Identifying an old brass locomotive from the 40's or 50's

Hi- I've got a brass locomotive that my great grandfather never completed before his death in the 50's. I can't find any identifying marks, but it appears to be O gauge (abt 1.25" wheelbase). 4" high, 14.5" long. Please take a look at these images and let me know if you can tell anything about the locomotive, even which locomotive this is a model of.

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Thanks- Tim

Reply to
tim.lunny
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The geocities site seems to be a poor place to post photos - I got one brief look and it has since been unavailable. In that brief look it was obvious that the model is of a New York Central J-1 or J-3 Hudson 4-6-4 locomotive. The model is missing the 4 wheel lead truck and the 4 wheel trailing truck. The model is of one of the Hudsons with an Elesco type feedwater heater (the semicircular raised shapes on either side of the top of the smokebox ahead of the stack). There were a few different manufacturers of brass O scale Hudsons before and after WWII. Scalecraft was one of the more popular. Geezer

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Reply to
Geezer

General agreement with most of what Geezer said. However, I do not think this model was produced by Scalecraft. Based on the few examples I've seen, I do not believe they sold locos with blind center drivers. Also, the valve gear is much too crude if my recollection of their general products is correct. Are we sure this is a scale rather than a tinplate locomotive? The few photos I was able to bring up did not include a bottom view. Hope these comments prove helpful. Thank you. Jerry

Reply to
trainjer

Sorry, but my limited access internet connection doesn't like to handle files that are more than a megabyte in size. Take and crop the images to where only the loco is in there and compress them to less than 50K in file size and it will be a lot better to view the images. I let the smallest image run for two minutes and didn't get to any part of the loco so I stopped that nonsense.

-- Yeppie, Bush is such an idiot that He usually outwits everybody else. How dumb!

Reply to
Bob May

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That sure looks like a two-wheel trailing truck, which would make this engine a pacific.

Reply to
video guy - www.locoworks.com

The flange size says it was definitely a scale and not tinplate model.

Reply to
Geezer

All the characteristics just shout NYC Hudson. While the NYC K-5 Pacifics did share the large turret cover that came down to the running boards, their Elesco feedwater heaters were all mounted out on brackets on the smokebox front. Also,the Elesco equipped Pacifics did not mount the feedwater turbo-pumps down behind the third driver on the left side. No, the model is definitely a NYC Hudson, and the spoked drivers with Baker valve gear make it a J-1c, J-1d, or J-1e. Geezer

Reply to
Geezer

Bob May spake thus:

Hey, Bob: I have dialup access too, and I was able to view all the pictures in a reasonable time. Maybe it's time to find a new ISP.

Reply to
David Nebenzahl

its from 1928 from the Ivbeenjackingoff comp

Reply to
trek fan

Nah, I just don't care to wait several minutes for that little bit of info that is actually contained in the 1Mb sized files. The first file I let go for most of a minute and never saw any part of a loco and the image looked like it was about 1/3 loaded. That is a lot of junk image that should have been cropped out of the file. I can see putting a lot of scenery in an image to provide the "flavor" in a picture of a loco on a layout but for an informational photo like that, the image should have been cropped close to the loco.

-- Yeppie, Bush is such an idiot that He usually outwits everybody else. How dumb!

Reply to
Bob May

Hi- Thanks for your help. I've resized my images for those who are bandwidth-challenged and to counteract Geocities hourly transfer limits. Please re-visit my images to see if there is anything you can tell about this locomotive.

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What is the purpose of the gear on the bottom?

What are the chances that I could find the same model in order to either complete the locomotive?

Thanks- Tim

Bob May wrote:

Reply to
tim.lunny

ok, that was short lived. moving pics off geocities to elsewhere right now...

snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com wrote:

Reply to
tim.lunny

Thanks for your patience-

Pictures are now posted here:

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-Tim

snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com wrote:

Reply to
tim.lunny

That is the bottom of the nmormal drive gear. The motor shaft was a worm gear the drives the hidden section of this gear.

Reply to
Howard R Garner

The chances of finding a duplicate model are very small, especially without a definitive identification of what you have. If you do luck out and find one on ebay or at a major O scale swap meet, you would probably be better off to use the new, complete model and junk the one you have now. That is, unless this locomotive has special sentimental significance to you.

Since you were not familiar with the purpose of the drive gear, it seems you may not be an experienced modeler. You may therefore want to seek out an experienced model builder to restore the locomotive for you. From a review of the photos, it looks like the project would include:

1) Find or make a 4 wheel lead truck. The truck Babbitt Railway Supply Co. offers for their updates of the old All Nation 4-6-0 / 4-4-2 / 4-6-2 kits could be used as a replacement, or one could be fabricated from 3 pieces of heavy brass stock soldered into an "H" shaped frame to support a pair of 36" wheelsets on 7' 2" centers.

2) Find or make a 4 wheel trail truck. Most of the older O gauge locomotive kit parts (other than the Varney / General Models / All Nation lines) are now being sold by Stevenson Preservation Lines. They offer a couple different 4 wheel trail trucks, although none are exactly correct for a NYC Hudson, and all are of later design (lost wax brass castings) and not as crude (sand castings) as would be in keeping with your early model.

3) Make other needed repairs such as machining a replacement main driver crankpin for the right side.

4) None of your photos show the tender, so I assume that is missing. This would probably be the biggest issue in a restoration. Enough other models of the Hudson have been offered that I would expect an appropriate (to the prototype) tender to show up fairly frequently on ebay. However, most tenders you would find will be of or close to current detail standards (etched brass sides, scale size rivet heads, lost wax cast detail parts, etc.), and might seem be out of place with the level of detail in your 1940 vintage locomotive. It would be important to know your objectives for the repair / restoration (i.e., recreate the original model as exactly as possible, or just achieve a viable mantle piece, or something else).

I share these thoughts as I have been facing a similar challenge with an old Hines Lines Erie K-5 Pacific mechanism. Good luck, Geezer

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Reply to
Geezer

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