Overland Limited

[Sandpatch1]

I was looking around the Bachmann Parts website, and I saw "Canadian Overland" labeled on some of the parts, Including a Canadian National tender, and I was wondering, what is the Canadian Overland, is it a new Bachmann set?

[Piyer]

I suspect that there should be a slash in there "Canadian / Overland" that it refers to parts that are usable on either a Canadian National or UP Overland (scheme) 4-8-2.

[WoundedBear]

I always thought an Overland was a UP 4-10-2 loco. I have never heard of a 4-8-4 Overland in Canada.

I think Bachmann made this one up.....lol. The 4-8-4 was called a Confederation or a Niagara up here by CN and CP called them Northerns, but I may be wrong.

Roger.....care to chime in?

Sid

[ACY]

They are referring to parts that work for either the Union Pacific 4-8-4 included in the Overland Limited set or for the Canadian National 4-8-4 seen above. Some parts also work in the NYC Niagara or Santa Fe Northern and are labeled accordingly.

[rogertra]

Other than it's a steam locomotive, other than it's a 4-8-4 (?), it's nothing like a CNR steam locomotive, not even the tender looks Canadian.  It's just some US (AT&SF ?) locomotive that Bachmann have lettered CNR so as to sell it to the uniformed toy train market.  "Modellers" will know the difference.

The first 4-8-4 in Canada, the 1927 built No. 6100 was named "Confederation" hence the initial wheel arrangement name, which never stuck.  "Northern" being the most common name for a 4-8-4.

There were only two Canadian Pacific 4-8-4s but CNR owned 160, more 4-8-4s than any other railway/railroad in North America.  Add these 160 to the CNR subsidiary GTW's 43 made a total of 203.  And not one of them looked like the model shown in the photos.  

Cheers

Roger T.

 

[Len]

Model trains have been sold in incorrect, and nonexistent, paint schemes since the hobby started "back when". And I'm old enough to remember when there were no "Ready to Run" models in HO. It's how the manufacturers can sell enough units to stay in business.

My pet peeve is all the EMD F-3 and F-7 diesels, which the New Haven never owned, painted up in the New Haven 'McGinnis' scheme. It's supposed to be a "close enough" representation of the hybrid diesel/3rd rail electric FL-9, but they're not even close.

Modifying and/or repainting to get accurate models has always been, and probably always will be, a fact of life for the hobby.

Len

[ACY]

Roger, the Union Pacific version is not prototypically correct either, even the new model Bachmann is selling is incorrect.

[rogertra]

Model trains have been sold in incorrect, and nonexistent, paint schemes since the hobby started "back when". And I'm old enough to remember when there were no "Ready to Run" models in HO. It's how the manufacturers can sell enough units to stay in business.

My pet peeve is all the EMD F-3 and F-7 diesels, which the New Haven never owned, painted up in the New Haven 'McGinnis' scheme. It's supposed to be a "close enough" representation of the hybrid diesel/3rd rail electric FL-9, but they're not even close.

Modifying and/or repainting to get accurate models has always been, and probably always will be, a fact of life for the hobby.

Len

When I started modelling in the UK, many years ago, and even nowadays, this painting of locos and rolling stock in colours they never carried was unknown.  There was no such thing an outside manufacturer, like EMD/GMD, Alco/MLW, Baldwin/CLC that build their own designs and then sold them to the railways.  All the UK railway companies designed their own locos and rolling stock and generally built them all in their own shops.  Ditto for freight cars and passenger cars.  All built in the railway's own shops to their own designs.  Therefore, no typical boxcar that could be painted in a dozen or more railroad colours.  You just don't paint and letter a GWR covered van in the colours of the SR, or LNER or LMS, it just won't sell.  Ditto for passenger cars.

Then I came to Canada and found generic boxcars or cabooses or passenger cars painted in dozens of lettering schemes for railroads that never even owned a car like the one modelled.  Then there were locomotives painted in CNR or CPR colours that were just the American version and not the Canadian version.  Canadian diesels in most cases, differer in details and body styles from the American version.  You can tell at a glance an American GP7 and a Canadian GP7 and especially Canadian MLW units from American Alco units.  For Canadian steam, it was even worst.  Not a single accurate Canadian steam loco in rtr plastic, which still holds true today.  All were like the photo we are discussing.  Just an American loco incorrectly lettered for the CNR or CPR.

At least for diesels and to some extent rolling stock that is finally changing.  We can finally get reasonably accurate Canadian diesels from the likes of Athearn and others and very accurate diesels and passenger cars from Rapido.

20 plus years ago when I started my Great Eastern Railway, it was all American locos and rolling stock incorrectly painted Canadian colours and, as mentioned above and still sadly today, no rtr, Spectrum quality Canadian steam, so I freelanced otherwise, I'd be modelling the CPR in 1958 or, if only accurate Canadian diesels were available, the CPR in 1972.

Cheers

Roger T.

[Len]

Sometimes I forget this is an international forum. I was speaking of my experience, from "back when" until now, here in the USofA.

Len