Apologies for the time it’s taken to compose this, but without further ado I shall elaborate about my Paya ‘Santa Fe’!
I purchased this model at the Amherst Railway Society show back in January- it has some serious problems, but for the price I paid, I was more than happy to overlook them.
I spent some time recently doing a little more digging into the history of the model. Most of the information I’m working from is from the TCA Western Division’s article on Paya, this Tinplate Times article, and a fascinating blog post that is cited by the Tinplate Times article.
The ‘Santa Fe’ was the ‘top of the line’ O gauge locomotive offered by Spanish toy company Paya. The model is a reasonably faithful representation of a class of 20 2-10-2 ‘Santa Fe’ steam locomotives that were ordered by the Northern Railway of Spain, and delivered after the formation of RENFE, the Spanish National Railway.
(prototype photo from
wikimedia.org)
The Paya O scale model clearly makes a few concessions to its prototype- the whole locomotive seems to ride higher than the prototype, with oversized drivers in fewer numbers than the real thing- the overall length of the locomotive has clearly been shortened as well.
The first point can somewhat be explained by considering the wheels, as far as I can tell, were already existant parts meant to be used by multiple models. As for the 6 drivers versus 10, one need only consider that as Paya produced it, the model can barely tolerate O-72 curves! Considering this, Paya’s choice to shrink the 2-10-2 down to a 2-6-2 makes quite a bit of sense.
One of the things that impressed me most about the Santa Fe, when I first laid eyes on it, was just how large it was! I photographed it alongside a Lionel 646 to help give some sense of ‘scale’ for it. Note that while the 646 and tender are longer overall, the Santa Fe is both taller and wider.
Paya had extensive issues with the quality of their diecast parts, and most suffer from zinc rot. Most of the original Santa Fe locomotives suffer heavily from it, mine included.
Paya’s model debuted somewhere between 1944 and 1948 (sources vary on when exactly they claim the model began production) and carried on in regular production until the 1960s, but was still produced into the 70s on a commissioned basis (presumably very low production numbers).
In the 1980s, the original owners turned over the company to its workers. The new Cooperative Paya company began to offer reissues of classic Paya toys, including the line of O gauge trains. The Santa Fe returned, this time being offered in multiple liveries. The quality of the diecast parts was better in this era, but sometimes the models still suffered zinc pest.
I’m not certain if mine is a product of the original Paya company or the Cooperative Paya company- a significant volume of the reproductions were apparently imported to the US in the late 80s and early 90s, so it would seem more likely for it to be a reissue than not. On the other hand, I made an inquiry to a Paya collector/repairman’s YouTube channel asking about how to differentiate, and based on his descriptions of spotting features, mine would be an original (1940s-1960s).
Alongside my Santa Fe came a sleeper car. Like the locomotive, it suffers from zinc rot, and also has warped plastic vestibule parts.
A few details of note- my Santa Fe, like most, was set up with an operating headlight and smoke unit that could be switched on or off via a pair of switches on the top of the boiler, just in front of the cab. The earliest examples of the Santa Fe did not have these switches. Note that the sleeper car also has a switch to turn its interior lighting on and off. Also note that the trains use a “one way” coupler system, so equipment must all be facing the same direction to be coupled together.
I have entertained purchasing parts to repair my Santa Fe- reproduction parts are available from Spain, but the cost would be significant to rehabilitate my locomotive. I have estimated the parts cost to be somewhere in the $200-300 range, depending if I tried to salvage certain castings that are less severely deteriorated or not.
Not cheap… but perhaps not too far off from what a nice, complete model is worth. One day, perhaps?
-Ellie
