My list of 27 trainsets made by HObbyline is all I know of. The Royal Blue is set # 462 and consists of twin FA-1 power, A combine and 3 Day coaches in Blue and Gray. This set for me is not like the other 26 for I know what trains made them up. I have catalog info on all the others. I have nothing on the Royal Blue except a statment from the forum members of Railfan net. They do seem to be well informed.
My search for a cetain B&O Royal Blue train set has to do with my other search for HObbyline HO trains from between 1953 and 1957. I would like to find the Model trains magazine from that time span. Only the Decenber Christmass addition is of interest to me. I would see if that old magazine show any sets by HObbyline. Make note of them, and see how they match up to what info I have already. I wont know till I find some of those additions.
frank
Outside of possibly brass, it looks like the streamlined 4-6-2 has never been made in HO. If you go up a scale or two, American Flyer made the Royal Blue steam engine in both S and O gauges, but I think they only made the matching passenger cars in O. The O versions are more rare than the S versions.
This is my old O gauge AF Royal Blue, which I finished restoring a couple months ago. The engine is actually very accurate. This set's been in my family for almost 70 years now!
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Found the person I was talking about..............on Ebay
Search ebay for "B&O Royal Blue," and you will find several sets currently available. One of them is a very nice brass rendition by MTS with a starting bid of $1295, without the engine.Key imported a beautiful streamlined B&O P-7 in Royal Blue livery, but the price is steep if you can find one. Much depends on how much of a surprise you want this to be. There are more affordable plastic versions on the 'bay, from Mantua and IHC
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Amer_Flyer_Royal_Blue_crop.jpg
Found this for you (American Flyer) and I actually know someone in Manitoba, Canada that may have one if this is what your looking for???? I know he was trying to sell it but I don't know if he ever did
Magnum
I don't know anything about their work or if they (he?) is still taking custom orders but there is a P7 shown on Eddystone's site.
http://www.eddystonelocomotives.com/products.htm
Other than that, I don't know of anyone who's made the streamlined version of the B&O 4-6-2...
B&O railroad used a streamlined 462 to pull their Royal Blue passenger train in the late 30's . The train ran from Washington to New York daily. My dad used to see this train when he lived in Baltimore as a kid. I'd like to add the train to my HO layout as a suprise to him. Can anyone tell me which company carried the loco in HO and where I can find one?