I’ll repeat this question on the MR Forum
From the News item photo, it looks it is the prototype for the least expensive locomotive kit in the Mantua HO catalogue. Does any reader still own a model?
I built the Reading 1187 Camelback as my first HO locomotive 72 years ago. Mine came with a sloping tender. Mantua still runs.
Can you please please post a photo of it? Or if you are not up to posting, send it to me as a jpg, btm, or gif to daveklepper@yahoo.com
Still runs. Great!
Got the needed photo from the Model Railroader Forum, so compare:
Did any Reading 0-4-0 have a slope-backed tender?
gregc on the MR forums rather conclusively posted a site containing a lode of Reading photos which contained at least two of these 0-4-0s (he linked the images) with slopeback four-axle tenders.
Thanks!!
Did any Reading 0-4-0s get straight-back tenders while still working for the Reading?
Would Age of Steam do a service by changing the tender to a slope-back and relocating the headlight?
That’s a good question. They might, however I did some checking in a book I’ve got on the Strasburg RR and that conventional tender is the one it had when the Strasburg got it in 1963. If the locomotive had a slope-back tender as built it lost it a long time ago.
The tender and headlight changed in going from Reading to industrial service?
Anywat here is Jim Bean with the new car added:
Post two or more freight cars, and the caboose will move to the freight train.
The competition for the Mantua Reading 0-4-0 was the Varney 0-4-0T B&O Dockside Switcher. Photos, anyone?
Well, it certainly lost the “as-issued” slope-back tender at some time. But when that was and why, your guess is as good as mine. [^o)]
There are better pictures of the yellow boxcar but they are not suitable for cropping and adding to the side view without significant ‘image processing’; most seem to be photographed with oblique or overhead views.
Get that caboose off the observation car’s view!
OK!
Works nicely for me.
Now perhaps we need G scalers to work up some ‘heritage’ cars to flesh out the line. Perhaps wth a common-size ceramic or glass insert for the ‘payload’.
(It does occur to me that a “commemorative” box that would fit a ‘fifth’ is roughly the proportions of a Pullman Palace Car… and a Vanderbilt tender bunker would fit neatly over the head of a fifth when making a tender… and a firebox and cab over a reversed fifth for a boiler…)
Overmod: Can you find, scan or provide URL, a picture of the full Mantua Bell of the Eighties train? Good to compare with Jim Beam’s.
And the “duck bill” combine, bag, and coaches?
Hard to find right-angle elevation views even in videos.
I haven’t even really found usable Olde Tyme car pictures.
In retrospect I did come across a picture of the original decal layout (tender, cab, and headlight panels) for the Belle of the Eighties that some enterprising Photoshop user might be able to crop and rotate, etc.
Post what you have, and I’ll do what I can.
I use both MS-Paint and MS-Photo-Editor, and that combination seems to worik for me.
This is what I found on the web for the Mantua Bell of the '80s trainset, and I hope someone else can do better.
These are not the Jackson and Sharp, duck-bill cleristory coaches I had in mind.
