Quote from: bobgrosh on September 20, 2007, 11:40:18 PM
OK, My Kay is ordered and prepaid. $664.99 Guess I'll just have to figure out the wiring when it gets here.

Just been in contact with my near-local dealer here in UK- special price of £615.00 - that's $1200.00.  Even got 455 with a green boiler...makes it very tempting.

Interestingly, she also told me that there would only be 1500 of them worldwide - anybody like to comment on that? [Ahem, that's YOU, Mr Bach-man].

tac
www.ovgrs.org 

Quote from: Lee Carlson on September 02, 2007, 05:24:06 PMIt will blow all the competition out of the water! 

Dear Mr Carlson - there is NO competition.  Nobody else makes a plastic K-27.

tac - with a tin one.

Dear Mr Mike0710 - Yes, you will need to buy suitable track to run outdoors.  Being charitable, it is true to say that the steel track made by Bachmann is eminently suited to running around the christmas tree, but little else.

As Nathan has pointed out - these makers will serve you well, with the provisos that he has noted...

Your train, with care and attention, will give you many years of outdoor enjoyment, as those of us who have them will tell you.  Read this website on a daily basis, and get yourself on mylargescale.com as well.  Between them they have most questions you could ever ask well-tied up.  The wealth of knowledge here and there is a constant source of information and advice - most of it useful!    

And welcome to the wonderful world of large-scale trains!!

tac in UK
www.ovgrs.org  

Charlie - you wrote - 'Scale models of WP&Y locomotives in 1:22 or 1:20.3 are not common, and some models in either scale may be more accurate than others.'

I take it that you are referring to the Aster/LGB 1:22.5 model of #73.  I did a series of measurements on my model and the real thing a few years back when it had just come out of major rebuild, and found that with the exception of the oversize drivers, the rest of it was pretty near the mark.  As might have been expected - Aster made the actual locomotive and valve gear - LGB made the running gear based on their then recently-introduced Mike in 1/27th scale, but did not change the size of the drive wheels.   

I am trying to pursuade Cliff of Accucraft US to undertake producing #73 - the upcoming EBT mike is simply an earlier version of this model...

Best wishes

tac
www.ovgrs.org

Quote from: ryeguyisme on August 09, 2007, 09:04:10 PMwrong, Chine has undoubtedly the largest amount of "operating" steam in the world as of yet but slowly but surely they are dwindling in numbers

Dear Mr ryeguyisme - Please read what I wrote - 'preserved, active and operational steam locomotives'.

This is a fact.  China does NOT have over 2400 such locomotives.  We do.

We also have over 80 preserved lines, standard gauge and narrow gauge, on which they operate.

tac
www.ovgrs.org

Well, my pal in Portland and I have ordered one each from the new run of Sunset - different versions with open and closed cabs.  I already have the open cab version.

The maker is Sunset Models, the price is around $600 or so, for a brass + DCC-ready, sound-equipped S2...coming toward the end of the year...I can wait.   

By the way, the old boxy GN electrics in H0 were made by Max Grey, and often appear on e-bay - there was a Y there last week for around $700 or so.

Test to all

tac
www.ovgrs.org

Dear Bach-Man - a few of us over on THIS side would like to see the Portland MAX.....

Just a thort.

Best wishes

tac
www.ovgrs.org

Quote from: Atlantic Central on August 06, 2007, 11:26:41 PM
The 4-4-2 "Atlantic" got its name from the Atlantic Coast Line, the first railroad to use this wheel arangement extensively (18950 and deminstrate its high speed capabilities.
And, it is widely held the "Pacific" got its name because it is a "bigger" loco built on the same design principals as the Atlantic.
Sheldon

Thanks, Sheldon, for that info - I guess that over here we copied your names for our similar type of locomotives.

tac
www.ovgrs.org

Huh, what did I say?  Were you offended there by the suggestion that the USA could have made use of the Beyer-Garratt format but went another way?

I sincerely beg your pardon, Sir, and in future will keep my opinions, shared at the time by the former USRA, BTW, to myself.

Most those of us who are not American have never had any doubt of the industrial and engineering might of the USA - its gigantic locomotives in particular - we really do not need a reminder of the general superiority of everything American over the rest of the world's pathetic and backward technology, but pointing out that 'Mallard' needed repairs after its world-record-breaking run was a pretty cheap shot.  Remember that NOBODY on earth claims to have gone faster by steam traction since that date in 1938.

The contest between 'Mallard' and 'The Burlington Zephyr' never happened.

Live with it.

tac
www.ovgrs.org

Dear Mr SteamGene: you wrote - 'I was taught some French in grade school, in high school, and in college. The way I was taught was that [Americanized or not (or at least so my French College Professor said)] et in French always made an "a" sound. Now what the plural of that sound is , I'm not sure. It may have been "ays"., or even " ies".'

My family and I, like many with Canadian and French connections, are French speakers.  Some of us speak more than one other language - as a university lecturer and consultant, I speak six languages apart from English, in any case, and I'm now seriously working on Japanese - I work in Tokyo for much of the year.  All pales into total insignificance when I think about the wife of a cousin - she is a First Nation interpreter specialising in ALL the algonquian languages - and is fluent in Inuit as well...

Anyhow - the pronunciation of the French name' Mallet' is 'Mallay'.  The plural of his name would sound exactly the same.  In French nobody would use his name in the way we do in English - they would say 'Les locomotifs type Mallet...'

He was not French, BTW, but Swiss - Jules T. Anatole Mallet (23 May 1837 - 10 October 1919).  He was the inventor of the first successful compound system for a railway steam locomotive, introducing in 1876 a series of small 2-cylinder compound 0-4-2 tanks for the Bayonne-Anglet-Biarritz Railway in France.  This arrangement became known as the Mallet locomotive.

'Tac: I always thought that the Beyer-Garratts were made in Africa or Australia. I know (having seen pictures of a Beyer-Garatt)  that they ran in Australia and Rhodesia or Zambia. Quite an impressive looking locomotive ( I think).'

Beyer-Garrat locomotives were a completely British invention and develpment, taking the name from the Beyer-Peacock locomotive works and the designer, Herbert William Garratt, a British locomotive engineer who after a career with British colonial railways was for some time the New South Wales Railways' Inspecting Engineer based in London. He first applied for a patent on the idea in 1907, after observing articulated gun carriages.

On of the original K1 garratts, the first ever built for the Tasmanian State Railways, is in service here in North Wales on the Welsh Highland Railway.
Read all about it on the excellent Wikipedia site, some of which I provided, BTW, and see it in action on Youtube.....     

Later on, big Garratts were built for the Algerian State Railways by the French government railway workshops, as well as those built in Britain, France, Spain, Germany, Italy, Belgium, South Africa, Brazil, and Australia.

Sadly, the development of the Mallet-type articulated loco in the USA took place at the same time as the developing Garratt, so you missed out making use of a far superior design.  On entering a curve from the tangent, the boiler of a Big Boy/Challenger/Allegheny tranfers outside the line of the track, putting undue stress on the outside rails.  with a garrat design, ALL the weight of the boiler remains within the curve, sharing the load almost equally on both lines.

Bearing in mind that with very few exceptions, the Garratts were running on less than standard gauge - 3ft 6in and metre gauge for the most part - they were gigantic locomotives by anybody's standards - the NSW 4-8-4+4-8-4s must have been an impressive sight with their 150 car drags....

Best wishes

tac
www.ovgrs.org

PS - every steam locomotive DOES have its own personality - that is a fact.  All of mine do, fer shure.  

Quote from: ATSF5700BOB on August 03, 2007, 08:31:52 PMTac: Thank you for the explanations you furnished on why steam locomotives are named the way they are in Great Britain. One other question I have: In Great Britain, wasn't there also a tank locomotive called a Pannier (spelling?) ?

Afternoon, Bob.  You have the spelling correct, Sir.  Here in UK the GWR [Great Western Railway] has a class of small tank 0-6-0 locomotive, nicknamed 'Pannier' because of the side tanks that 'hung' on the boiler like pannier bags, but square...

As I said, many locos here were named after their designer, like the Peckett and the Fairlie and Beyer-Garratt.  Some even doubled up on names, like the  Gresley and Stanier Pacifics and so on.  The CME's of the various pre-nationalisation railways were VERY much individuals with very strong ideas about locomotive design.  If you want to learn more then getting any of the many thousands of books on the various railways of the UK before 1948 would be a good read - I just googled UK railways and got over 890,000 hits!

tac
www.ovgrs.org

Quote from: foureyes on August 03, 2007, 07:41:16 PMThere is nothing wrong with track power and aluminum.  I can't figure out why -- with so many experts around -- everyone seems to miss the fact that aluminum is the second best conductor of electricity after ... copper!

That's why cross-country transmission lines use aluminium wires...

tac
www.ovgrs.org

Quote from: dieseldan on June 30, 2007, 01:28:18 PMHas anyone "torture tested" any of the Bachmann Spectrum line?

At the prices WE have to pay here in UK, we don't torture ANY of our LS trains.

The opening price of almost $900 for the Connie ensures that they get looked after pretty well...

tac
www.ovgrs.org

Dear Mr Gene - you wrote - 'A Hudson and a Baltic are both 4-6-4s'. 

Yes, thank you, I know that, but I live in the UK where we do not have Hudsons.  The name 'Baltic' was only applied to TANK locomotives, as we never had a 4-6-4 locomotive with a tender in UK.

There is no reason why the Atlantic type loco should be so named here in UK. None of the lines that had this type of loco had any connection with the Atlantic.

The same goes for the Pacific, and we have a large number of them still in steam...in fact, the UK has more preserved, active and operational steam locomotives of all types than any other country in the world.

tac
www.ovgrs.org

Dear Mr Gene - you wrote - 'A Hudson and a Baltic are both 4-6-4s'. 

Yes, thank you, I know that, but I live in the UK where we do not have Hudsons.  The name 'Baltic' was only applied to TANK locomotives, as we never had a 4-6-4 locomotive with a tender in UK.

There is no reason why the Atlantic type loco should be so named here in UK. None of the lines that had this type of loco had any connection with the Atlantic.

The same goes for the Pacific, and we have a large number of them still in steam...in fact, the UK has more preserved, active and operational steam locomotives of all types than any other country in the world.

tac
www.ovgrs.org