I ordered every "annual" until last year the cost for S&H to Europe exploded. It was higher than the "annual" itself. Hope S&H will now be lower....

One "trouble issue" might be the fact that this equipment focusses on modellers in UK, the US and in continental Europa - which leads to the question of scale. 1:43.5? 1:45?? 1:48??? The same goes for HO. Minitrains solved it by offering them in 1:76 as they are quite minute and allows them to run with Baldwins from English vendors. The drawback is that you can't have them next to models from continental vendors like Roco as they are - although minute - are now about 15% too large.
Maybe Bachmann doesn't produce them in O scale because Fleischmann was never successfull in narrow gauge O scale? Seems to me that Europeans prefer HO narrow gauge

Richard

The WW1 Balwins are a dilemma both in On30 and in HOn9 (HOe). After WW1 they ran all across Europe - both in the UK and in Continental Europe (and even in North Africa). The discipancy between UK and Continental On30 is ca 5%, while for HOe it is a whopping 14%. As a subscriber to "Voie Libre" (the great French analogue to the NG&SL Gazette), I'm pretty sure they are very disappointed as they cannot be combined with the offerings from other continental artisans like Trains d'Antan.

Question: wondering all the time why US modelers would be intersted - did these Baldwins indeed run in the US after WW1?

Hey

I already suggested the baldwin 4-60 and 2-6-2 some time ago in this forum but so far, there was no reaction from the bachmann yet.

These locomotive are indeed globally deployable - that's the key argument in my opinion.

But as already discussed, in what scale? I also see 1:45 as a nice compromise to satisfy both american (1:48) and European (1:43,5) scales.

Besides being a Gazette subscriber, I also subscribe to the French magazine "Voie Libre". I highly recommend this magazine also to US readers: there is an English version available for i-pad users and its articles are not confined to France. They ran many interesting articles about the aforementioned Baldwins - both prototype and model ones.

By the way: there are HOn3 models by Victor Scale Models.

Snowy greetings from Austria

Rich

I guess what Dusten means with the 8-18d beeing a more suitable prototype for conversion into 4-4-0 and 4-6-0 is in the arrangement of the drivers, more specifically in the distance between the drivers.

In the ubiqous 4-4-0 of the 1870's - 1900's, the distance between the two drivers is very large. In the 8-18d, this large distance is retained, as it is actually a 8-18 with an extra driver.

If you take a typical mogol like the Brooks one from Bachmann, or any "donor" HO mogul, youu cannot simply remove the first driver in order to make a 4-4-0. In doing so, the (remaining two) drivers are very closetogether - much too close for a 4-4-0. It just doesn't look good.

If you skip the front driver from a 8-18d, you end up with a 4-4-0 that has the drivers in the "correct" distance.

Furthermore, I'm very much surprised about the arguments why Bachmann wouldn't make an 8-18: too old, too limited, etc. If this applies, then why did they ever produce one in G scale??? In G scale the long distance between the drivers and the problems with tight curves should apply to G scale even more. It would be really interesting to hear from Bachmann, how the selection process was.

Richard

As for the suggestion to offer narrow gauge diesels based on existing HO RS and SW frames, I think that there are already quite some very nice kits on the aftermarket from Boulder Valley, Backwoods Miniatures etc. Locomotives like the Twin Schnosser, the Double-Plymouth and the Boxcab are great models and certainly not TOO difficult to build.

Hi guys

I was wondering if anyone ever tried to an "optical" Mason Bogie from a Bachmann On30 Forney. I'm aware of the constructional differences between them. Nevertheless I'm wondering if it is possible to cosmetically modify the Forney so that it looks (from a distance and with -5.0 dioptries) like a Mason Bogie.....

Richard

Dusten, as you know I fully backup your request. It never understood why Bachmann ever released the OF 4-4-0 and the minute IF 4-4-0 particularly the the context of the abundance of which the 8-18c was deployed in the US and abroad.

Not only that the 8-18c was deployed by most of the narrow gauge common cariers. As trains grew longer and heavier after the 1890's, many 8-18c (as well as many other wheel arrangements of older construction dates) were bounced off and sold e.g. to logging roads. If you research the logging roads in the south (TX, LA, MS, AL) you will see that they only rarely deployed geared locomotives like Shays because the essentially flat land didn't require these specialised engines. Instead they rather bought old 4-4-0, 2-6-0, 2-6-2 and 2-8-0 ones and ran them until they literally felt apart.

An 8-18c can thus be used to model "old style" common carriers like the Colorado roads, any other common carrier in "flat" regions and even as 1930's logging engines.

Also I would have bought 2 - 3 8-18C's from MMI despite the high price and I believe that the high price is the main reason why so few pre-orders were received. Maybe the second reason being the "unserious" way how they produce: announce a modell without any garantuee that it will ever be produced and not giving any deadline or so. So you pre--order and than you wait for YEARS without knowing if the modell will ever be produced.

Even with the long lead times the Bachmann anouncements are delivered, the ARE delivered.

Richard

@gloria:

The book I referred to is "Kansas City Southern in the Deramis Era" from Louis Marre published by Wither's. It's not focussing on the early railroading era actually. However, they elaborately describe all KCS predecessors. Very nice book. The quote must be seen in the context of the steam locomotives used between Kansas City and Shreveport (e.g. the mallets) over Rich Mountain and the ones deployed south of Shreveport - a huge contrast.

Also, I can highly recommend the books from Joan and Thomas Gandy who published the Natchez photographs of Henry and Earl Norman. The Book "Natchez City Streets Revisited" (Arcadia  Publishibg) shows hundreds of photos of the typical Louisiana houses in the late 1800's.

Richard

Hi Dusten,
great to read that others also model the 19th century. After I picked 1882, I found out that locomotives like Forneys, most of the Porters, Heislers, etc did not yet exist. And modelling southern Louisiana common carier, I'm confined to locomotives that follow the concept written in a great book about the history of the KCS: ... in flat country, even the smallest locomotive could draw whatever the draft gear of those days could stand...
Thus, even the smallest consolidations like the C16 are way to "unprototypical" for me. That leaves the "standard" 4-4-0 (the Bachmann model unfortunately is a dwarf engine) and the mason bogies...
Richard

I'd like to see something I could use on my 1882 layout - the ever-postponed MMI 4-4-0 or a Mason-Bogie.

Hi

You're writing that you also want to change the speaker. Well, the porter doesn't use a speaker. Will be difficult to change, I guess....

Richard

Hi

does anyone know what happened with the Xeodon line of products (domes, pilots, etc) after they quit their business? Does someone else offer them now? They were great products and it would be nice if they were available again.

Richard

Does this mean that an exciter is essentially the magnet and coil so that the body of the porter sis actually the "cone" of the speaker?

@ebtnut:

the Class A Climax you ask for is already available from Ozsteam (from Australia) as a Bachmann Climax conversion kit. See http://www.ozsteam.com/html/on30_t-boiler_climax_conversio.html for photos. They're sold via ebay.

Ricgard