Lionel N&W 0-8-0

[Anonymous]

Can anyone out there please take a moment an post a good trackside photo of their Lionel Norfolk & Western 0-8-0 switcher that was released about 2 years ago? My reason for asking is I'm seriously considering the purchase of one of these neat little switchers and the on-line 'Lionel' catalog picture is just to small to see any detail or approximation of scale. I'd also be interested in knowing your opinion as to its operating characteristic on your layout.

Thanks to whomever for their assistance.

[wrmcclellan]

Hello. I do not have the N&W loco, but I do have the NYC version, Lionel #6-28080.

I do not have the ability to easily post a photo (my digital camera and I do not have great relationship), but I can describe the unit quite well. This is my experience and my opinion, but I hope they help you in your decision. Hopefully someone else can get you a photo here.

This is an impressive effort by Lionel and overall I am very pleased with it. It is a fun loco to run and with the valve action and small drivers, visually interesting. As soon as the members of our club layout saw it, two of them went out and purchased similar units (UP and another NYC).

The loco is accurately scale sized and compares extremely well with photos in Alvin Staufer's book "Steam Power of the New York Central System," Vol 1, Modern Power, 1915-1955, published in 1961. The cab number of 7745, U-3A, is accurate per Staufer's references, with the 7745 originally built in 1920 by Brooks (#'s 7745 - 7748). A curious detail is the separately applied builders plates read LIMA. Oh well, on the whole, Lionel really did some homework on this one and discrepancies could be attributed to the "pleasures" of mass production.

The cab contains a light, engineer and fireman figures. The cab roof has two cast in roof vents with one slightly open. The boiler casting is superb with sharp cast in piping and really well done cleanout plugs (compare well to castings used on brass locos). There is a good amount of addon piping and details such as generator, injectors, power reverse, air pump, blow downs, whistle, pop-off, bell, and headlight. The smokebox cover is hinged, opens, and is secured by one very strong magnet.

The drivers and valve gear are slightly darkened (not too much) and thus are seen well while operating. Slow speed performance is superb and the chuff is accurately timed to 4 per revolution via a cam and relay. Unfortunately, when the sound is off, you can hear the relay clicking, but I like the sound, so I do not notice it. The smoke unit is typical Lionel in terms of output and is is the somewhat improved fan driven unit, but is not timed to the drivers (too bad). The whistle and bell are excellent and compare well with some old NYC sound films I have on videotape.

This loco is a blast to use in the club layout yard, puttering around, shifting cars to different tracks and performing various set-outs to industries and the main line. Out on the main line, it is a pretty slow trip to get around our layout, but on my 8x12 layout at home it is just right.

Valve gear is a bit oversized and in that typical concession to 3-rail (durability in handling), is not accurately modeled with the typical offset in the radius rod and the upper valve link rod being stationary. For a great example of how it should work, check out the neat link below to Toy Train Revue. My Lionel 18005 (1990) and the older Lionel Hudson have the valve motion implemented correctly and did it within toy train geometries. I am not complaining and I love toy trains, but on such an effort as this engine that is so close to scale, it seems that little design effort would be required to make it more accurate and in line with the effort on the rest of the engine.

http://www.toytrainrevue.com/action.htm

My one complaint is the electrocouplers are a bit stiff. So even though the unit tracks well through my 022 switches and 0-31 curves, the couplers tend to push cars off the rails on radii less than 0-54 or 0-42. Obviously trying to couple on sharp curves is out of the question unless one aligns the couplers by hand.

Overall I think this is a neat little engine and if you enjoy the scale efforts by Lionel and do not want to spend $1500 on a large engine but want the detail, this one is a great way to go. Good luck in your decision.

I have Lionel, MTH, Weaver, Williams, K-Line, etc., equipment and have endured the good and bad from all of them. So I do not think I am overly biased one way or the other.

[BigJim]

wr,
When switching with your 0-8-0, have you ever tried kicking cars or better yet swinging a car by?

[wrmcclellan]

BigJim,

An interesting question that I could not answer so I went out and did a test on my layout which is flat and has no grades.

I used the new and free rolling Lionel 175008 boxcar which also has a decent weight to it for some momentum.

The best I could get with "kicking" the car with the TMCC or conv control was about 8-12 inches of free roll after throttling back the loco. Had to leave the couplers unmated as attempts with releasing the coupler via TMCC and then quickly throttling back were not successful (3-4 inches). To get the 12 inches required quite a running start, so I had to run 24-36 inches to kick it 12 inches. Not what I would deem very successful.

I am not sure what you mean by swinging, but I tried to see how far the boxcar would roll if I cut the boxcar loose whie passing a switch to see if I could roll it into a siding. Basically the same result. At best about 4-12 inches depending on speed and all this on straight track. Never tried the switch to see if it would clear the main as it did not go far on the straight.

My conclusion is kicking or anything else without some grade involved (as we do have on our yard tracks on the club layout) is not really possible. Even with the slight grade on our club yard tracks and the different rolling resistance of the variety of cars we run means some roll down and some do not.

BTW - I also tried this with an MTH 0-6-0 with basically the same results in conv mode. In DCS, the thumbwheel control is not fast enough to quickly increase or decrease loco speed. Use of DIR (for quicker stop after building up forward speed) is a little better, but to equal the TMCC would require manipulation of the DCS momemtum settings which I did not try as I think the end result would be no better than above.

Regards,
wr

[Anonymous]

Many thanks to those of you who responded to my posting about the Lionel 0-8-0 switcher. I think I now have a somewhat clearer understanding as to its operational characteristics of this little engine. However, I'm still hoping someone out there will come up with a decent trackside photo of one of these little fellows and post it on this forum so I can get a clearer idea as to what it actually looks like. Here's hoping!

[BigJim]

wr,
8-12 inches doesn't say much for the rolling properties of the cars.

[wrmcclellan]

Big Jim,

A simple push by hand easily sends the car I used around 1/2 of an 0-72 circle on one end of the layout (Lionel tubular track). The problem is definitely not the car. I could not get the engine to bump or launch the car in any realistic manner. This engine is geared very low and does not speed up easily or slow down quickly for the ways I tried it.

nyccollector - I tried to post the only photo that I could get to show anything decently, but I could not get it into this frame by pasting or drag & drop. I will have to do some looking around to see how to include a photo in these posts.

Regards,
wr

[wrmcclellan]

nyccollector,

Here is a try at posting the not so great photo I took today.



The others I took did not turn out well.