I owned one of these some time back and really wished I hadn't sold it. It has a delightfully chunky, all business look with its wide Wooten firebox, Elesco feedwater heater high on the nose (neither of which is a UP feature BTW) and piping detail that would shame brass locomotive manufacturers not too long ago. It appears to me that they did some modifications to their 2-8-0 mechanism from the 1970s and applied a trailing truck as it looks like it was just stuck in there. The firebox is short enough to do without but that's just another part of its appeal to me.
Sometime during their production, Bachmann improved the drive on them because, unlike my first example, this one is a smooth, powerful and quiet runner with a billowing smoke feature. Its original owner mounted Kadee couplers to it---and---failed to tell me about the broken clips for the tender trucks...sigh...but it was inexpensive enough that I would have picked it up anyway. I purchased it, along with several other low priced goodies I'll be posting later, at a swap meet this past weekend...
4 comments:
I'm not into steam (I like to model the modern era), but I've got to agree with you that that is a good looking engine.
Thanks, it'll be pulling my Patriot train at Christmas time.
I would miss a match of my favourite soccer team for a beauty like that!!! (By the way, my favourite team's history connects it to the Romanian Railway Company - CFR). Is this Mikado from the 3rd or from the 4th rail era ?
This would be Era 4, one that would have been built just before WWII.
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