wheelbase than normal, which was handy for certain prototypes--but I understand the wheelsets had a serious problem with the insulation decaying over time, resulting in short circuits, so if you have any of these trucks, you'll likely have to change out the wheels.

Elsewhere there has been a good deal of discussion of a wonderful free-lanced road that had a touch of fantasy about it (i.e., dinosaurs), John Allen's Gorre & Daphetid.  Your comment got me to thinking what a freelanced road serving the North Pole and inspired by Polar Express might look like.

Operationally, it would be very challenging, as suggested by book, movie, and John Allen--steep grades, sharp curves, single track, horrible weather. . . traffic would be primarily materials for the toys made in that red brick city at the pole (which one cynical movie critic suggested employed the elves as slave labor, or at least non-union guys, for the dangerous work they did in a city out of Dickens--what a grinch!). . .passenger service is limited to one night per year, and provides its own challenges by threading this train past all the freights that are now running southbound with toys for Santa to pick up, relay-style, as he flies about the world. . .that's why his sleigh doesn't have to be as big as an ocean liner!

Does this sound like fun?

Great to hear from another steam man!

You're right, AT&SF had 16 engines in two classes, but they weren't included because their driver sizes (72", same as a USRA 4-6-2, and a whopping 84", or 7 feet) was too far off from the 78"-80" standard for an interchangeable mechanism between models based on the above prototypes.  However, if someone did make a "7-foot" Hudson mechanism, it could be used for the second series of AT&SF engines and also for the streamlined Milwaukee F-7s and the C&NW 4-6-4s as well.  And that 84" size is what was also used under Milwaukee's A-1 4-4-2s--the original Hiawatha engines.

Didn't I see something recently about a new train set, based on the early Hiawatha, complete with the 4-4-2?

Guilford is right, 4-6-4s were relatively rare outside the NYC, and even on that road were dwarfed in numbers by 4-6-2s (275 vs. almost 500?).  Which tickles my brain cells again--NYC's most common 4-6-2 was the K-3 and all its subclasses, which 79" drivers--very close to the 80" drivers of PRR's K4s, suggesting another engine on the K4s mechanism (although it would also require a change in valve gear on a mechanism that may not be designed for it, as the USRA 2-10-2s are).  And while on the subject of 4-6-2s that are dimensionally close to PRRs K4s, we can't forget B&O's P7s--and No. 5300, the President Washington, is still with us in the B&O Museum in Baltimore; this next bit says something about why we still love steam:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbCFdocYkiA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rI99Dvpxo2w&feature=related

Found this while looking for K-3 specs:

http://www.canadasouthern.com/caso/loco.htm

http://www.canadasouthern.com/caso/home.htm

I also find it interesting that while Alco built by far the largest number of 4-6-4s, including Milwaukee's streamlined F7s and all 275 of NYC's engines, Baldwin built the greatest variety (for C&O in two versions, Maine Central, AT&SF in two classes, Milwaukee's F6, Burlington, New Haven), while Lima built only a copy order for the Nickel Plate Road (the first engines having been built by Alco, which also turned out to be the last engines from the plant in Dunkirk, N.Y.).

Isn't steam trivia fun?