4-8-8-4 Big Boy Steam Engine

Just months before Pearl Harbor, the American Locomotive Company delivered the first Big Boy to the Union Pacific Railroad. The UP's Department of Research and Mechanical Standards had designed the locomotive for a specific task: to pull a 3600-ton train unassisted over the Wasatch Mountains in Utah. While the Big Boy is often cited as the biggest steam locomotive ever built, in fact it is not. The Norfolk & Western's Y6 and A, the Duluth Missabe & Iron Range's Yellowstones, and the Chesapeake and Ohio's Alleghenys were all in the same league, and some exceeded the Big Boy's weight and power.

But in the battle for hearts and minds, the Big Boy won. Perhaps it was the name, simple and direct, scrawled on a locomotive under construction by an Alco shop worker. Maybe it was timing, as the Big Boys hit the road just when America needed symbols to rally around. Maybe the UP's publicity department just did a better job of telling the world what great equipment they had. Whatever the reason, the Big Boy captured the imagination of railfans and the American public over the ensuing years, perhaps more than any other steam engine. In many ways it is the symbolic locomotive of the American West, as big and powerful as the country it sped through.

Writer Henry Comstock beautifully described the Big Boy's place at the apex of steam engine history: \"A Union Pacific 'Big Boy' was 604 tons and 19,000 cubic feet of steel and coal and water, poised upon 36 wheels spaced no wider apart than those of an automobile. That it could thunder safely over undulating and curved track at speeds in excess of 70 miles an hour was due in large measure to the efforts of two long-forgotten pioneers. As early as 1836, the basic system that held its wheels in equalized contact with the rails was patented by a Philadelphian named Joseph Harrison; and a French technical writer, Anatole Mallet, first thought to couple two driving units heel to toe below one boiler in 1874.\"

This enduring symbol of American railroading returns to the rails, complete with the industry-leading speed control, smoke output, and range of accurate sounds that characterize all MTH locomotives complete with industry-leading speed control, synchronized puffing smoke timed to driver revolutions, and a range of accurate sounds that characterize all M.T.H. locomotives. Our model features a powerful motor for pulling power and speed that rival the original Big Boy - as well as authentic articulated chuffing sounds with the two engines drifting in and out of sync.

 

4-6-2 USRA Heavy Pacific Steam Engine

During World War I, Uncle Sam nationalized the railroads when they proved unequal to the task of moving massive amounts of men and materiel for the war effort. The agency that ran the trains was the United States Railroad Administration, or USRA, and one of its chief accomplishments was the creation of 12 steam engine designs that lasted for decades. According to the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, USRA locomotives were \"the first successful standardization of American motive power\" - and the only standard designs until the diesel era.

In the World War I period, the 4-6-2 Pacific was the favored mainline passenger engine in relatively level territory, so the USRA designs included light and heavy 4-6-2s. The heavy version, designed for trackage that allowed a heavier axle load, was similar in most major dimensions to the existing Pennsylvania K4s and Chesapeake & Ohio F-17 Pacifics. Both had been designed around 1913 and were considered powerful and fast locomotives for their time.

Only 20 government-issue heavy Pacifics were actually built, all of them going to the Erie Railroad. But like most USRA designs, the heavy Pacific was so good that a number of railroads ordered copies after government control ended. The Erie bought 11 more, and at least three of the most successful heavy Pacifics built in the 1920s were based on the USRA design: the Baltimore & Ohio P-7d \"President\" class, the C&O F-19, and the Southern Railway Ps-4. A survivor of the latter class resides today in the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C., resplendent in the Southern's famous green livery with gold striping.

The USRA heavy Pacific returns to the Premier line for 2017, upgraded with wireless drawbar, quillable whistle, cab-to-tender deck plate, and additional details (not all details are shown in photos). Relive the days when these high-stepping Pacifics led mainline passenger runs, or their later years when they were relegated to local passenger trains and even freight service.

 

 4-6-2 Ps-4 Steam Engine

"The Southern Railway under the absolute monarchy of steam was the most pervasively beautiful carrier I have ever known,\" wrote David P. Morgan, famed editor of Trainsmagazine. The Southern embodied the romantic vision of the South. As railway historian H. Stafford Bryant Jr. put it, \"With the Southern, it was always Garden Week in Virginia, April on the Habersham Road, and the Ole Miss game at Tuscaloosa.\" And the locomotive that personified Southern style was the Ps-4 Pacific.

In truth, the Ps-4 was a virtual copy of the USRA's Heavy Pacific design, which drew heavily on the Pennsy K4s for inspiration. But two sons of Virginia, Fairfax Harrison and W. Graham Claytor Jr., made the Ps-4 a stunning corporate symbol recognized worldwide as one of the most beautiful of all American steamers.

Born of a patrician Virginia family, Fairfax Harrison was a graduate of Yale and Columbia, lawyer, historian, Latin scholar and country gentlemen who ran the Southern from the teens through most of the 1930s. On a 1925 trip to London, he was impressed by the green livery and fine lining on many British steamers, and resolved to bring that grace and beauty to his own road. Thus the next order of Ps-4's, delivered by Alco's Richmond Locomotive Works in 1926, arrived in Virgina green with gold lining and lettering. The new look was so successful that it was soon applied to earlier Ps-4's and the entire passenger fleet. Because the Southern allowed crews to stay with their \"own\" locomotive, there was more than the usual incentive to keep the engines in sparkling condition. As David Morgan noted, \"No green-and-gold Ps-4 was ever humbled by any Yankee engine she encountered in Washington or Cincinnati, and her engineers, shopmen and wipers knew it.\"

Decades later, W. Graham Claytor Jr. - WWII destroyer escort captain who rescued survivors of the U.S.S. Indianapolis, Secretary of the Navy, president of the Southern from 1967-77 and later president of Amtrak - determined that the glory that was the Ps-4 would never be forgotten. While working as an outside legal counsel to the Southern in the 1950s, he convinced the railroad to pull one Ps-4 from the scrap line and donate it to the Smithsonian, where it resides today in green-and-gold glory, a reminder to future generations of the mechanical beauty that was the steam era. Claytor later described his youthful experience with the Ps-4: \"Our Washington Division line is mostly straight, but is undulating throughout its length with the line rising and falling about every 3 or 4 miles like a long ocean swell. In the old days when I used to ride passenger trains to college behind Ps-4 locomotives, the standard operating procedure was to go 80-mph-plus downhill, hit the bottom at maximum speed, and crest the next hill as fast as possible, but seldom over 35 mph.\"

New for 2017, we offer our Premier Ps-4 for the first time with the 8-wheel tender that trailed two-thirds of the 64 Ps-4 engines, in contrast to the more well-known 12-wheel tender. No. 1372 left Alco's Schenectady works in 1924 and was later lettered for the Southern's all-Pullman, extra-fare Crescent Limited service from Washington to Atlanta. No. 6476, sporting an Elesco feedwater heater between bell and stack, belonged to Southern subsidiary Cincinnati, New Orleans & Texas Pacific, route of The Queen and Crescent Limitedbetween the Cincinnati (the Queen City), and New Orleans (the Crescent City).

 

4-8-4 GS-4 Steam Engine

In 1937 the Southern Pacific trumpeted a new train in full-page magazine ads:

Let us stand by the tracks of Southern Pacific's Coast Line, as thousands now do every day and listen.Suddenly from far off comes a musical note, rising. Round a curve flashes a streak of color. Here comes the Daylight, the most beautiful train in the West!

The Daylights linked Los Angeles and San Francisco \"in a glorious daylight trip, streaking along the Pacific Ocean for more than a hundred breathless miles.\" Travelers were invited to \"Step inside the Daylight and see the beauty and luxury that have already won the West. Notice the wide, soft seats in the coaches. They are cushioned with sponge rubber and turn to face the extraordinarily large windows.\" Presenting a glorious streak of orange and red from locomotive to observation car, the Daylights were a sharp departure from the SP's normal dark olive passenger cars.

Leading the trains were the Southern Pacific's class GS (for \"Golden State\") Northerns, arguably among the handsomest steam engines ever built. Constructed by Lima Locomotive Works, inventor of the super-power concept, the Daylight 4-8-4s had the combination of power and speed that characterized steam power at its zenith. Class GS-4 engines, delivered in 1941 and 1942, were among the last and best-looking of the breed, with tall 80\" drivers and enclosed all-weather cabs. In addition to handling premier passenger trains, the Golden State 4-8-4s were regularly used on the SP's famed Overnight high-speed freight service. Long before FedEx existed, it provided overnight business deliveries between San Francisco and Los Angeles, carrying everything from groceries to replacement car engines.

A lone GS-4, No. 4449, was saved from the scrapper and donated to the city of Portland, Oregon, where it sat mounted and stuffed in a city park for 16 years. Jack Holst, an elderly Southern Pacific employee, visited the engine regularly, oiling its bearings and rods in the hope that it would someday return to steam. As a result of his efforts, No. 4449 was in good enough shape that it was chosen as the western engine for the American Freedom Train, returning to steam just four months to begin touring the country in 1975 in celebration of our nation's 200th anniversary. Repainted in Daylight colors, the engine still operates today in excursion service.

 

ALP 46 Electric Engine

The ALP-46 is the third generation of electric power to serve New Jersey commuters. In the 1930s, the Pennsylvania Railroad's landmark electrification linked New York City to much of New Jersey with MP54 electric commuter cars and trains hauled by GG1 electric locomotives. When New Jersey Transit took over commuter rail service in 1983 from Conrail (which had inherited the operation from Pennsy successor Penn Central), the GG1s were still soldiering on and badly in need of replacement.

But in the half-century since the GG1s' delivery, building electric locomotives had become a lost art in the United States. Looking for new power, NJT took a cue from Amtrak and ordered the Swedish-designed ALP-44, a near-copy of Amtrak's AEM-7. The first ALP-44s arrived in 1990.

Fast forward a decade and NJT was once more in the market for new locomotives, with increased ridership and double-decker cars creating the need for a more powerful engine. Turning again to Europe, NJT contracted with German-headquartered ADtranz to build the ALP-46, based on their Class 101, the flagship electric of Germany's national railway. During production, ADtranz was taken over by Bombardier Transportation, which then became the largest rail equipment manufacturer in the world.

While unique to New Jersey Transit, the ALP-46 shares the basic shape and technology of Bombardier electrics in service throughout Europe. It offers a near-perfect combination of speed, safety, and practicality. Designed for aerodynamics but also for economical construction, its streamlined shape is composed almost entirely of flat surfaces. The ends are raked at an angle that slices through the air - but a steeper, more streamlined angle was avoided in order to minimize air turbulence between the engine and the following car.

The controls, of course, are computerized with myriad safety systems. With nearly 900 horsepower available to each of its eight wheels, wheelslip control on the ALP-46 was mandatory. Another system monitors the pantograph shoe that contacts the overhead wire. In the event of shoe breakage, it automatically lowers the pantograph to prevent wire damage. The trucks on the ALP-46 are derived from those on Germany's high-speed Inter-City Express (ICE), with modifications for the tighter curves on commuter lines. In full flight, the ALP-46 can reach 100 mph, but its trucks are designed to be safe at 160 mph.

Built in Bombardier's plant in Kassel, Germany, the NJT's fleet of 29 ALP-46s was delivered in 2001-2002. It is used largely in push-pull service with single-level coaches and bi-level Bombardier-built cars; the engine leads the train in one direction, and on the return leg the engineer drives from a cab in the end coach. The locomotives proved so successful that NJT took delivery of 36 additional units in 2009-2011, with upgraded electonics and designated class ALP-46A.

 

Reservations Due By: June 5, 2017

Expected Release: Febuary 2018

NJS

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