This is a locomotive I know very little about, and had never felt the desire to own. Not until it was offered for a fiver at the G1 birthday event from a chap looking to clear his stand at the end of the day who didn't want to take it home. For that sort of money, I snapped it up to add to my HO scale American fleet. OK, it doesn't really fit in with a short line, but it was a fiver.
A little digging on the web suggests this model could date from the 1970s, but apart from that, the information is scarce. Those flanges say old, as does the interesting tender mounted motor.
Driving through a shaft to the gearbox in the loco, I assume this limits the tight curves the model can traverse. I found some suggestions that it can be replaced with a moden can motor, which would made sense.
Does it work? Not very well initially, but after scraping quite a lot of muck from the wheels, things improved a lot. Appropriatly, this model picks up using the Amercian system - all the wheels on one side of the tender, and all the wheels (including the pony) on the other side of the loco. On this model, that's a lot of wheels, so it should handle dirty spots of track well enough.
Anyway, another one for the collection (I know, I don't need any more toy trains) for the moment. It goes to show, if you are in the right place at the right time, there are bargains to be had. Now, I must go and watch a Western, in the name of research. Yee-Ha!
5 comments:
This is not the right era — perhaps half a century later — but how about Emperor of the North [Pole] for lots of US train action? No cowboys though…
Blomin' finescalers. If I want cowboys on my train set I'll have cowboys! They can be trying to raid the giraffe cars!
Reno still exists and is back on the V&T. It was sold to MGM in 1945 and appeared in many films.
Same stand in the back corner I got my K1 from?
That's the one Matt. I think you might have got the better bargain too!
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