Back in the 70’s I bought a nice PFM Denver and Salt Lake 2-6-6-0 from Bob’s hobby shop, which was the premier local hobby center at the time. Bob’s carried every thing it seemed. (gone are those days).
I had a number of HO figures on my layout, but this fine and costly engine deserved an engineer. Bob went to his selection of metal cast, painted figures and pulled out this great old seated engineer that was flawlessly painted. He had a huge white walrus moustache and wore the old red leather enginer’s cap of the turn of the century with the square brim. Whatsmore, he had his arm out as if on the arm rest and a cant to him such that he was looking out the window. What a great figure!! I put him in the cab of that loco and he is still there today, even though I am out of HO and into HOn3.
Lusting after a couple of these guys for my K-27 and K-28, I have looked high and low in most all the catalogs from all the vendors and to no avail. Chesterfield Hobbies, (local), who try to carry on the Bob’s tradition did not know of the figure. I know some of you old codgers like me remember this figure. Who made this marvelous old crusty engineer?
I attach an image from my old 1978 HO layout with the engineer watchin’ the track ahead.
I was even willing to settle for a lesser guy and found the Kato seated engine crew to be terrible and worthless for any purpose I had. I felt they looked kludgy and too pretty for steam work on the narrow gauge and not one of the two or three engineers in the pack worked for me or were in any kind of useful position. These couldn’t have been made or designed by a model railroader! What about an engineer looking out the window backwards as if in the middle of a switc
You are probably thinking of the old Weston castings. These were very nicely painted and were a much harder metal than the white metal / pewter low temp metals of today.
Campbell models near Medford Oregon has some of these dies and is in production of some of them. Many of these old dies are about worn out and it is very expensive to make new ones.
Contact them for what they might have in production.
Thanks guys but I have seen the Selley and Labelle figures. The Selleys were close but not quite right and the LaBelles were totally off base. Naturally, I am willing to repaint and would expect that from any thing I find that might work. The Selley yard figures are interesting and I might pick some of those up, but that old engineer has me totally spoiled. I did find a nearly ideal figure, but alas, it was only avaialble in N scale.
I will poke around E-bay but I don’t expect much there. I’m still waiting for some old guy to give me the maker of those old figures. Sometimes us old guys can’t rmember the wife’s birthday, but can reel off chapter and verse about old disappeared vendors.
edit: You guys are fast! I think these were old Weston figures! Wow! Thanks, I will investigate further. I will attempt to rip the old guy out of the D&SL tonight and pop him into a Blackstone K-27 or my Sunset K-28, take a photo that shows him to advantage and post it in this thread for those not familiar with what we old boys are talking about.
Richard, your hogger looks to me like one of the old Selley figures, cast in white metal. As you can see in the link provided by Maxman, the first guy in the steam crew, the third one in the diesel crew, the “driver”, and the cab engineer (upper torso) are all the same. The bent right arm is the same as your crewman, and, if I recall correctly, these figures were somewhat poseable, at least initially. Any subsequent attempt to re-position limbs usually resulted in grievous bodily harm to the subject.
The Bowser catalogue also shows an engineer and fireman (#91000), but then lists eight other sets (not illustrated) for specific Bowser locomotives. There’s no indication if they’re the same figures or modified versions. The two figures shown don’t match yours - one has the bent right arm but a much larger head or a taller hat. [swg]
Another outfit that offered cast metal figures was Dyna Models, but my older Walthers catalogues showing those products are long gone.
EDIT: A couple of more recent Walthers catalogues do show Dyna Models, but no crew figures at all.
Of the ones currently available, the LaBelle figures, in my opinion, are the best, although the pre-painted ones don’t do justice to the pattern- and mould-makers’ work.
Mike, I noted in my original post that I had all the Kato seated cab figures and I thought they were not suitable for my use compared to the old guy which I have since learned is 100%, definitely an old Weston figure. Again, many thanks (Bob).
All the Kato engineers have goggles on with balloon shaped caps and look like aviators with helium filled baseball caps. The goggles are more suited to a record run of 100 plus miles per hour in one of those high wheel Atlantics or a crack 70mph plus, “Powhattan Arrow” behind a N&W J! A super fast wide open straight-away on the flat New Mexican desert might have seen 35MPH on the D&RGW. Most of their trains ran 5-20 miles per hour on the main line and up grades. No need for goggles.
I checked out Campbell’s recast Weston figures and almost every one of their old, absolutely superlative 60’s and 70’s figures are still avaialble, albeit at $7-$8 each! The only old figure missing is that old engineer. (wouldn’t ya’ know it!) Their yard crew figures are all available and are classics, going back to the 50’s! I do have at least one of every one of those guys.
I promised to shoot some pix once I ripped the old guy from the D&SL mallet and dropped him into my Blackstone K-27 and here are two shots.
Now this is how an old narrow gauge engineer should look!
Amazingly, I just went by Chesterfield hobbies to pick up some LaBelle cast iron switch stands ordered for me and an and old model rail was there as a customer and overheard me talking about this post and the old engineer figure and chimed in that I was indeed talking about the old line of Weston figures. He noted that he had several of the
I did not mean to overly denegrate the Kato set. They would certainly be suitable for some modern steam. For my part, I would have to hand file off a bit of those balloon hats, do something about those ridiculous, OSIA approved, panty-waist goggles and do a bit of a melt number on this figure’s right arms so that they were on the window’s arm cushion. After that they would need a re-paint, of course. Where do the designers of this stuff come from?
I have a feeling that the Weston figure’s dies were made when steam was still around. I actually have seen an old Varney ad., I think, in an old MR magazine from the 40’s or 50’s. I believe it was a full page ad., maybe on the back or inside covers of the mag. The scene shows their “old lady” parked on a timber trestle and a number of the old weston figures in the image. It is the scene of a lynching and some poor hapless soul is strung up from the trestle as others look on. Imagine that in a modern MR!
For those with the verve, curiousity and the CD set of all the MR’s, you might poke around the advertisers index under Varney and check this out., say, from the late 40’s until the early 60’s. I hope I am not mis-remembering. The scene was comical and memorable. Some may remember it in the cobwebs of there brains who are long subscribers to MR.
Sounds like a John Allen picture. As I recall, the man’s crime was being a diesel locomotive salesman!!
BTW the hats on the Kato figures look fine to me. Hickory stripe Engineer’s hats that I’ve owned do generally stick up higher than say a baseball cap. They are more “modern” than the old Kromer hats engineers wore in the early part of the century, those hats sort of came to a point at the top. The reproduction 1906 Sears catalogue I have shows a bowler-shaped hat that they sold as a “Railroader’s Hat”.
WJSTIX, you may well be correct about good ole John Allen, but I thought Varney got permission to use it in an ad. Again, I maybe wrong on this.
We know Allen went for the amusing and bizarre and often against the grain of the old rivet counters and nit-pickers. However, he became so famous he was ultimately excused by the worst of his critics, in the end.
Well, I didn’t say it wasn’t used in an ad. John Allen was a professional photographer and was hired by several companies over the years to do pictures of their model railroad products for ads, particularly Varney, so it’s very likely you’re correct.
When I first saw these guys, to me the hats do indeed look like Kromer types. Some more so than others. I myself, don’t recall seeing a Kromer that came to a point, but it may just be a matter of perspective. Most types worn by railroaders were more of a balloon style, with or without flaps.
Kromer still makes caps. The winter style (with flaps that could be pulled down) line was sold off to another company, but is still made. To me, the later winter style aren’t as balloonish as older ones I’ve seen in old pictures. The Kromers without the flaps, called welder’s caps, are st
John Allen and Gordon Varney had some advertising arrangement where Varney used Allen’s railroad for the staging of new and existing products. This was one of the earliest relationships where a product was placed in a highly detailed modeled scene. The whimsical was often displayed in these photos but required careful examination. Varney held the back cover of MR for years; as Mantua held the inside front cover, but seldom presented their products on any staging.
I recall as a young modeler in those years waiting for the new issue of MR so as to get ideas for making my railroad look only a little bit real.
We used dyed sawdust for grass… sissal hemp rope for tall weeds and wood fiber plaster and window screen for ground work under it all.
Richard, the figure you like so much was a Weston “Old-Time Engineer”. I got one many years ago for my MDC Shay. Campbell makes them now, though I don’t think they are in production at this time. Here’s old Charlie with his loco:
An old joke about Shays: “It’s easy to tell when a Shay jumps the track: The ride gets smoother!” [swg]
