I need help with this HO scale SP 4-10-2 here! The model was first offered on british auction site vectis.co.uk and later the (buyer from vectis) offered it on ebay.co.uk. I asked him about the model, but the only infos I got from him was that the model is a mix of white metal and brass, but the tender body is made of wood, and that it features an open frame motor. And as visible, the 3 inner drivers are flangeless and the drivers have almost no lateral sideplay at all. He couldn´t tell me anything about the manufacturer, but was sure it was from a kit but not scratchbuilt. What do you guys think? Scratchbuilt or kit? And if kit, who could be the manufacturer and in which years could such a kit have been produced?
I tried to find more info on the internet but couldn´t find any infos about SP 4-10-2 kits ever being produced.
I am not expert either but I do recollect an inexpensive vanderbilt tender “kit” that was available, at least briefly, by one of the basement-type manufacturers, that consisted of exactly two wooden parts: the cylinder and squared off fuel area. They fit together. It was up to the modeler to supply frame and all other detail parts, and if you wanted rivet detail, then you needed to fit a shim brass wrapper around those parts. I have no better recollection than that so i cannot say if the tender shown in these photos has its origin in that “kit” (if that was the right word for it) or if someone scratch built their own along the same general idea.
The rest of the locomotive could i suppose be one of the rather early Japanese imports, as it has that slightly ungainly look that some early Japanese brass had. On the other hand don’t those cylinders look like the old Varney casting?
It is interesting how the patina and wear on an old model rather effectively capture the weathered look of a prototype!
@Brakie: Yes, I actually also believe that it´s a scratchbuilt engine rather than a kit.
@dknelson: You won´t believe me but I thought almost the same about the cylinders! They are definetly too long (horizontally), and when I saw the photos for the first time, immediately a thought popped up in brain that I have already seen such cylinders on some models before, but I couldn´t remember which models exactly and by which manufacturer. But it could be Varney indeed. But maybe not. Not only the cylinders are too long (or let´s say too unprototypical looking) but also the pilot truck because the space between the front and rear wheels of the pilot truck is also too long, which is visually being intensified by the long cylinders. I also agree with you about the weathering. It looks quite well on this model! Being a SP 4-10-2 fan, I wanted to purchase it, but when I heard that there is almost no lateral sideplay for the drivers, I rejected it. Because then it surely wouldn´t have made it through my curves, and if yes, it would have looked terribly with those 3 inner blind drivers hanging in the air way too far beside the rails.
I may be way off base but that looks like a Penn Line (Bowser) drive. It is from a PRR decapod and had three fixed blind drivers that can handle an 18"radius curve because they are unsprung. The rest of it is up to somebody else.
I had to look at some SP versions of this engine, this model is a cobbled together model, the air pumps are upside down. It may have used some Bowser and cal scale parts.KTM-Max Gray made brass version, The Max Gray about 1963 looksfar more detailed than this model, the builder, likely in England may not have had the brass version available or the money so may have wanted the model scrounged for everything and made this.
@ndbprr: But with the Bowser PRR 2-10-0 it was the center driver that had the gear. On this model it´s the 4th driver that has the gear which I find very unusual. All 10 coupled steamers I know have the gear on the center driver except the Mantua 2-10-0 and 0-10-0 which have the gear on the 2nd driver. By the way I think that fixed/stiff drivers with no sideplay simply look horrible in curves. Seeing the wheels overhanging with a clearly visible space between wheels and rails and not touching the rails is something I absolutely dislike. I rather do not have the model then instead of accepting such a bad compromise.
@dinwitty: I know those Max Gray SP 4-10-2´s. And I heard many times already that these Max Gray 4-10-2´s are by far the heaviest 4-10-2´s ever made in HO scale because of their very heavy and solid construction which was made for running. I can only imagine that it must be a great puller. Sadly they won´t make it through my curves, but otherwise I´m sure these 4-10-2´s by Max Gray would be the right ones for me. I seriously doubt if that scratchbuilt 4-10-2 would have been able to pull 40 freight cars with 6 driving wheels being off rails hanging in the air and only 4 driving wheels touching the rails while running through my curves.
This is nearly OT at this point but just to clarify one thing discussed above. By the mid to late 1950s Japanese brass had (I generalize) the rivet detail and good proportions that made it so desired. But Japanese brass from the late 1940s and very early 1950s was different: it was cheap, sometimes not very well assembled, and things often seemed out of scale because quite possibly they were eye-balled rather than made using plans and drawings. And often they were not cataloged: often built per spec at the request of visiting American servicemen. So looking at catalogs is not where you’d find that very very early brass. The locomotive of this model has some of those features, and I join those who speculate that it is partly scratchbuilt, partly assembled from available parts, and possibly without the benefit of plans.