PRR was not the only RR to use 4-6-2’s? I’m not in the market for this locomotive at all, but just off the top of my head, I know that Pennsy Pacific’s are/were made by Athearn Genesis, MTH, BLI, and Bachmann Spectrum, and I’m sure there are probably others. Why doesn’t anyone make a Pacific for any RR other than Pennsy? If there was a Pacific made for Union Pacific, Southern Pacific, or several other RR’s, I’d buy it.
The Genesis Pacific was not a K4, but a generic class. I was not even aware the Genesis model was offered in PRR, but they probably did.
The basic Pacific chassis with eighty inch drivers could be used for more than a few other Pacifics, but the shell and details would have to be updated. Why everyone else has actually made the K4 does not make sense to most of us. Most of us would agree if they made a SP (2472) smaller drivers, or a UP 2906, or a Southern PS4, it probably would sell well. There are many other Pacifics including the B&M 4-6-2 at Steamtown, that might run again. Any of these could sell many copies.
It would seem that most of the manufactures are slow in taking chances on new items. Since the beginning of model railroading, the NYC Hudson and the PRR K5 , (Read Big K4), in the case of American Flyer, both were built and all models seemed to follow this first great success. Both Lionel and American Flyer offered the Hudson and they sold very well. Yes they were in different scales, but the fact is they sold year after year without new tooling.
I was absolutely excited when I finally got the American Flyer Northern. We had been running the Hudson and K5 and I really wanted some thing with eight drivers. By the way, I still have it.
I don’t see an Athearn Genesis K4 on their site. In defense of the Standard Railroad of the World, it owned a LOT of Pacifics in a number of classes, with 425 in the K4 class alone.[:)]
I wish I had your HO K4 problem! I model Pennsy in N and nobody’s offered one since Minitrix back in the 70s. Compared to today’s stuff, they come up short in almost every respect.[:(]
Pennsylvania RR K4 pacifics have been a popular engine in virtually all scales since the 1930s. That is because the PRR was a huge railroad that lots of guys have modeled, and because the K4 class was itself huge by any standards. And the Pennsy stretched from the east coast into the middle west and down into the “near South”
Now, Mantua / Tyco for years offered a Pacific that was B&O prototyoe, and there have been various USRA Pacifics offered that many roads had or modified. Bowser offers (I think they still do) a New York Central 4-6-2. Athearn briefly offered a Boston & Maine Pacific – but that is part of the problem right there: I think the B&M had a relative handful of that prototype and not many guys model the B&M circa 1940.
Dave Nelson
About American Flyer, they also offered a New Haven I-4 Pacific for years, and it’s not too bad…for AF.
But then, the AF plant was on the NH, the NH’s overhead electrification inspired Gilbert’s Erector sets, and their use of the NH’s 8200-class passenger cars for their “streamlined” design led to them being called “American Flyer Cars” by rail fans for decades. So it’s no surprise that AF made a NH Pacific.
As for the original question, PRR is a pretty popular RR, and they had hundreds of K4’s (the NH only had 50 I-4’s by comparison), and they ran for a long, long time. I was just at Steamtown last week, and the park ranger had something interesting to say during the shop tour. The reason why the K4’s lasted so long was because all their replacements were such failures. LOL
Paul A. Cutler III
Weather Or No Go New Haven
IHC make a 4-6-2 loosely based on a USRA 4-6-2 and a semi streamlined Pacific…Rossi made a nice USRA 4-6-2 as well.
The Genesis 4-6-2 is a USRA Pacific.
When you read the discussions offered by various modellers as to why they used a particular railroad or location on a railroad you will see a recurring theme that they are modelling a division or railroad they remember seeing or growing up near. The majority of us modellers grew up near the PRR, AT&SF, or the Union Pacific and thus like to buy what we once might have seen because these engines left a life-long impression on us.
The K4 was a great passenger engine and the last ones built were twenty years old when the T1’s hit the road. You are right also about their replacements failed to do the job that the K4 had done so many years. I was very fortunate to see them run and watch the T1’s also. The late forties was a time for us as railfans that will never be equaled in terms of types of steam and diesels working side by side to get over the road. I watched several times as a K4 would come into town on a train with a diesel behind it that had failed on the road. They were simply marvelous to watch at work.
The S1 and S2 were experimental passenger engines and the T1 was going to be the ultimate steam passenger engine for the PRR. The T1 was perfect on the drawings board and the test station rollers at Altoona where the engineering staff tested and decided it was ready, since it outperformed the latest E7’s in every way above 26mph. They forgot you had to start the train also and the T1 failed in this department big time. I don’t think I ever saw one leaving our town without slipping several times on a restart.
A funny thing happened in the next two or three years of T1 production road testing. They failed and the K4 continued on to the
The Pennsy K-4 certainly needs no defending–it was probably the most successful 4-6-2 design of all, and certainly one of the most distinctive. It even fascinates ME and I model strictly western rails.
But I think what el Parro is getting at is that a ‘generic’ 4-6-2 seems to be in very short supply as compared to other wheel arrangements that are being released, these days. IHC has a ‘sort-of’’ Light USRA, and so does Genesis (though that particular loco seems to be plagued with a ‘splitting’ gear problem), however it seems to me that a wheel arrangement that was common to an awful lot of railroads is getting short shrift in the modeling department. Hopefully, manufacturers will realize that a lot of model railroaders like medium and smaller steam as well as the hefty larger models. For myself, I looked for years for a smaller 4-6-2 that I could convert into a Rio Grande 800 Pacific. Finally found one, a brass PFM Rio Grande model that I really like. But I wouldn’t have minded a well-built, good running ‘generic’ plastic that I could have kitbashed.
As I said, nothing whatsoever against the Pennsy K-4—BUT we also need some others out there.
Tom
If somebody were to make some New Haven steam, I would buy several…it still bugs me to no end that manufacturers ignore the rest of the market, treating the holy 13 like they are the only railroads that sell…they aren’t…
Now if page 6 of the Feb. 2004 Model Railroader were to be any guide, there were two New Haven prototypes in the N and HO top 10 most wanted list. EP-5 and the FL-9.
And what do we get? More F7’s and GG1’s…[censored]
People will try and say they keep making the same lousey “Big Boys” and K-4’s cause they sell…well no they don’t. I keep seeing the same ones at LHS’s over and over… Yet I’d be hard pressed to find a NH DL-109…or PA-1 for that matter.
Around here steam doesn’t sell very well. Our stock of Katos, Atlas, Proto in HO are pretty slim. Where as Our display case is filled with Steam that sits for a while. Thats in HO. N scale here sells decently but not nearly as much as HO, so all N scale engines sit for a while here regardless of Steam or Diesel
I wonder if it has less to do with where people live - the idea that many people live or grew up along the PRR or UP - and more with where the manufacturers are?? Lionel in the old days built models of electric boxcabs, then the NYC Hudson, then PRR GG-1, in part because those were what was common in the New York area where they were located. Similarly, Athearn is located in Los Angeles, and their passenger cars are based on Santa Fe models, their reefers on PFE cars, and their cabooses are I think Santa Fe also(?). Bowser is I think in Pennsylvania and offers quite a few PRR engines. In fact, with one or two exceptions like Athearn, I’m would bet the majority of model rail manufacturers are in the northeast part of the US, and that influences what they choose to make to some extent.
Pennsy was big - it wasn’t the biggest in terms of route mileage - that distinction, I believe, belonged to SP - but its only rival in terms of track mileage was NYC. The last I read Pennsy has one of the five largest modeling fraternities in the hobby. Her K4s was the largest single 4-6-2 class produced in the US and, even though she was slightly outnumbered in total 4-6-2 production by her arch rival, New York Central, the two were, for practical purposes, equal in size. She was “The Standard Railroad of the World”, a phrase coined, by the way, by the Pennsylvania Railroad advertising department. I had/have a friend who was a militant Pennsy fan - in his world creation had began and ended at Horseshoe Curve.
Armed with all of this it should come as no shock that manufacturers have, over the years, produced a number of K4s models - they know what’s going to sell!!! Like Mr Vollmer I too am just a little surprised that Minitrix has been the only manufacturer in N-Scale to have produced a plastic model over the last 35* years.
I’m not a Pennsy fan but I can relate to your desire for something a little bit more generic - that Belpaire firebox does give the model more than a little corporate uniqueness. I was aquainted with an individual - he’s passed on now - who had filed off the Belpaire firebox and done some other modifications to the boiler shell to create _______ something!!! The same thing holds true of the GS4 - it screams Espee. I - an N-Scaler by the way - would like to see a more generic Northern, something on the lines of a Rock Island R-67B; Rock Island designed, and ran their 4-8-4s as freight locomotives; I would run mine as a dual-service locomotive. I keep hoping that Mr C from Con-Cor might design a GS1/GS2 or even a GS6 - something with smaller drivers than found on the GS4. (Sigh!!)Maybe one of these days.
I’m not sure just what kind o
There have been quite a few manufacturers to make 4-6-2s other than the K4.
Athearn made an HO 4-6-2 kit in the 60s, which I believe had either a belt or gear drive. There’s a diagram for the gear drive 4-6-2 here: http://www.hoseeker.net/lit.html (4-6-2 1964)
Bowser makes a Light 4-6-2 kit based on USRA pacifics, and they also make a NYC K-11 Pacific that’s a little less expensive.
http://bowser-trains.com/holocos/usra_light_pacific/usra_light_pacific.htm
http://bowser-trains.com/holocos/nyc_k11/nyc_k11.htm
Samhongsa made a plastic USRA Light 4-6-2 for Athearn’s Genesis line for a few years, but they’re pretty rare now.
Rivarossi made Heavy 4-6-2s for about 35 years, which were upgraded with better motors, drives and a flywheel in the mid 90s.
Mehano makes a basic USRA Light that has been sold by AHM, Life-Like, and most recently IHC. It now has a skewed motor and brass flywheel, with a drive that runs both smoothly and silently. They also have a semi-streamlined version of the same engine.
http://ihc-hobby.com/cgi-bin/bsc.cgi?sn=0M1NO04286704116R98593X1P07238
http://ihc-hobby.com/cgi-bin/bsc.cgi?sn=0239106F860306L841S2F98VW26579
There may be others out there, but I can’t think of them right now.
Darth Santa Fe,
Just making a point here, but not one single steam unit you listed was built by ALCO…that is a problem for people modeling an ALCO road like the New Haven. USRA this, USRA that, doesn’t cut it with all the railroads.
My initial thought was that somebody should bring out the light and heavy USRA Pacifics -
Then I checked and found that the USRA light was only used by a handful of roads, while the only road to get the heavy edition was the Erie! Seems that the movement of passengers was not a USRA priority, and the production of pure passenger locomotives was right at the bottom of their list.
(Same thing happened with the War Production Board in 1943. N&W had to build a batch of J’s without streamlining and pretend they were dual-purpose locos to keep the Feds off their backs - while selling surplus 2-8-8-2’s and less-than-wonderful 4-8-2’s to other railroads!)
What a lot of folks would like to see is a Harriman Pacific, which would be much more useful to west-of-the-Mississippi modelers than any of the basically Eastern prototype 4-6-2’s now and previously offered. Any manufacturer out there listening?
Chuck (Who’s prototype ran seven classes of Pacific, of which he models none)