For all of You Train Lovers

[YY1]

Thank goodness I bought almost everything I will need years ago.

I did just buy one of these, as they are a new release.

I bought a refurb and saved over a hundred bucks!

A few years ago, I bought a brass one as I thought a modern plastic one would never get done.
I resigned myself to kit-bashing a P2K USRA mechanism in the brass body and living with the wheel spacing discrepancy.
People don't generally like to pay for new small steam engines, because they cost 90% of what the larger ones do.
All the money is in the engineering and very little is in the materials.
That brass B6sb was less than half the price of this new BLI one, with DCC and sound.

 

[Hey-O]

The whole thing went from stupid, to completely stupid in the flash of a credit card. LOL. I think you guys will enjoy watching this come together. I've been buying for several months now, and I don't mean trains, that only took a few minutes.

 

[YY1]

Broadway Limited Imports has been real good to us PRR fans.
A couple years ago, they gave us this small steamer-

 

[Hey-O]

Thank goodness I bought almost everything I will need years ago.

I did just buy one of these, as they are a new release.

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View attachment 1938629

I bought a refurb and saved over a hundred bucks!

A few years ago, I bought a brass one as I thought a modern plastic one would never get done.
I resigned myself to kit-bashing a P2K USRA mechanism in the brass body and living with the wheel spacing discrepancy.
People don't generally like to pay for new small steam engines, because they cost 90% of what the larger ones do.
All the money is in the engineering and very little is in the materials.
That brass B6sb was less than half the price of this new BLI one, with DCC and sound.

That's a sweet piece! $450.00 all day long!! I'd have one but I'm trying to stay in the 40's and 50's, I said trying.

 

[YY1]

One of the things that attracted me to PRR (other than that it's legacy line through Xenia, OH ran about 2 miles from my house), was that they had some bizarre stuff created by their in-house mechanical department. BLI has made most of them.

Q2 4-4-6-4 duplex drive-

I have one of these, but I only paid half of what they are going for now.
Even then, it's the most expensive engine I own.

 

[YY1]

The S1 6-4-4-6-

 

[Hey-O]

One of the tings that attracted me to PRR (other than that it's legacy line through Xenia, OH ran about 2 miles from my house), was that they had some bizarre stuff created by their in-house mechanical department. BLI has made most of them.

Q2 4-4-6-4 duplex drive-

View attachment 1938634

I have one of these, but I only paid half of what they are going for now.
Even then, it's the most expensive engine I own.

The engineering and detailing in that is incredible. I really like that!!

 

[YY1]

PRR did not have a 4-8-4, arguably the best and most modern development in steam locomotives.

Instead they had really good 4-8-2's and duplex 4-4-4-4s (The T1)

IMO this is one of the most beautiful locomotives ever built.
It's pretty, but it looks like it means business.

 

[YY1]

They were also one of three railroads to develop a working steam turbine.

The S2 6-8-6-

The other two were C&O (M-1) and N&W (the Jawn Henry)

 

[YY1]

My layout is set in 1948.

I can plausibly run all of these (a little license on the S1, and I'll probably never have one), plus all the "first gen" diesels.
PRR had almost one of everything in that department as well, along with at least one no one else had, the Baldwin passenger shark.

 

[YY1]

Additionally, PRR was prohibited from designing new locos during WWII (they skated on the T1, though), so they took a C&O design and built these-

T1 2-10-4 (PRR also never had a 2-8-4)

 

[YY1]

They never built an articulated engine, but they were a 45% owner of the N&W, and bought a small lot of used 2-8-8-2 Y3's from them.

 

[YY1]

They also leased a few different types of locos from other railroads at various times.

Including Reading 4-8-4 T1's.

This is the same class that was used on the 1975/76 American Freedom Train, on which I received a VIP tour including brunch in the business car and a cab "experience" including having my hand on the throttle, cutoff, and brake and blowing the whistle. I remember the engineer trying to explain to me what the cutoff did, but my 8 year old brain really didn't get it.
I later learned that engineer was Ross Rowland, an incredibly big player in the field of steam locomotive preservation.

 

[YY1]

Outside of my time frame, PRR leased Santa Fe 2-10-4's for the Sandusky coal and ore branch.

 

[Hey-O]

I like the Bonnet F7A's

 

[YY1]

My goal, with my roster, is to have "one of everything" that could have run on the Columbus Division in 1948 and a few that were staples on the Akron, Cleveland, and Cincinnati divisions.

 

[BLK 68 R/T]

I liked the countryside, mountains and the color of the rocks in the area. Against the darker colors, this stuck out as a nice contrast, so this seemed like the train for me, so I bought this. I think I now have eight cars and adding. I know more about the diorama than the actual trains. I think they said the locomotive, passenger and caboose should represent one company and they could pull multiple rail cars from different companies in the rest of the load. To late for to much protocol, I'm on a roll. I finished the track on both sides, ran my main power lines, wired in all my track joiners feeds and isolating blocks. All I need now is to wire the track to my DC and DCC boxes through a switch. Then I'll start building the town first.
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Not knocking your setup in any way, but passenger trains typically don’t use a caboose. They finished off the rear with an observation car. Most passenger trains prior to the creation of Amtrak all used their own name on their trains. After Amtrak it was common to see mixed road names in the trains for quite some time. Eventually they all became Amtrack. Now you see mixed road names on some passenger trains that are privately owned cars.

Notable passenger trains I can think of are the - Hiawatha, North Coast Limited, Empire Builder and the California Zephyr.

 

[YY1]

Actually, most passenger consists did not use an observation car.

Those were reserved for special "named" trains like those mentioned above.

OBS cars are "one way" and required turning, unlike other passenger equipment that could simply be shuffled and run the other way.

 

[Hey-O]

My goal, with my roster, is to have "one of everything" that could have run on the Columbus Division in 1948 and a few that were staples on the Akron, Cleveland, and Cincinnati divisions.

Next to you, I know nothing!! I'm already getting more in a few minutes than I ever knew in my lifetime. This started out as an art project with a 50 dollar used DC train set. Theresa said I need a train that makes sounds and the rest is history!! LOL. Lake with a waterfall in the left back corner and a train yard up front with multiple buildings. Mountains along the left, front to back with two tunnels, one in each of the turns. I have about three hundred trees for the mountainness areas.

 

[YY1]

OBS cars are also almost always special plan built, meaning no two of them are the same.

If you want an entire consist of a passenger train from a specific year, those are available-

Yowza!