PRR’s R1 was the Baldwin-Westinghouse 2-D-2 loser to the GE 2-C+C-2 GG1 as the later tracked better. Despite this, the R1 headed up the Broadway Limited Penn Station-Harrisburg every afternoon, returning in the morning Harrisburg-Penn Station with mail and express run or years Pennsylvania Railroad class R1 - Wikipedia
Then check out what was in Varney’s 1939 catlalog Despite the ad copy calling it “adapted from the GG1” it is clearly a R1 as it has 2-D-2 wheel arragement.Who knew? I’m a SPF (Slobberin’ Pensy Freak) and as far as I knew there had never been a model of an R1 or the even rarer R2. OK, prototpe fidelity ain’t the greatest, especially the underframe, but we are talking the Pleistocene Era of model railroading here. Anybody ever seen the model? Does anyone actually OWN one?
Clearly it is NOT a model of a R1, and equally obviously bashed from GG1 pieces or molds. The shorter ‘driver’ wheelbase and the cast-steel sideframe “detail” are obviously taken from the GG1, as is the Loewy welded nose styling. I could comment on those lead and trailing trucks… but they bear no resemblance whatsoever to what was on the R1, although they might if stuck on a model of a P5b – aren’t they P70 coach trucks? They put very similar sideframes on their CV6 diesel switcher…
Note that as pictured there are no pantographs, and no place to attach them easily, which is a pity because it would have been a cinch to have live overhead on a 3-rail model with a few well-placed snips of wire and insulation…
What this actually is… is the moral predecessor of the Tyco approach to a GG1 that was a sort of E44 under a bashed carbody.
Doesn’t mean I don’t want one, though… polished to an Airstream shine (note this was over a decade before the Congo GG1s!) and it would be a cinch to scratchbuild a more “R1-like” sideframe detail on each body side, and use better pilot trucks…
The R2 was a steam locomotive design; one candidate being the smaller direct-drive turbine with planetary drive that Westinghouse was peddling in 1948. All the prospective 1943 Pittsburgh electrification designs used articulated frames, like larger versions of the DD2, with the 428A motors
Clearly it COULD BE a model of a R1, and bashed from GG1 pieces Varney may have already had. They could have described it as being adapted from a GG1 in an effort to drive interest in it. They hint at building it to meet the limited space requirements of model railroading, but from a marketing standpoint are they more likely to sell a bunch of models described as being adapted from the GG1 or of an obscure locomotive class, of which a grand total of 1 was built? Besides, it was made in 1939. How extraordinarily accurate were the models then? Perfect or close enough?
I had heard that the Pennsylvania used steam locomotive wheel arrangements to name their electric locomotives. Since the “Class G” was a 4-6-0, the “GG1” was so named because of its 4-6-6-4 wheel arrangement. Two Class Gs put together.
Was the “Class R” a 4-8-4 steam locomotive designation on the Pennsylvania? I don’t think the pennsylvania had any steam 4-8-4s, did they?
What happened was Varney wanted to make a generic streamliner to follow modern railroad trends, so they took a generic 2-8-0 steam engine chassis they already had, added 4 wheel trucks and put a shortened GG1 body on top. The model even has the siderods hidden behind the shell to drive all 8 wheels. varneygg1.jpg (766×1014) (hoseeker.net)
Varney didn’t make any prototypical models until the Dockside 0-4-0T (1941), instead going for generic designs that would look “close enough” on most HO railroads of the day. And since they were one of the first to offer ready-made kits in a world of HO scale scratchbuilding, it worked out for them because the HO railroaders were used to doing mostly their own custom work anyway.
By the way, these old GG1s are super rare and extremely valuable to Varney collectors! I don’t even know how much they go for, but I’ve heard it’s a lot.
Now that I see how this was made… they missed a sure bet by not setting up dummy jackshafts and ginning up a (suitably abbreviated) boxcab body…might even have tried using the Consolidation engine truck to do a L5 if anyone actually wanted one… and both the DD1s and most of the L5s wouldn’t miss pantographs…
It helps to browse through older (REALLY older) issues of Model Railroader to put this in context – while there were some surprisingly nice and close-to-scale models at that time, there were also plenty of “if you squint hard enough it sort of looks like …” models, both commercially and scratchbuild by modelers, and which MR thought highly enough of to publish pictures of. The line between toy trains and scale model railroading was still evolving.
So the Varney offering was taken for what it was at the time, and we cannot look at it with 1938 eyes.
I think that the moral ‘competition’ for the Varney Streamliner was the likes of the Lionel O-27 suitable “GG1” – judged by that standard it is a reasonable starting place for a comparable “compressed” R1. Not difficult to make ‘walking-beam equalizers’ and so forth for those side panels, or more accurate sideframes for the engine trucks, and bash Dohner-style ends out of some contemporary material like cardstock soaked in airplane dope. As the OP pointed out, the result would be just as recognizable to PRR fans as the Lionel GG1 is…
A little additional research: it appears that only ~200 of these were made before production ceased. When the dust had settled in the early '70s regarding the Penn Line/Varney/Life-Like cast GG1 business, Bowser did have the molds but Lee English said the company had no interest in producing more (or revising the thing to suit ‘contemporary sensibilities’.
It is reasonably possible that the molds still exist…
(As an aside, most of the collectors knowledgeable about these do call it a ‘R1’ even though acknowledging that the details were derived from the GG1 or its tooling…)
The DD2 was famously built (I believe in early 1938) as the test prototype for the stillborn electrification to Pittsburgh. It had higher rated horsepower from two fewer axles.
Later (in the 1943 wartime revival of the electrification planning) the design would have been expanded into a “GG2” and further into engines with eight axles – probably operated in pairs – all using the 428-A motors and larger drivers as in the DD2. Note the implicit matching of electrics and divided-drive steam power for fast passenger trains, even though the only prototype was built with freight gearing…
Instead, the GG1 was cloned for additional wartime power and the rest is history.
The DD2 was kept in service all the way to the early '60s, and only scrapped when the other orphan power was. (IIRC Bill Volkmer thought highly of it).
Ed, you of all people would have technical information on the Westinghouse 428-A motors as used in this design – I have actually seen pictures of them installed in the chassis but can’t search them out now. Something like what FM provided for the 362-D motors they used:
There was a time when I probably would have conceded to having a meatball branded onto my hindquarters, more as a mark of ownership rather than a monogram of loyalty [:-^] I served under three CEOs beginning with Reggie Jones, through the heady Jack Welch years and finally through most of Jefferey’s time. As so many fine bastions of industry, GE has somehow lost much of its luster.
I was part of Lighting but our plant was also a materials supplier for several other GE businesses. Our primary function was the refining and manufacture of tungsten and molybdenum ingots, sheets, powders and wire.
It was good policy to keep an eye on the competition so following some of Mr. Westinghouse’s technical advancements was beneficial. Reading about the endeavors into the Milwaukee Road’s EP-3 design shortcomings make me wonder about the engineering talents at Westinghouse and Baldwin.
This article primarily describes the GG1 but there is also interesting notes about the PRR electrification in general. I don’t have any skinny on the design or improvements of the Westinghouse 428A (625hp) motor but if I come across anything I’ll update a reply here. I have some PRR operations manuals that I haven’t been through yet.
Man, the FF1 on a passenger run is the definition of overkill as it was renowned for destroying the draft gear of the roling stock it was given to pull. I think it spent most of its time in service after testing was complete pushing trains out of the Schuykill Valley.
Pennsylvania Railroad class R1 - Wikipedia
Despite the ad copy calling it “adapted from the GG1” it is clearly a R1 as it has 2-D-2 wheel arragement.Who knew? I’m a SPF (Slobberin’ Pensy Freak) and as far as I knew there had never been a model of an R1 or the even rarer R2. OK, prototpe fidelity ain’t the greatest, especially the underframe, but we are talking the Pleistocene Era of model railroading here. Anybody ever seen the model? Does anyone actually OWN one?
