as i stated earlier i am new to this hobby so if i am asking to many questions just tell me.
Iam looking to buy an old steam engine off E-Bay and ther are some codes and numbers i dont understand for examplee what dose 4-0-0 or 2-8-0 mean also what are MA OR PA short for
I under stand that MDC=Model die Cast Company, and im sur there are others,
again im sorry if I am asking to many questions, but im really intrested in this hoby and want to learn all i can.
thank you
OTM
0-4-2=zero pilot (leading) wheels, 4 driving wheels and 2 trailing wheels. Is always pilot, drivers, trailing wheels and it only applys to steam locos. Deiesl has there own classification that I don’t yet fully understand.
MA is most likely Maryland, PA most likely Pennsylvania.
Ask all you want.
Ma & Pa is Maryland and Pennsylvania (Did that get spelled right?) railroad. A wunnerful little shortline in Maryland and Pennsylvania.
Here in the USA we count the total wheels on a steam engine by function.
Pilot wheels in the front 2 or 4
Driving wheels in the middle 2, 4, 6 8 etc by groups if articuleds.
trailing wheels that support the firebox and help guide engines backwards get 2, 4 or 6.
In europe… they dont really know how to count (Very high or things they cannot actually see) so they like to keep things simple and “One Sided”
4-4-0 in the USA becomes 2-2-0 in Europe Savvy?
Desiels get letters according to the trucks they ride on.
I don’t know about railroad terms, but the standard abbreviation for Maryland id MD. MA is Massachusetts
That’s true, but in the case of the Maryland and Pennsylvania Railroad its nickname is the Ma&Pa. Bachmann has just produced the 4-4-0, numbers 4,5,6 for the Ma&Pa and there is a 4-6-0 also. An excellent book on the railroad is The Ma&Pa by George Hilton. For many it is the quintessential shortline.
Enjoy
Paul
Acknowledged and noted for future reference.
In this case I was wrong while being right…I’ll give ya a minute to ponder that one
I raced thru the original post, I knew the answer to the wheel configuration and living in PA I had a bit of brain flatulence and applied the same abbreviation thought process to our neighbor to the south. Long story short- I was thinking standard state abbreviation…[D)]
For diesels (the same system was used for electrics), they use a system by the number of axles, with a letter denoting a powered axle and a number denoting a nonpowered axle. For example, a B-B truck locomotive has 2 trucks with two axles each, all powered. Going back to older diesels, the early passenger units ran on A-1-A trucks, meaning they had three axles, the outer two powered and the center one non powered. For electrics, the famous Pennsylvania Railroad GG-1 was a 2-C-C-2 wheel arrangement. There were two nonpowered axles, three powered axles, three more powered axles that would swivel independantly from the other three (which is why there was a separate letter to denote them) and finally two nonpowered axles.
Hey Orange- type in Whyte Classification or Whyte Railroad Classification in your search engine, and you should get the full story of how the US differentiated between steam locomotives. Once you see the diagrams, it is pretty self explanatory, it’s like you are looking at the wheels from the side of the loco. Example- on a 4-8-4 you would see 2 little (pilot)wheels in front, then 4 large (driving) wheels, then 2 more small (trailing) wheels. The 4-8-4 was also called the Northern by the railroads, so you have certain wheel arrangements that go together with their names. It can be a bit daunting, but I’m sure you will catch on fast.
In diesels, the standard wheel arrangements today are either B-B, (viewed from the side of the locomotive you see 2 wheels on each truck((the thing the wheels are part of)) or C-C, which indicates 3 wheels per truck.
I think this site has a glossary of terms, never been to it so I can’t tell you just where it is, but I seem to remember noticing it on the homepage before I logged into the forum section. It can probably answer all of your questions better than we can explain them!
Hope I didn’t bore you to death!
Or put a slightly different way - the German VDEV standard counts axles, not wheels. And have ways to signal whether the wheels on axles are mechanically connected (e.g with siderods), whether they are in a rigid frame or on a truck that can swivel relative to the engine and a few other things:
http://mysite.du.edu/~jcalvert/railway/wheelarr.htm
Grin,
Stein