Ok, you wanted to know the Minimum distance a HO Big Boy needed. well I was browsing Trix’s site, and found that thier big boy is not the silly Marklin AC crap, but rather is “Built specifically for North American 2-rail DC”(their words).
But here’s the kicker:
“The Big Boy can be used on curved track with a minimum radius of 360 mm / 14-3/16”, but we recommend larger radius curves. Due to the overhang of this locomotive’s long boiler, signals, catenary masts, bridge railings, tunnel portals, etc. must be set out further from the curved track for clearance. "
So you see, you can run your big boy on a 15" radius curve (looks horrid, but it can be done).
4884 was inquiring about the Rivarossi version of the Big Boy. Is it built to the same specs? All I could find was the Marklin-Trix info (same stuff you found), but nothing on Rivarossi.
As far as i can find, the Rivarossi Big Boy is discontinued (not sure if it’s a retooling freeze yet or not), And no one seems to have the specs on it anywhere.
Some good info, guys. Yes, I was looking at a Rivarossi big boy. The Trix would be nice too, but the $800.00 probably won’t be coming out of my wallet anytime soon. [:)]
The rivarossi bigboys come in different road# and some also differ in details like the cooling tubes above the front trucks, they were visible when the prototypical 4000 series left the factory (rivarossi #4000 and #4003) but later on these tubes were build into the chassis for safety reasons (rivarossi #4001 and #4023) I have seen both the Rivarossi and Trix BigBoys and to my opinion the small difference like the lighted numberboards is not worth 400,=. Maybe that the bad availability in the USA from these RIVAROSSI locomotives has something to do with the Exchange rate US dollar and European Euro, (rivarossi is Italian) wich changed a lot over the last year: 1 euro was $0.85 now is $1.15 The new UP FEF’s coming from this factory are now alsmost delayed 9 months.