To: CBQ@yahoogroups.com
From: CBQ@yahoogroups.com
Date: Sun, 4 Oct 2015 23:34:30 -0700
Subject: RE: [CBQ] Proposed but never built CB&Q steam?
Hi Rupert and list,
Good idea about the herald. One idea I had was to use a cheap Bachmann NKP 2-8-4 as painted and paint out the names on the tender with black paint and use a Burlington Route decal over the top of what had been the Nickel Plate Road lettering. The engine would be left numbered in the #700 series with the yellow factory numbering under the cab window. The NYC&StL lettering on the sand dome would be painted out as well. The rationale would be that the War Production Board diverted a couple of the 1944 Lima 2-8-4s to the CB&Q from the NKP due to a fictional need for power.
Or you could go whole hog and just make it a CB&Q 2-8-4 built by Lima. Have a drop pilot on the front, use the twin beam MARS / warning light, get rid of the number boards the NKP used and put a regular Sunbeam headlight on the front. Swap the Buckeye trucks on the tender out for Commonwealth trucks. Or completely get rid of the Lima tender and use something like a spare O5 tender from Overland Models. I think changing the tender trucks would do quite a lot to change the looks of the tender.
Another bonkers idea I had was to assume that Baldwin somehow convinced the "Q" to buy a couple of 4-10-2s when their demonstrator #60,000 was touring in the '20s or whenever). Use a cheap Union Pacific 3 cylinder 4-10-2 from LMB and get rid of the tender and substitute a spare M4a tender which I already have. The UP 4-10-2 has an extended front end so it might be somewhat feasible. A Hudson tender might also be a better tender to use or something similar to an M2a tender.
I'm just bored with the collection of steam I have. I've pretty much been able to acquire everything made that is out there (short of an Elesco FWH O1a... not willing to pay the prices they go for... the old LMBs are fine for me!). I sometimes wonder what would have happened if the "Q" had tried to build a 2-10-4 around 1940 or so. Imagine an O5 but as a 2-10-4. I'd be willing to junk a Custom Brass 4-8-4 to make something like that... put it on a Bachmann Santa Fe 2-10-4 chassis maybe. I don't know if the dimensions would work or not since the Santa Fe drivers are the same size as an O5... you'd have to add a course to the O5 boiler I bet. At some point if a ready-to-run O5 is ever made (and it could happen... Broadway or MTH has a Milwaukee Road S3 announced... of course the #261 is restored which helps that project) the values of the Custom Brass 4-8-4s will completely crash (I bought one a few years ago for something like $140 in an off the beaten path auction - not eBay in other words).
If one were to make a WW2 era 2-10-4 a better idea would probably be a C&O / PRR style 2-10-4 which was a proven design like the 2-8-4s. The Pennsy's use of the Chessie / Lima / Advisory Mechanical Committee design gives you a plausible precedent. I think the Milwaukee Road wanted FT sets but was forced into buying the S3 sets. Rio Grande had to buy UP style Challengers and they probably wanted unobtainable FT sets as well. God only knows what Pennsy wanted to buy... probably duplex drive Big Boys with pantagraphs and traction motors in the tenders and the whole thing streamlined by Raymond Lowey!!!
Anyway, just more goofy thoughts.
Mike Martin