Being a huge fan of (western) 1860s to 1880s era railroading (LOVE the Wild West!), I´m disappointed by the fact that there is so little good stuff from that era available in the model railroad market (no matter which scale).
Ok, Bachmann made a step forward by offering their 4-4-0´s with DCC and sound. But besides this, I think this particular model is still awful because it barely pulls more than 3 to 4 cars and is quite generic: the CP “Jupiter” and UP #119 only differ in stack style, in headlight position and in boiler length.
The situation is even worse with passenger cars: Only ConCor offers open platform cars with interiors but it´s only their coaches that have interiors while their baggage-mail cars do not. Bachmanns open platform cars don´t offer any interiors at all, and both Bachmann and ConCor produce only 2 types each: ConCor has a coach and baggage-mail car while Bachmann has a coach and a combine. Roundhouse offers the best and most beautiful open platform cars in my eyes, but they too come without interiors and only 2 types more: coach, business car, combine and baggage-mail car. But where are the open platform diners and sleepers? Open platform diners and sleepers were already well around by the 1870´s, so I really wonder why nobody yet decided to produce models of them because long distance passenger trains already featured these types during that era. It would be so nice to have a 1870´s passenger train with mail cars, baggage cars, coaches, diners and sleepers with all cars featuring full interiors and the possibility to install interior lights as well!
I would LOVE to see 4-4-0 Americans, 4-6-0 Ten Wheelers and 2-6-0 Moguls featuring not only DCC with sound and working headlight but also with working cab light, traction tires and smoke units (which would surely fit into the large woodburner baloon stacks at least). I´ve already seen lots of photos with Americans pulling 10 car passenger trains and Moguls pulling 25
Although the post civil war 4-4-0´s were the key loco in the making of a nation, they never became as iconic and popular as the Big Boys, Challengers, Cab Forward´s and other behemoths. Apparently, manufacturers do not see a chance of selling a sufficient amount to make a reasonable profit.
It´s a pity, but I don´t think it will change. European model railroaders suffer as well, there are hardly any pre-1900 locos and rolling stock around.
No need to sugar coat your thoughts John. You can say how you really feel.
[:P]
I built the Tyco/Mantua “The General” loco kit. It’s a pretty little engine, but it really is tiny. So much so that the motor is in the tender with a driveshaft transmiting power to the locomotive. Adding DCC, sound, lights, and smoke to one of these little guys seems like it would be a stretch, but then I have not seen one of the Bachmann 4-4-0’s in person yet. The Tyco General only has a traction tire on one of the 4 drivers, and even though it’s die cast, there isn’t much weight to it, so it does not have much pulling power.Not an issue for me as I built it for display, not as a daily runner anyway.
You need to get on a Civil War modeler forum. I kinda cringe when I hear “Wild West”. It is so much of a creation of the movies so the eras and what happened typically are very muddled.
The Pacific Rail Act was passed in 1862 and the golden spike was driven in 1869. That means that for the majority of the 1860’s the “Wild West” that was rail served was east of Kansas City or west of the Sierra Nevada’s. Most of the rail lines west of Kansas City weren’t laid until the 1870-1890’s.
If you are modeling “western” railroads in the 1860’s you are modeling Missouri, Kansas or Arkansas (or California).
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Ok, Bachmann made a step forward by offering their 4-4-0´s with DCC and sound. But besides this, I think this particular model is still awful because it´s barely pull
Keep in mind that 4-4-0s couldn’t pull much of a train in 1:1. And trains usually weren’t all that long either.
Left unmentioned in available rolling stock was LaBelle. They offer a variety of kits that are suitable for modest backdating and are light, since they’re made of wood. Don’t ignore the narrowgauge options, since there was relatively little difference in size between much SG and NG rolling stock before 1900. See: https://www.labellemodels.com/scale-c-21.html?osCsid=soistrud7on5a2g3c6ne2ln4f3
I model the 1910 era Nevada mining railroads and you are right, manufacturers don’t make much pre 1930’s equipment. However, if you know were to look and get on the corect websites there is more out there than you would think. The Virginia and Truckee has been intermittantly popular with manufacturers over the decades and kits can still be found on Ebay. I’ve built an entire 10’x20’ layout dedicated to two of the most obscure railroads ever: The Bullfrog Goldfield RR and the Tonopah and Tidewater RR so I know it can be done. Just don’t expect everything to come RTR.
@Old Thumper: And a (reliable) daily runner is exactly what I need. That´s why the Mantua/Tyco isn´t a choice for me.
@dehusman: I know the term Wild West is critical. But I also know that most Western movies don´t play in the “real” West but rather in the Midwest because most of them are cowboy themed, who could be mostly found in the Midwest (Great Plains). I´d say that the grand majority of Western movies plays in the plains of Texas, Kansas and New Mexico. But for me this is part of the Wild West too. Well it would be nice to have an American that can pull 8 to 10 open platform passenger cars on level track as well as grades. And on grades most models released simply won´t make it. Those baggage cars released by ConCor or Roundhouse aren´t full baggage cars but combined baggage-mail cars. And at least the mail section had interiors, which these models lack. I know most trains in that era had meal stops but some already featured diners already in the open platform era. So why not model that? Well, in the 1870´s Omaha-Oakland via UP/CP clearly was a long distance passenger route through the West. I know there were only kerosene lantners or the light from the firebox existing as “cab light” during that era. But you know it´s a model railroad, so the cab light can´t be a kerosene lantern of course but simply an electric light (LED) in a casing that is resembling a kerosene lantern. This is absolutely doable. And lighted fireboxes are nothing new too. And with todays LED´s being available in such small sizes, many things are possible to be lighted that surely wouldn´t have been possible before. I know all these models you mentioned but none of them is satisfying my needs.
@richg1998: Didn´t know they moved the motor into the engine. Sounds good. I always disliked looking at that shaft between the tender and the engine!
@mlehman: I know about LaBelle but those types I desire aren´t available
You might want to look at Eight Wheeler Models for early sleepers; that guy is doing some interesting stuff with 3D printing. Other good suppliers are John Canfield, who is on the Yahoo EarlyRail group. I pick up a lot of stuff on EBay, and much as I love LaBelle cars, the crown jewels of the wooden passenger car kits are probably Westwood - hopefully, I have enough of them for one lifetime. Rio Grande Models makes some good general purpose kits - flatcars, ventilated boxcars - and all kinds of MoW equipment. Funaro and Camarlengo has some of the more modern wood 40’ cars, as does Tichy Train Group - which also makes virtually everything you will need to scratchbuild wooden equipment - and if you think you can’t scratchbuild, my advice is to try to build a good basic LaBelle boxcar model: if you can do that, you can scratchbuild.
The range of commercial 4-4-0s is expanded slightly by brass: PFM did a reasonable range of them (V&T, CP/UP set, although Balboa’s was better), and NWSL did their “Spartan Series” 4-4-0s and 2-6-0s, which look promising to me, although I have never built one; Ken Kidder also made some nice 2-6-0s. Finally, if you are a real glutton for work, there were some old 4-4-0 kits that can be made into something nice - Roundhouse and Mantua did them, although the brass “Belle of the Eighties” is probably a lot of work for even the most dedicated scratchbasher.
The 4-4-0 was an interesting engine, and its heyday was really the 1850-1880 period, when track was rough enough that its suspension and flexibility were at a premium, and trains were light enough that it could pull most anything. I don’t know how many were built, but after reading this, I went back to reexamine Schrenk and Frey’s book on NP steam, w
Definatly no sugar molases or other sweetener in that statement just truth
From what I have read a reasonable train for one of the early 4-4-0’s
Would be in the region of 4 to six cars and a monster train would be something like 8 after that a second loco would be required.
So if the model needs traction tyres to do that then its not heavy enough and has a rubish motor that needs traction tyres like I said bad design there are metals that can add the weight and I don’t mean lead.
Also good quality small motors that can do the job so the failure of the designer to use them is bad design.
Sorry but I won’t knowingly go and purchase a loco that has the infernal things fitted they are more trouble than they are worth.
I also object strongly when one goes and the relevent manufacturer says oh we don’t have them sorry and believe me it happens more and more these days.
And they know full well the loco is useless without them.
Generally, it works best if the actual size of the prototype you’re interested in is inverse to the scale…that is, the smaller the real engine, the larger the scale should be. If you want to model the mid-19th century, you should check out what’s available in O scale, like what you can see on Bernard Kempinski’s Civil War era “Aquia Line” layout.
p.s. Just because a car doesn’t come from the factory with an interior doesn’t mean you can’t add one. Several companies, like Palace Car Co., make seats, tables, RPO mail racks, etc. for car interiors.
1.“Wild West” means nothing. What you really mean is Early American. With a few variations, the basic design of most mid-19th Century North American locomotives and cars was essentially very similar from Maine to California, and from Florida to British Columbia.
Many of the models of this period are actually oversized. The Mantua General is one of the few that is pretty close. Some are based on V&T designs that came after the Civil War, and tended to be a bit larger.
A very small loco has very little space inside it for anything. Usable traction is related to adhesion, which depends upon weight. You’re in luck if your prototype had a tender. You can load the inside of the boiler, cab, stack, etc. with all the weight you can, leaving room only for a small gearbox. Put the motor in the tender, and you can have a useful engine. If the little tiny drive shaft bothers you so much that you can’t abide it, you’ll probably have to live with a poor puller.
I got a bit distracted by the rather nice little structures on the left hand side of town in the first or second picture, as thats what I need is some very nice small structures
When I have a bit more time I am going in for a better look that layout needs a propper look at.
One way to get decent traction out of a miniscule loco with a pencil-thin boiler is to mount the drive in the tender and surround it with (iridium, if you an afford it, or lead) weight. Then make the locomotive just heavy enough to track and work it over to let it freewheel. I first saw this in the '70s, a model of a SNCF loco that had been purchased in Paris. The boiler and machinery of that 2-8-2 were feather-light and would roll at a harsh glance. The tender weighed about a ton, and could have pulled the knob off a door.
As for the “Wild West,” it was mostly a fabrication of fiction writers who never got west of Pittsburg (the terminal ‘h’ came later.) Note, too, how many of the movies seemed to have towns that all looked the same - thanks to a movie set now called ‘Old Tucson,’ just west of the Arizona city of the same name. In most Western towns, the Marshall and a deputy or two were among the first settlers.
I grew up on Hollywood Westerns. More recently, I met real cowboys. They were wearing MLB team jackets and NFL logo baseball caps, and were riding the range in pickups and Jeeps. Not much romance there, I’m afraid.
@MidlandPacific: Thanks for the link! You see? Because of all that stuff you wrote down I prefer the 1860s to 1880s era like mentioned before, because the 1890s already differed from that era and things started to change in many ways. By the way I have an authentic 1894-1904 SP Sunset Limited consisting of 6 Roundhouse Palace cars featuring individual and prototipically correct interior arrangements and custom painting and detailing as well as a Mehano SP E-23 4-4-0 with DCC, sound and smoke. The Mehano 4-4-0 is based on SP´s E-23 class Americans that appeared in 1899. It´s my favorite train and for some time I thought I´d be satisfied with that, but I realize that I want an open platform car passenger train with an even older 4-4-0 from the even earlier era as these are my probably most favorite trains.
@John Busby: 8 cars is exactly the number I´d like my 1870s passenger train to have. And an American that is strong enough to pull it even on grades. But such models aren´t available. By the way I´m a fan of traction tires because they are more effective than just boiler weight. I have a small european 2-10-0 equipped with 4 traction tires that easily outpulls my much bigger and also heavier american 2-10-2´s that don´t have traction tires but just boiler weight.
@Graffen: Thank your for this link! I´ll have a lot to read in this thread as it has 74 pages! Just a quick question: There is no mention of the scale, but I assume it´s HO, right? That Mogul of him with the big wood load looks really marvelous!
@wjstix: I agree with you. The smaller the prototype the larger the scale should be. But impossible for people with restricted space like me. Believe me, if I was a millionaire with a huge house with garden, I would build a huge outdoor G scale 1870s era layout for sure!
@ACY: I disagree. Wild West means a lot! Nobody will think of Maine when hearing this! Also woodburners with those big stacks were clearly a more weste
8 cars might be a bit long for an 1870’s train. Until larger engines came along, five cars would have been more typical. IIRC the original NYC Empire State Express of the 1890’s was only five cars or so for example. By the 1920’s it might be 14 cars or more. 19th century was normally small engines pulling shorter trains, with more trains per day than you’d see in the 20th century.