498671001948uehgyopo818048571.jpg (1564×1024) (american-rails.com)
They say there is a prototype for everything. It seems that is true for unpainted brass locos.
Actually this is a CB&Q Northern that was gold plated to help celebrate a couple of anniversaries being celebrated in 1964.
Cooooooooool !!!
What’s the shipping going to cost ?
( I may order one …)
Ive never seen that before. What a beautiful locomotive. Dan
I did a double take when I first saw it. At first glance I thought somebody had created a diorama and taken it ouside. I was really impressed with the static grass until I realized it was the real deal.
“So Mr. Boss, what would you like to celebrate our anniversary?”
“Gold plate”
“Excellent choice. Perhaps some gold detail on the wheel walls, or the stack and domes?”
I was thinking something a bit more… obvious."
“Ahh, what did you have in mind?”
(insert image here)
“…”
Methinks it is gold PAINTED and not Gold PLATED.
The difference would be in the millions of dollars even back then!
Lion is correct…that was a gold paint-job, not a gold-plating job. I recall seeing the photo some time ago in a TRAINS magazine.
Wayne
I was going by the website caption which indicated it was gold plated. Now that I think about it, that wouldn’t make a lot of sense.
How quickly we forget!
4960, the “Tenshodo Mikado”:
https://www.steamlocomotive.com/places/jensen/cbq4960-gold.jpg
Hard to see photos of 5632 (which I believe was actually painted gold twice) without feeling a pang – it was one of the CB&Q’s preserved locomotives, but the “Q” decided to get out of the steam excursion business. 4960 bounced around between Wisconsin’s Circus World Museum and the Mid Continent Museum in North Freedom WI – it was too big to run on the museum’s rails most likely – but fortunately eventually ended up with the Grand Canyon RR and while some Q fans lament the changes made to the locomotive, hey it’s still in running condition.
5632 was acquired by Dick Jensen an experienced steam guy who had other locomotives in his roster including a Grand Trunk Western 4-6-2 5629 that we in Wisconsin saw pull the Circus Train that the Circus World Museum ran to Milwaukee for several years – surely it had to be the most colorful train in the world with those brightly painted antique wagons on brightly painted circus flatcars. And a huge Schlitz logo on the tender (Schlitz paid for it all)
Jensen was in love with steam and was able to acquire steam locomotives and knew enough to get them running or keep them running, but he was not well to do. If there was money to be made running excursions the railroads would have kept doing it! Well Jensen was storing his steamers on C&WI property. 5632 was in parts – the CB&Q included boxcars full of parts in the deal. Jensen also owned spare tenders.
But a bad combination of no money, ill health, perhaps it is fair to say some foolish stubborness, and his misplaced belief that regardless of whether he paid his rent or moved his locomotives off property when ordered to, at the very least nobody would dare scrap a steam locomotive anymore by the late 1960s resulted in Jensen’s two locomotives indeed being scrapped. He failed to account for the fact that in litigation a judge can order things and that is that.
Is that the one they converted to run on used vegetable oil as fuel. I road the GCRR to the South Rim several years ago but that was behind a diesel. If I remember right, the steamer was only used for special occasions.
Story I heard was that Jensen PO’d the Powers That Be so much with his attitude, they said “skewer you” and scrapped the locos. They wanted 1) him to pay the rent he owed them 2) the locos off their property or else and he did neither.
Don’t forget the diesels:
http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=4914932
MR ran an April Fools article several years ago titled “The UNDEC Railroad,” which included lots of pictures of unletterd diesels and the CB&Q northern as a prototype for unpainted brass locos. One of their best.
