Model Train Journal

The late Steve Neill had quite an assortment of interesting historical O-scale trains. His estate went to auction three years ago, but recently an unusual pair of items were found in his garage. They present as a pair of 12"x 4" x3" steel blocks, weighing approximately 40 pounds each. Each block was a split matching pair. My first guess was that they were die cast dies, but Phil Randall (aka Nortonville Phil) noted that there were no vents to get molten metal in and air out (an astute observation!). Our next guess was that they were press dies. It took some doing to separate the halves, which were stuck together with something like cosmoline. Here is what we found when we opened up one of the bricks:


https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/k0i8n5si5eo071nebhwd6/Tender-Dies-01.jpg?rlkey=pio9l0a1adr5ki87habkphtgw

So this is clearly one half of a tender side. We surmise that a blank of brass sheet, cut to size, would be loaded into the lower half. There are six slots around the perimeter. It seems that the blank would have bent tabs, which would fit the slots and register the blank within the die. There is a boss on the right-hand side of the upper die, and a matching void on the lower die. These features would register the two halves.

The other brick was similar and clearly for the other side of the tender:


https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/i2gxdf3ein01uwh76tj0q/Tender-Dies-02.jpg?rlkey=y8qwhkrcy5a0prs0e45f88fp8

Here is the die for the outside of the side, as evidenced by the presence of the rivet pattern:


https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/0q21j3c1pzd9qwc9i9ltx/Tender-Dies-03.jpg?rlkey=lxy6hdc2pubrbbujxcme5bptd

I am curious to see if anybody can ID the model. The closest thing I have is the tender from the Lobaugh FEF:


https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/9fx69bqkw1dt1ueyiaupf/Lobaugh-UP-FEF-Tender.jpg?rlkey=ie8plza3sjcbm354vv01tb72c

Both the dies and the model have the same staggered rows of rivets. However, note that the die does not have a rivet pattern to mark the coal bunker of the tender. So maybe it's for the tender of an oil burner, or possibly an auxiliary water tender. I nosed around but had no luck finding any tender that matched in both size, shape, and rivet pattern. There is a UP auxiliary tender that is close, but I couldn't find a photo of one with the same rivet pattern. Any ideas?

As a final comment, I had no idea that super-heavy-duty tooling like this would ever be needed or cost effective to form the sides of a brass model. I can only imagine the tooling cost. I also wonder about the size of the press that would be used with these dies. Does anybody have insight into any of this?

Jim

R.K. Maroon wrote:As a final comment, I had no idea that super-heavy-duty tooling like this would ever be needed or cost effective to form the sides of a brass model. I can only imagine the tooling cost. I also wonder about the size of the press that would be used with these dies. Does anybody have insight into any of this? Jim

Maybe a good person to pose this question to would be Scott Mann.

Spray it with some PAM cooking spray and make some tender sides. It’s pretty cool to come up with some old tooling. A local garage will have a press good enough to stamp them.

Donate it to a museum somewhere. Not here.

For the FEF and the Jabelmann Challenger, Lobaugh apparently used the famous converted sewing machine, and popped them out one by one. In later years (Al Ellis) they went to a dead-soft brass, etched. All had the coal bunker outline.

The tender above has home made sides. Happy to make you a better set!



This is, I believe, a genuine Lobaugh Challenger tender side. The FEF is similar; I will look inside to see if the rivets were embossed. Pretty sure they were. My work is almost as good as this - I can pop out a pair for you if you ever feel like re-doing the above tender.

I think the flaw here is you have to use dead soft copper to get this to work. Soft copper and brass is lousy model making material. That is one reason I stay away from silver solder.

All, as usual, opinion.

That is a very cool piece of O scale history, that few today will appreciate. I agree with Bob. If you can find a museum that would display them that would be a great home for them, but as our hobby seems to be waning except for RTR trains I'm not sure that exist anymore.

Ive seen this tender come up on Ebay a few times I think its the tender supplied with Central Locomotive Works 4-8-4's its close to a UP tender but not really.

steamaheadstephen59 wrote:I think its the tender supplied with Central Locomotive Works 4-8-4's.

BINGO -- I don't own one of these myself but I have seen a few. Here is the tender:


https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/ww3ux6z19f20xf81lkpmo/CLW-Northern-Mar-2012-05.jpg?rlkey=u8x4ucaz113ylohxgokknzonq

This makes some sense, as Steve had a fair number of historical items from CLW in his collection. I don't know the circumstances by which he acquired all of it. Most of the business, including tooling, went to Lou Houlemarde when he bought CLW from Bob.

As an aside, note that the CLW 4-8-4 was originally developed by Scale-Craft during their attempt at a post-war reboot. It appeared in the 1950 catalog with a mid-year availability. It is believed that none were ever shipped, but the prototype of the model survives and is in a private collection.


https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/zw9ujtg8md43m6eo0h95c/Scale-Craft-1950-p008.jpg?rlkey=o95lk2wapck8ryk2gecarr6vu

At any rate, well done, Stephen! The mystery has been solved.

Jim

I am going to tentatively challenge that outcome.

The Scale Craft/CLW tender was originally an aluminum casting. Smith produced it like that, but then decided on a C&O style tender with embossed sides, looking only vaguely like the above pictured tenders. I had one, but sold it over 30 years ago and acquired the proper aluminum cast tender, which only looks good on a centipede underframe.

I am not positive it was embossed - it may have been etched, like the PS-4 and H10 tender bodies were.

I could be flat-out wrong - maybe Smith had decided to do the Scale Craft tender in soft copper or something - and found out that after all that die-making effort it just didn't turn out.

Exacta is the only outfit I know of who successfully made such things, and it is not totally clear that they did not use heat to get the effect. Their heavyweight car sides are works of art! We only come close these days with plastic or urethane.

CLW, with cast aluminum tender: