Model Train Journal

Bob, I don't recall knowing that you had one each of the D&H J and NP Z-6 Challengers. In my mind "Challenger" is strongly associated with "UP". It easy to forget that others had them too. Great models.

If front drive shaft goes through the rear worm, that means that the rear drive shaft has to be hollow. Very interesting idea. I hope on some future visit we can take some photos? Of course, if I showed up with a good camera and a light tent, you (or, more likely, Linda) would wind up having to throw me out after some number of days (ha -- or hours!).

And, although the 24-hour news cycle on the Overland 2-8-8-2 is long past, here is another photo:



The model is pulling a long coal drag on Michael Ross's big Virginian layout. It's not a great photo of the locomotive, but I post it so I can follow with this one:



The model is pulling only 0.5 amps while pulling itself and a good size train. I show this as a back-door way of pointing out that the engine has a Doug Cockerham drive in it. I don't have any data on other articulated locomotives to know if this low current draw is really unusual or not, but the drive is quite smooth and seemingly quite efficient.

I have one other example of UP steam, which I will post next time
Jim

bob turner wrote:Not strictly UP, but I am not starting a Delaware & Hudson thread just for this thing. Lobaugh pre-war, came to me badly damaged and cut-up for USH gearboxes. I re-did it with post-war Lobaugh gears and a new tender body and cab.

Looks great, but you'll need two more of them, plus a kicker, to get a train up Ararat:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iR1TnS8n5FQ

The first time I saw an O-scale D&H Challenger was back in the 1980s -- a guy in my hometown NMRA division built a 3-rail version using two Lionel Hudson mechanisms.

Chris Webster wrote:The first time I saw an O-scale D&H Challenger was back in the 1980s -- a guy in my hometown NMRA division built a 3-rail version using two Lionel Hudson mechanisms.

Got a photo? I saw so many bashes in the 60's, 70's and 80's it wasn't even funny.
If his looked right, I'd like to see a photo. Would restore my faith in 3-railer's ability to actually DO that.
I won't tell you what I thought of the ones I saw!

Unless you count the grey Williams Mikado, this one is the last of my UP Steam. A P-77 in 17/64, drivers machined from rough castings. Tender is an escaped SP in 1/4" scale; that will have to be rectified with a coal Vanderbilt some day.

Well, Bump! I thought I had posted my CLW/Scale Craft FEF-1 in one of these threads. I guess not, even though you have seen it multiple times in the past. It has a Lobaugh Centipede tender bed that came to me in rough casting form. After preliminary machining and drilling, I discovered it did not track well. Rather than plug and re-drill, I milled out the pedestals, and put in sprung journal boxes. I will go load the photo into Shuttlewhatever in short order.

The CLW/Scale Craft 4-8-4 had no prototype. It may have had tinges of a Milwaukee Northern, but it was not clear - it did have a fully sprung and equalized main driver section; the springs were genuine phosphor bronze leaf springs. It works! It caused too much space between drivers, which could presumably be obscured with (ugh) brake shoes. I have a cache of plastic brake beams and shoes, and someday . . .

Charlie Schwarm, whose name appears on the kit blueprint, was going to braze a frame together to make driver spacing better - alas, he departed before finishing that project. It would be easy to cut a new frame on a CNC mill - but not worth it. The future is having lost-plastic done after a printed 3D plastic frame pops out of the "machine."

The kit came from Milt Sorensen of Meridian, Idaho. Milt can be found in the pages of Dan Henon's old OSN. the kit taught me a lot about soldering and dome making. Smokebox, firebox, cab, domes, and cylinders were all either replaced or seriously modified. The tender is the original Scale Craft, with a fully sprung Lobaugh Centipede truck. The tender lead and locomotive trailing truck are not sprung, since they roll fine, and I don't spring stuff that doesn't need it. Power is CLW gears driven by a giant and slow Pittman 6000 series motor.

Bump. Note the rather good Lionel models on page 1.

bob turner wrote:Unless you count the grey Williams Mikado, this one is the last of my UP Steam. A P-77 in 17/64, drivers machined from rough castings. Tender is an escaped SP in 1/4" scale; that will have to be rectified with a coal Vanderbilt some day.

What a beautiful model, Bob! You’re a true asset to this hobby!

In the next few days I’ll post some pictures of my UP equipment.

The next few days would be ok -

I just pulled this UP Pacific off the shelf to measure a few things, and found one crosshead and all gearbox bearings frozen solid with congealed oil and green corrosion. It took “Blaster” to get them loose; no amount of gentle prying would do - and this one is a more recent creation! I shudder to think of the maintenance burden on my earlier (1985) efforts!

Bob,
I would love to add photos but as I discovered MTJ requires a third party hosting site, something I haven’t had time to create.

I really enjoy your wonderful models. Appreciate the time & craftsmanship in each.

86TA355SR wrote:Bob,
I would love to add photos but as I discovered MTJ requires a third party hosting site, something I haven’t had time to create.

I really enjoy your wonderful models. Appreciate the time & craftsmanship in each.

It's actually a better deal for all of us to use a third party photo hosting site.
The powers-that-be tend to purge all photos when the server gets full, and we lose everything posted direct.

Nobody believes it when we say don't post directly.....once a purge was complete, it was "Oh, Look! I can post photos now!" and six months later they were all gone.

Please disregard the track, pictures taken prior to 'converting' to 2R. I model only UP steam.

Enjoy,

Aaron

Nice locos Aaron. That 2-10-2 looks familiar and is a very nice model. Did you add the coal boards?

up148 wrote:Nice locos Aaron. That 2-10-2 looks familiar and is a very nice model. Did you add the coal boards?

Butch,

No, I bought it that way from a fellow UP fan you know. Builder is unknown. The tender water extension is a little out of scale, I will correct later. Overall, I’m quite pleased & it’s one of my favorite models.

Several more UP TTTs are awaiting construction but I want to finish an FEF-1 and a Fetter Challenger first.

Aaron

Yes, very nice models. Thanks for posting them. You mean in addition to the FEF and Fetters Challenger shown in your post?

Did you guys ever see the collection in the hobby store in Salt Lake City? Some of those models were right on up there with the best, and that was before Key, et.al.