Union Pacific Steam

[bob turner]

Starting off with a "Lobaugh" Big Boy. The boiler barrel, frames, tender, drivers, smokebox are all Lobaugh. Firebox and frame extensions are mine. Domes are carved from aluminum pipe.

[bob turner]

Note the tender ripples, discussed in another thread. These are mostly due to manufacture, but also finger pressure. They can be sort of straightened with finger pressure on a flat surface.

[up148]

Looks very nice Bob. You've obviously chosen a road close to my heart.

[De Bruin]

Agree, and timely now that one of these actually roams the planet again
(or at least did for awhile before... well you know)
Bob,is the pilot a tad high off the rail or the blade height shortened for clearance because the frame is so long?

[bob turner]

Let's dedicate this thread to Butch. I was thinking of him when I named it - rather than Lobaugh Challengers or something matching the rest of my new series.

Yes, Pete - I think it might be a tad high - and it is not for operational reasons, since I have not powered this beast yet. I just wanted to use up my spare Challenger parts. Speaking of Challengers . . .

[E7]

No doubt about it, Butch is definitely "Mr. UP" in these parts!

[up148]

Thanks Bob/Rich, but all of us have favorite road(s). UP just captured my imagination when I returned to modeling and trains back in 1975 and I couldn't learn enough about it's history. And Tom March didn't help, as he's a bigger UP zealot than I am and imported a huge selection of UP prototypes.

[ScaleCraft]

I saw that high pilot on a UP steamer, and I knew I'd seen that before.

Joe Rudinski did mostly UP. Steam and diseasemal.

We were all over running at Stivers one evening (Mister Two Layers Of Homasote Supported Every 30" or more), and here comes Joe, track speed plus, hits one of Stivers infamous damp weather Homasote dips, right at the main crossover to enter the yards...and his Prototype Specific Pilot Height....caught the end of the points. At track speed.

We spent some considerable time gathering up accordioned rolling stock, while old Stivers re-laid the switch parts, and Joe packed his engine away with a badly bent under pilot.

Next time he brought an engine over to Stivers to run, clearance looked like that on Burner's photo.

[R.K. Maroon]

First off, let me say thanks to Bob for getting his photo posting going again. I don't have much UP steam but I will participate as I can.

My tastes in steam locomotives is skewed by the curvature radius of the club layout. Yes, this is not completely logical, but it's easier to like something if a model of it is actually a practical runner. Go figure.

In that regards, while large articulated locomotives tend to actually make it around our 65" curves, the pilot overhang is just too much for me to enjoy. Note when I made this video of an Overland 2-8-8-2 (which I have posted before) that I did not include any shots of it going around a curve:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gR7yuy-Qz8k

As such, I am drawn more to Bob's Challenger, for instance, than to the Big Boy.

So what's the story on the Challenger, Bob. I know you have "a few", but I don't have a memory of this one with it's shorter-than-expected tender. Also, is my perception incorrect or is the fireman's window on the low side?

Jim

[Rufus T. Firefly]

.

[ScaleCraft]

In #1 Gauge,several manufacturers make artics. MOST aren't..they're Meyers. Done to reduce overhang on curves.
Botchman made a 2-6-6-2 tank loco...Meyer...customer had it shipped to me direct, never saw it, would not accept it back until I'd done what he wanted.
Took over 4 years. I'd work on it, get fed up, put it away, dig it out a couple of months later, work on it..ad infinitum nauseum.

Made it a true artic, Mallet to be precise, rebuilt all the valve gear, different open cab, tender, switch behind smokebox door to make the sound simple or compound.

The amount of work was astounding, and I will never, ever do another.
Meyers was the fix for overhang on sharp curves, and most of the Large Scale crowd didn't have a clue.

[bob turner]

Delighted that you guys are picking up on this thread. I feel like that guy in Martin's post is clapping for us.

The Challengers are of interest - a really balanced locomotive, and enough variants to make life interesting. I have Rio Grande, Northern Pacific, and Delaware and Hudson Challengers, and will be re-posting their photos here. I believe that by now, almost 100% of my previous threads on locomotives have zero photographs left, or ones with the Photobucket logo smeared all over them. So you get to endure threads on Pacifics, Mikados, 0-6-0s - maybe even doorstop Diesels, and get to see photos that you could once see in our archives.

The UP had two versions of Challengers, and they were similar only with respect to wheel arrangement, driver diameter, and lettering.

The first is now known as the "Fetters" Challenger (Arthur Fetters, General Mechanical Engineer) and it is shown above, with short tender and really arched cab roof, making the windows look too low. The second - the "modern" - Challenger is known as the Jabelmann Challenger, after Otto Jabelmann, Vice President at the time of design and construction. This is the one with the Centipede tender and tapered side rods. It has a lot in common with Big Boy and the later series 4-8-4s.

For those interested, you really need Kratville's book "The Challenger Locomotives." I think you can still buy it new.

Let me post this, and I will go and snag some Jabelmann Challenger photos.

[bob turner]

I got this one from Henry Leslie - pretty beat up with a smunched cab and rusty drivers. It cleaned up nicely. I always do new cabs when I rebuild these things, and I believe this one has my patented tender sides as well. If there are no ripples, it is almost certain to be one of mine. Almost.

[bob turner]

I have maybe eight challengers of various flavors, and three FEFs - and a Harriman heavy Pacific in 17/64. I won't post all the Challengers, but do have three more to show you. Then I will get into the FEFs and a lonely Williams Mikado (which I intend to sell).

I mentioned Bill Kratville in a post above. I never met him, but we corresponded. Neat guy, and friends with my friend Jim Seacrest. Let me say this - if you like UP and SP, you absolutely must have Kratville Pubs books on your shelf. I think Bob Church now has his own setup - Signature Press - but he and Kratville shared a lot as these books were being prepared.

[E7]

A bit of Heresy here because it's HO but it is also UP. I might have posted this before, but if so, it's worth a second look:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxLDft8WlXc&t=213s