Pete,
I am used to seeing steam locomotives of the type used in the northeast U.S. and these were always with a tender to match water consumption needs, if you used a smaller tender it ment more stops at the water tower & fuel point and not all railroads had plenty of water towers or fuel points along the way.
The Pennsy used water scoop method which meant having track pans under the rails so the tender could pick up water on the move and not have to stop as often, can't say how well that worked as only a few railroads used the water scoops.
Lee F.
Very nice work and thanks for sharing it with us!
Welcome to the CTT Forum!
Regards, Roy
Lee F,
1. The loco is RailKing, not scale. I'm surprised you didn't comment on the 3807 itself - look at the below photo. MTH did a poor job on the boiler; it is too large and too tall.
2. The Lionel Lionmaster Challenger is a much better proportioned than the MTH RK version. The Lionmaster version is on top, the MTH RK on bottom in the following photo:
3. The replacement Vanderbilt tender looked small because of the front quarter angle of the photo. The original MTH Centipede tender was even shorter - look at the above photo. One works with what one has available - I would like to have a Lionel Lionmaster Challenger/Big Boy Centipede tender behind the 3807 but they are not available. BTW, if you want me to install 6 wheel trucks on the Vandy tender, send me $100 - I checked and Lionel wants $50 ea. for 6 wheel tender trucks.
4. As to whether or not it is "prototypical", not all railroads ran all locos with "long haul" tenders. UP photo books show some of their articulated locos with short tenders.
5. My layout has 0-72 or larger curves; I also run Big Boys and a 4-12-2.
Regards,
Pete in W'brg,
The steam locomotives look nice but the last one the 3807 has too short of a tender for it to be prototypical, the tender was designed for each locomotive's need for water and fuel(coal or wood or oil).
Sometimes a shorter tender is used because of track space on curves, but if you want a big steam loco you must have a large layout for it to run, I found this to be so with a Reading T1 (4-8-4)steam loco by MTH. The T1 has a large tender, six axles.
Nice Locomotives. My guess is Weaver.
You can click on each photo to see a larger version
UP 499 started life as a Lionel Southern Pacific Harriman 2-8-0 with a long Vanderbilt oil tender. The loco was repainted to UP and upgraded with an EOB Drop-in Board. The current coal tender is from a K-Line scale Mikado and has 2-8-0's Rail Sounds hardware.
UP 518 started life as a Lionel Southern Pacific 4-4-2 with Vanderbilt oil tender; painted in Daylight colors. When I purchased the loco, it was it was completely disassembled - all the parts in a couple of plastic bags. Reassembled and repainted the loco to Union Pacific - still waiting for some final detail parts. A EOB Drop-in Board is on order and will be installed. The coal tender came from a scale Lionel C&O 2-6-6-2 and had the 4-4-2 Rail sounds installed after being repainted UP.
UP 2499 is a K-Line scale Mikado upgraded with an EOB Drop-in Board. It came with a coal tender and now has a Lionel Vanderbilt oil tender with the Mikado's Rail sounds. The tender came from the SP Daylight 4-4-2 and was repainted to UP.
UP 3005 started as a scale Lionel USRA light 2-6-6-2 with a long coal tender. The loco was redone to UP, upgraded with an EOB Drop-in Board, and acquired a repainted Centipede coal tender from a MTH RK PS1 grey UP Challenger. The tender's drawbar was upgraded to accept the 2-6-6-2's Lionel IR wireless tether and Rail sounds was installed.
UP 3807 was an early MTH RK PS1 grey Challenger. The loco was gutted, cast on train indicator lights were removed, and the bell was removed. Lionel LED equipped marker lights, scale train indicator boards, engineer and fireman, and a scale bell were installed. The junky MTH pilot assembly on the front engine was trashed and a Lionel Lionmaster Challenger pilot assembly with an added front coupler was put in its place. The original, too short, Centipede tender was replaced with a Lionel Vanderbilt tender from the SP 2-8-0. The tender was repainted and the oil bunker height was raised ¼ inch. The locomotive was outfitted with an EOB and the tender with Lionel Challenger RailSounds.
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