The End of Brass?

Sorta like the yupster fools who think Range Rovers are the best SUVs (well, in a way: they're off the road [read: in the shop] more), when their reliability ratings and cost to repair are abominable. Maybe not as dumb as the idiots who think they need a Hummer, but . . .

Ah, well, the car analogy was rather lost on me, anyway. I've never owned a car or held a driver's licence in my entire life. :-)

But were they 10 times better looking? Did they run 10 times better?

Cheers,

Mark.

Based on the GS-2s, weren't they? But I take your point, Ernie. But then, I reiterate my original point, which was that even something as distinctively "Espee" as the GS design could be found on other roads.

Magnificent engines, by the way. My Dad and I were lucky enough to visit

Cheers,

Mark.

Just try to model a wonderful little RR like tha Ma and Pa in cast or plastic.

I have a friend who bought a Range Rover in '98. Hates it. Says it is the biggest, most expensive piece of junk he's ever owned. He is also a fellow Jeep owner. His is an '85 CJ-7 with 380,000 miles on it. Do you know that Jeeps get stuck more than any other car in North America? I know this. I have "several" of them.

.................F>

Mudflats, GA

The GS-6 did have some engines go to the WP during WW2 and some GS-8 locos did go elsewhere but the GS-8 was a unique beastie that didn't look anything like the rest of the locos and was probably as unrecognizable as a SP loco as the GS-1 was for the lack of streamlining. You're not going to be seeing GS-4's on any other road is my point, nor do you tend to see any other road's engines on the SP for the most part. A NYC Hudson could run anywhere in the US or Canada because of its size but they only ran on the Big Four roads and especially not on the Pennsy unless the NYC tracks through an area were out. Likewise, the Pennsy unique Belpair firebox was used almost exclusively on that railroad so any engine built to Pennsy standards is pretty much going to be a Pennsy engine and no where esle. Probably the most widely used engines were the Harriman Standard engines and even then, the various roads that used them applied their appliances differently on each road, including even the sand domes. Build a Harriman Standard Consolidation and you have to provide several domes as well as piping kits, bell and headlight setups to cover all of the variations. Basically too many variations between classes of locos to be able to make every one of them in plastic. Even brass has had a trouble over the many years that brass has been imported to get all of the classes of different locos.

-- Bob May Losing weight is easy! If you ever want to lose weight, eat and drink less. Works evevery time it is tried!

Depending upon the maker of the brass engine, the performance can be anywhere from extremely poor to very good. Brands like PFM and Westside tended to be a lot better for operation than something like NJBrass or GEM which often came in with poor motors that sometimes wouldn't run right out of the box. Engines like those tended to get some loving care in the running dept. and have gone on to become excellent performers.

-- Bob May Losing weight is easy! If you ever want to lose weight, eat and drink less. Works evevery time it is tried!

The Bachmann 4-6-0 is a Ma&Pa engine.

David Thompson

"The humans founded America, mastered the nuclear forces, and destroyed the original Mars about thirty thousand years ago." "So George Washington was there when they split the atom?" "Could have been."

-from "Triumph of the Terrans", copyright 24L1042

Indeed, Bob, this has been my experience, having done a number of rebuilds or repowerings of brass steam locos for friends and associates. And I reckon this is why I have a slightly jaundiced view of the whole brass "mystique". For the sort of money that these folks have paid for their models, they certainly shouldn't then have to spend even more money to replace the mechanism with something that actually works.

If we stick with the Mercedes analogy for bit longer, how many customers would they have if the only way you could drive them was to replace all of the mechanicals with aftermarket parts from Holden?

Cheers,

Mark.

Well, yeah - I take your point here, Bob. The nitpicker in me just couldn't resist making those previous posts. :-)

(The nitpicker in me will strenously resist the tempatation to mention the TH&B Hudsons, or the various Pennsy engines sold to the Interstate RR, the L&HR, or the DT&I. I won't say nuffink! VBG!)

Maybe, maybe not. It's interesting to look at the mass produced injection moulded kits for things like aircraft and armour, where some clever design and tooling allows for numerous variants to be catered for from the one basic kit.

I like your example of the Harriman Standard designs, as they would be ideal candidates for exactly that sort of treatment. I cannot imagine any "technical" reasons that would prevent tooling a model steam locomotive that way - cost and consumer appeal may well be the big problems, though.

But consider, say, a basic Harriman 2-8-2 in plastic. The mechanism and major runnning gear components could all be common, as would be the basic smokebox/boiler/firebox moulding. After that, individual mouldings for the features and details could be specific to the road being modelled. One basic model could then cater for the Union Pacific, Southern Pacific, Illinois Central, Chicago & Alton and Central of Georgia, and the other shortlines that bought these engines secondhand.

Whaddya reckon?

All the best,

Mark.

Or maybe LIRR, PRSL, NY&LB, and that's just the roads I'm familiar with from the East coast.

Walt

Wasn't aware NY&LB owned any locomotives..as it is/was a ROW RR only leasing trackage rights to CNJ, PRR etc. But Great Northern had some Belpaire fireboxes too, 0-8-0, 2-8-0, 4-8-4, 2-8-8-2, 2-10-2, & 2-6-8-0.

Ray H.

They didn't look like the Pennsylvania Belpaire. The GN Belpaire flat top actually looked like part of the firebox. The Pennsylvania's looked like box added on as an appendage.

Again, that was a particular style of Belpaire. It appeared on the LMS locomotives and their developments on BR, via Stanier, and on the South Eastern and Chatham then the Southern via Holcroft, who went to work for Maunsell.

Other Belpaires like the Midland Railway's and the Great Central's were more like square boxes with rounded corners. Churchward's Great Western Belpaire was pretty distinctive, as was the Pennsylvania's.

The GN Belpaire looked rather like the Belpaire used by Bulleid, or the one on the Stanier Pacifics, both of which were Wootten type fireboxes. Churchward built one like this, but on his solitary pacific.

The standard GWR/LMS/BR/SECR Belpaire had flowing curves to narrow it to fit between the frames but to flare out to the boiler's diameter, and also fairly generous curves tobetween the side and top. The Pennsylvania Belpaire looked like a box added onto a round firebox.

Right you are. But the last PRR steam loco that I ever saw in regular service was a K-4 (maybe K-5) that passed in front of me at a grade crossing in Asbury Park, NJ on 9/7/54. I was enroute to 4 years in the USAF, and when I came home steam was history.

Walt

The 2-8-0 and 2-6-0 have been done by MDC to a fair degree. They do need a fair number of tender castings as well as different cabs for a start. I'll note that there were no Mikes on the Harriman roads from that era.

-- Bob May Losing weight is easy! If you ever want to lose weight, eat and drink less. Works evevery time it is tried!

I've always thought of the LIRR to be an castoff destination for the Pennsy. I also forgot the many GN locos that had a wider version of the Belpair as they were burning low grade coal out west and thus needed a much bigger firebox.

-- Bob May Losing weight is easy! If you ever want to lose weight, eat and drink less. Works evevery time it is tried!

Bob,

The GN did use Belpaire boilers, but not due to low grade coal. The NP was the railroad that had lots of on-line 'Lignite' coal and had very large fireboxes in their locomotives. The called the stuff 'flamable dirt'......

Jim Bernier

Bob May wrote:

Try anthracene. Think big-time carcinogen. See CFR-49.