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Introduction.....
Since we Muffins entered the hobby from HO, we are most interested in the scale sized models, running on three rail track. Thus
we're often referred to as "Hi-Railers." By scale, in O Gauge, the models are
1/48th scale - or 1 inch equals 4 feet.
Generally, we prefer models of equipment that ran during the height of
railroading from before to just after World War II. This era includes large
steam engines and the early diesel engines. There were lots of railroads in
existence, as the major rail consolidations had not yet taken place, so there
were plenty of paint schemes to model. Passenger equipment was also still
in use. As our collection concentrates around this late steam - early diesel era,
we have lots of 40' freight equipment and Madison, or Heavyweight,
passenger car sets.
I also concentrate on Eastern Roads - we have to draw
the line someplace! So if it ran in the east, maybe even all the way to Chicago
- we're probably interested in it.
We also have been able to collect and enjoy nearly 100 of the recently offered
steam engine models by 3rd Rail, Lionel, Mike's Train House and Weaver Models.
In addition to the steam engines, our collection inckudes over 250 diesel and electric engines, mostly from Atlas O and MTH, with a few from Lionel and 3rd Rail.
We hope you enjoy this short summary of our collection - thanks for looking!
Our Collection Summary
- Atlas O Reefers (Click the link
for a listing of our reefers and several photographs)
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The Atlas Model Railroad Company has offered O
gauge scale rolling stock for many years. Sometime around the end of the
1990's, Atlas reorganized this effort, started Atlas O LLC, and began
offering highly detailed O Gauge rolling stock in both 3 rail, for us
hi-railers, and 2 rail versions. In May, 2000 they began to offer their
models of the 40' woodsided billboard refrigerated box cars - in short - "reefers". These models were
representative of the old woodsided refrigerator cars that were used across
the US for transporting perishable merchandise, including meats, cheeses and
beer. Since their introduction, I have worked diligently to
build a complete collection of these reefers and had at least one model of
each design. To our knowledge, we had one of the few
collections in the country that included all of the reefer designs.
In early 2003, just as we were reaching the completion of our Atlas O
reefer collection, Atlas announced a new series of reefers in the 36'
length. These 36' reefers predated the 40's as they were in use in the late
1800's. Ouch. Unfortunately, the 36' reefers are as wonderful as the 40's -
so we have been collecting them too, and are adding pictures of those
reefers to our website as we acquire them.
A couple years back, we had three "pastries" in college at the same time
so we funded a year of college for each through selling our entire
collection of 40' reefers. We kept all of the 36' reefers and have added to
it. At this point in time, we have at least one of every design of the 36'
reefers that have been issued - 128 in total. While we haven't succeeded in
recollecting all of the 40' reefers again, we do have over 320 40'
Reefers with the
new issues and buying up some of the old ones that we liked when the prices
are affordable.
A couple of years ago Atlas O began offering 53'6" Wood Express Box Cars
and we have been able to collect them as they have been released. The latest
run includes Lehigh Valley lettered cars and we were really excited to get
these.
- Steamers (Click the
link for a listing of our steamers and several photographs)
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As we described earlier, we were first attracted to O gauge
as a result of seeing a demonstration of the electronics available in
today's O gauge model railroad engines. The sounds, the smoke and their
ability to move at such slow speeds make today's models the finest ever
offered.
To date, we have nearly 100 steamers from all four O Gauge manufacturers - the 3rd Rail Division of Sunset
Models; Lionel; Mike's Train
House (MTH) and Weaver Models. Almost all of them have command control capabilities, so we can run them
with other engines on the same track. I have some upgrades to do to finish
the rest.
Our collection includes many of Lionel's largest steamers, for example,
their Century Club Empire State Hudson and Niagara; the C&O 2-8-8-2 H-7; the
C&O 2-6-6-6 Allegheny and the B&O 2-8-8-4 EM-1, plus a few of their recent
Berkshires: Nickel Plate, Erie and C&O, including the Pere Marquette
Berkshire #1225 - the engine from the "Polar Express."
We also have MTH's Premier Triplex
in Virginian and both Erie's; a pair of Western Maryland Challengers; the C&O 2-10-4 Texan; C&O
0-4-0 and 0-8-0 Switchers; and the C&O 2-8-4 Kanawha plus a pair of
Greenbriers amongst others. Most recently we picked up 4 of the Premier NYC
Mohawks and a 2-8-0 Consolidation in Western Maryland, Pittsburgh and
Lake Erie and Reading liveries. MTH released in the Fall of 2009 5 different versions of
the NYC Mohawk. Between Jimmy of the Homer City Poor House,
and several friends, I ended up with 4 of them. Not bad since they were all sold out and I failed
to preorder one! (This just in - got #5 for Easter 2010!).
Here's one of the MTH Premier Mohawks:
In 3rd Rail we have a pair of Greenbriers and an Allegheny in
C&O; a pair of Empire State Hudson's and a NYC Dreyfus Hudson plus an L3b Mohawk; a PRR
T-1; the Erie 0-8-8-0 Camelback and the just released Norfolk and Western
Y6b.
In Weaver, we have a pair of the NKP Hudson's; a Milwaukee F6a; a
Milwaukee Hudson; a Milwaukee Northern S3; and the
Lehigh Valley John Wilke's. Weaver is now installing TMCC upgrades in older
conventional steamers - we need to send the John Wilke's in for that
upgrade. It is our oldest steamer having been originally issued in 1994.
Here's the Weaver Milwaukee F6a:
- Diesels (Click the
link for a listing of our diesels and several photographs)
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I don't understand how, but as we have been concentrating on
acquiring steamers, we still managed to add about 250 diesels to our roster.
The majority of the engines are from Atlas O including their Alco road switchers, RS-1's and RS-3's; EMD SW's; Alco's and Erie Built's all in
assorted eastern roads, plus several of the Trainman U-23b's. In addition, we have scale diesels from Lionel, like the
Alco S-2 in Lehigh Valley paint, their U-Boats in EL, Reading and D&H and the Century Club FM Trainmaster pair.
We also have several MTH EMD and FM ABA consists including PAs; FAs; E-6's
and E-8's. Here are a pair of Atlas U-23bs:
- Box Cabs
and Electrics (Click the link for a listing of our Box Cabs / Electrics and
several photographs)
I love the utilitarian look of box cabs, and the electrics. For a
long time, we didn't have a single model of a box cab or an electric. When MTH issued the Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) FF-2 Box Cab - that
was my undoing - love the look - like the thing was engineered quickly and
by folks with no sense of "design" - they are actually pretty ugly. MTH
issued three different numbers, and it took awhile - but we have all three.
Then come to find out that 3rd Rail also did them in brass and to date we
have located two of those models. After the FF2's we added the large EF
electrics in New Haven and Milwaukee. Later, MTH issued the P5A box cab -
like small FF-2's and we also bought one of the redesigned P5A's with the
center cab - for crew safety and a precursor of the famous PRR GG-1's.
We have quite a collection of electric engines from the Pennsylvania
GG-1's in at least 9 different liveries, to the large New Haven EF3b and
EP3's and
Milwaukee Little Joe's to the Milwaukee EP units.
Here
are links to some pictures of the boxcabs:
MTH FF-2
#7
MTH FF-2 #3
MTH P5A Box Cab
MTH
P5A with Center Cab
MTH EF in
New Haven
MTH EF in
Milwaukee
- Varnish & Streamliners
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Almost all of our passenger car sets to date have been from Mike's
Train House (MTH), in both the heavyweight or Madison variety, or the streamliners
- included the ribbed and plated cars. In addition to the MTH sets, we have
the latest Madison car sets from Lionel in C&O; B&O; NYC; and Milwaukee,
and have started to collect some Golden Gate Depot sets in C&O, Lehigh
Valley, New Haven;
Milwaukee, Erie and Lackawanna, plus all 12 of the 1938 Dreyfus streamlined
passenger cars and the recently released NYC Empire State Express sets. From
our inventory, we have over 80 sets of
passenger cars - I need to sell some of these - what were we thinking!
- Other Rollingstock
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- We have assembled here some additional rolling stock photos - cabooses
through maintenance of way pieces. We have a large collection of Atlas O
hopper cars - over 180 - plus over 40 of the Lionel milk cars. In total, we
have over 900 pieces of Atlas O rolling stock and over 100 cabeese. Got to
have cabeese.
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