USA Trains NW-2 COW, CALF & Sets Back in Production

Garden Railroading
1

The USA Trains NW-2 Cow and Calf was introduced in 1995. It was a G Scale “Fan Favorite” for quite some time. The NW-2 Calf locomotives were only produced for a short run making them valuable and collectable.

Then the NW-2 cow production was also dropped when USA Trains introduced the Alco S-4 switcher.

Great News for those who love the EMD NW-2 Cow and Calf Switcher and have been looking in search for them. USA Trains has “Re-Issued” some road names of the NW-2 Cow and Calf switchers. For example the ever popular Santa Fe “Warbonnet” has been re-issued in both Cow and Calf version.

USA Trains also decided to “Re-Issue” the woodside caboose which disappeared for a while. Many road names of the woodside caboose have been “Re-Issued”.

USA Trains has “Re-Issued” a few of their NW-2 Starter sets. These NW-2 Starter sets are a “Freight Car Set”. They come complete with 1) NW-2 Locomotive, 1) American Series Box Car or reefer depending on the set road name and 1) woodside caboose. The set comes with everything you need to run it including transformer and track.

NW-2 “Complete” Starter Sets Price = $349.95 list price

Here is the list of Re-Issued NW-2 Sets

R72300 Rio Grande

R72301 Santa Fe (Yellow & Blue Version)

R72304 New York Central

USA Trains even released one “All New” NW-2 Starter Set
R72305 Union Pacific

For those who wanted USA Trains to offere starter sets, they have heard your requests. Although it would have been nice to also offer S-4 starter sets but we will take what we can get.

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I found out some interesting facts about the EMD NW-2. When a NW-2 Cow and Calf were made prototypically, they were manufactured as a “Match Set”. In the trucking industry we call this a “Married Set”. In the trucking industry a Car Carrier truck is married to the trailer. This means it is meant to never seperate althought they are spererate pieces of equipment. The same when EMD manufactured the NW-2 Cow and Calf is was done as a set and they were never meant to be seperated although a hand full of railroads did put regular type couplers on them so they could be seperated. Also when NW-2 Cow and Calf were produced they were no longer called NW-2 locomotives since how they were now a set. EMD actually called the NW-2 Cow and Calf a entirely different model name. The NW-2 cow and calf set was actually called a “TR” model by EMD. There was a TR1, TR2 and TR3 NW-2 sets. Some sets were even made of 1 Cow and 2 Calf units. However I found the production numbers on these were real low and seem to be rare even on real railroads for the time period.

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Ah. You’re back.

After Trainboard and MLS, everybody thought you’d gone for good.

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I never really left, I lurked around here, MLS and Trainboard, But you know what? No one can keep me down. I really don’t care who likes me and who doesn’t. Also people who did ridicule me without knowing the facts are absolute idiots. I started my own website 2 years ago with members who enjoy it, so that is where I have been in case you were wondering.

5

Dave is still around???

Who you bugging now old dude???

Hope your doing fine…

I backslide into 1" scale for a year. Its complete for now back to G,gauge,1:29th SCALE…

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Yeah, I’m around. Got real tired of idiots, so dropped of the major forums.

Heck, I think I was a charter member of both…maybe all three.

Glad your 1" works. I did 1.5" for a lot of years…live steam, battery, gasoline/hydraulic.

In another life…far away and long ago.

The two major 5-acre pikes in our area were encroached by development (and taxed for “best possible use” of the land), and they’ve been gone for…Lord, 15-20 years.

Ah, found it in my files, I did. Classic:

“Anyway there was a famous Mopar drag race car called “Color Me Gone” that raced in the NHRA sanctioned drag racing in the early 60’s. Yep I have some knowledge of old Mopars also. What does that have to do with trains. Nothing, but I can say that MLS can “Color Me Gone”. Too many sore heads from Train Board and a few opposing people to one post who continue to bash me and a webmater who condones those actions. I must say I have never seen one subject post cause so much choas on any one board like this before.”

I suppose w webmater is a cousin of TowMater.

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Looks like we have alot in common. I have always been a Mopar enthusiast since 1985. Restored my first Dodge in 1990 which was a numbers match Challenger R/T. Went on to car shows, then NHRA myself. Eventually near the end of 10 years in the car hobby I became a show judge. I know exactly which car you refer to. I got tired of the car scene so I retired to G Scale trains in 1999.

Yes I agree to your end statement. Aristo pulled the plug on sponsoring them because of continued bashing that happens at that site. That is about as far as I will go into any comments in which site you refer to as I don’t want to bring myself down to thier level.

As far as Train Board I quit because I did not agree with the ever changing rules that I had to enforce as a moderator which in the end gave me a bad name. That ghost will probably follow me for a while but those who get to know me personally will find I am not really that up tight about insane rules. If I had the chance to do it over again I would have never agreed to become a moderator there.

[quote user=“Curmudgeon”]

Yeah, I’m around. Got real tired of idiots, so dropped of the major forums.

Heck, I think I was a charter member of both…maybe all three.

Glad your 1" works. I did 1.5" for a lot of years…live steam, battery, gasoline/hydraulic.

In another life…far away and long ago.

The two major 5-acre pikes in our area were encroached by development (and taxed for “best possible use” of the land), and they’ve been gone for…Lord, 15-20 years.

Ah, found it in my files, I did. Classic:

"Anyway there was a famous Mopar drag race car called “Color Me Gone” that raced in the NHRA sanctioned drag racing in the early 60’s. Yep I have some knowledge of old Mopars also. What does that have to do with trains. Nothing, but I can say that MLS can "Color Me G

8

Good to see you posting Dave, missed your wisdom.