With all of the “new” locomotives being brought out by
the train makers these days, I wonder why no one has
made a decent 4-4-0. I don’t mean the likes of a Lionel
or MTH “General”, but a more contemporary model as
was used by many railroads right through the end of
steam. These locos were used by everyone from
Class 1 railroads to small Branch Lines. A railroad
near my home town ran 4-4-0s right into the late 1940s
when they finally changed over to diesel.
This type of loco would be a nice addition heading up
a decent freight or mixed train of medium length. They
were also capable of dragging quite a long passenger
train as well.
The last decent 4-4-0 was manufactured by Thomas
(not the Tank Engine) Trains back in the 40s and 50s.
Since then, nothing. Maybe someone here has ‘kit-
bashed’ something together?
Lionel recently came out with their Mogul, which, by all accounts, has been a sucess. If I recall correctly, the Mogul(2-6-0?) has the name number of axles as a 4-4-0, so perhaps a scale-sized “modern” 4-4-0 isn’t too far off. For $600 with the Mogul, you get a Pittman motor, Odyssey, fan-driven smoke, and a wireless tether. They’ve proven that it can be done in a small scale-sized steamer that won’t break the bank, so maybe now we’ll start to see more along those same lines.
I have the MTH 4-4-0 NYC on order. I just hope they do not pair it with the larger than scale tender MTH has used on their other turn-of-the-century offerings. I have been told the newer DCS electronics are smaller than the older PS2 that I have.
The SMR is a great looking General, if you wi***o add command control and sound it will cost another $300.00 plus the controls to put into it. [:D][:p][8D]
