Mason Bogie Website

[Frisco]

http://www.ironhorse129.com/prototype/masonbogie/mason_bogie.htm , Has some wonderful information on all Mason Bogie locomotives.

[Jim Banner]

Frisco, thanks for the awesome link.  I spent several pleasant hours looking at all the photos.  Am I correct in thinking that at least some of these locomotives had not only the tender wheels in the form of a bogie but also the drivers?  Did they mount the cylinders on the bogie too?  That is, did they swivel along with the drivers?  Any and all thoughts and comments would be welcome.

I have this image in my head of a highly modified H0 diesel mechanism with 1/2" wheels on the rear truck, 3/4" wheels on the front truck, and a 3:2 gear box added into the front drive line.  Add some hand crafted side frames and a custom shell and you would have a killer 0n30 locomotive - 8 wheel pickup, 8 wheel drive, and able to negotiate 15" radius curves.  It boggles the mind.

[Hamish K]

Yes, Mason-Bogies were articulatd locomotives with the drivers on a swivelling bogie, and the cylinders attached to the swivelling bogie. If the drivers didn't swivell it wasn't a Mason-Bogie. The design was developed by Mason's from the British Fairlie design, Mason obtained the patents from Fairlie. There were two versions of the Fairlie, the Double Fairlie and the Single. Double Fairlies looked like two locomtives back-to-back  joined at the cab, they had two sets of swivelling drivers. For Thomas fans, Mighty Mac is a double Fairlie. Mason built one double locomotive, the Janus for the Lehigh valley (see website linked by Frisco),  it was not a success. One British built double locomotive went to the USA, the Mountaineer on the D&RG.

Single Fairlies had a conventional boiler, one set of swivelling drivers and a non powered swivelling truck at the rear. All Mason Bogies, except Janus, were based on the Single Fairlie design.

Hamish

[scottychaos]

There are actually Three pages total..thats only one of them!

First came David Fletcher's "Masterclass 2002" that started it all:
http://archive.mylargescale.com/articles/masterclass/

Then Tom created the "photo archive", the list of prototype images, to go with the class:
http://www.ironhorse129.com/prototype/masonbogie/mason_bogie.htm

Then I created the "color archive":
http://www.frontiernet.net/~scottychaos/ON_LINE/


Are three pages are related..
Combined, they make the single largest, most detailed, Mason Bogie reference in existance.

Here are a few more related pages, about the models being built:

http://www.mylargescale.com/Community/Forums/tabid/56/forumid/21/view/topic/postid/32404/Default.aspx

http://gold.mylargescale.com/scottychaos/leviathancover.htm

Scot

[Royce Wilson]

The perfect On30 locomotive!

                                              Royce Wilson

[woodburner]

Hi Scot,

Wow, I didnt know your site is still up and running!  We've learned a lot of things since it went up and have much better information now about the colors of Mason Bogie locomotives. 

There are two colors known: 

Green for early bogies, up to 1877

Chocolate brown for later bogies, from 1879 on. 

The transition point appears to be some time in 1878, but all we can say definitively is that chocolate brown was in use by the early part of 1879.  So your Leviathan happily remains quite accurate, which is pretty good. 

The black versions like the No. 55 should have dark yellow letters and numbers, instead of white.  This is from an original paint spec, which came to light some time after the MLS class was completed.   

I'd like to suggest revising the site to help people better - mostly by retiring all the wine, lake and blue versions, anything that has red wheels and trucks, and so on.  Contact me seperately and we can work together to update the site and give the best info we have. 

Hope all is well your way,
Jim