Matching Locomotives


F

flatbedcowboy

Member
So odd question..

Apparently I have a hole burning through my wallet and have been thinking about buying another steam loco. Some back ground first:

I collect mostly athearn products in a John Deere paint scheme and am building a freelanced layout (more or less collecting junk to put in my closet till I finish a basement).

Athearn released a John Deere 4-8-4 Northern a while back and Im looking at purchasing another 4-8-4 in some other paint scheme and want to try my hand at painting it to match, which would be a lot cheaper option than buying another JD one on Ebay for twice as much as it retailed for.

So here's the deal, it seems none of the ones I can afford look like the Northern I have.... Different tenders, different drive wheels, and different details and placement. So do people just buy locos because they are the same type (4-8-4) or do you buy ones that look the same with the same features or does anyone care? I just thought it would look weird having two Northerns on my roster and both look different. How did the real railroads do it?
 
If for no other reason than continuity in parts stocking, and more people being able to run them, railroads usually will have more than one engine the same. If they have more than one 4-6-0, they will try to have several in a single class.
 
flatbedcowboy said:
How did the real railroads do it?
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Seldom did the big railroads buy single locomotives unless they were some sort of specialty loco. They would buy blocks of 5, 10, 15, 20, ... or even 50. That is why when talking about a railroad they have "classes" of locomotives. Each class was usually one or two block purchases. The would be numbered for that grouping.

For modeling something like John Deere you have the additional issue that Athearn has been painting each years set differently. So even a caboose from 1989 is not going to match the one from 2005. I believe my John Deere 4-8-4 is based on a Union Pacific FEF-3 class. I also believe they have only run the 4-8-4 in JD colors once, so the UP model would be the one to get in order to match the "look" of a real railroads class of locos.
 
That would be a nice loco to paint cheap enough so if I screw up it won't be like a 400 buck mistake!

So as a model railroader does everyone stay with the prototype when building a roster? By purchasing engines that are all the same or do people just collect based on type?
 
I personally buy 2 types of locomotives, one that the RR I'm using as a prototype had. The second type of loco I buy is simply one that I like, that wasn't on my RR's roster at all.
 
Unless you are planning to double-head the two locomotives, it isn't really necessary that they match exactly. Depending on the era, it might be possible that the prototype purchased or leased a different type of loco of similar wheel arrangement to supplement their own motive power. This was particularly true during wartime (WWII or Korea), when increased traffic created demands for motive power that simply couldn't be handled by the existing roster. Some railroads also had sub-classes of locomotives that differed somewhat as to tenders, and even valve-gear, feedwater heaters, etc.
 
As my railroad is purely fictional, I don't have the problem of matching loco's and rolling stock. I buy an engine that will firstly negotiate my 18" radius curves and secondly that I like the look of.

My G Gauge, on the other hand, is being put together as an NS Railroad, so I am trying to keep everything compatible with NS engines and rolling stock. With that being said, I am also trying to copy what I see run past us every day, and that is a pretty big mix when it comes to road names - especially where the rolling stock is concerned.
 
Piqued my interest, this thread. Went and had a Google. Couldn't find any pictures of real JD Locos, except maybe some Gensets (which seemed to be painted red). But, a lot of Athearn HO, specially train sets, Bombadier coaches even.. The few steam engines shown, including a 4-4-0 American, all looked pretty generic, so I would say, go with whatever takes your fancy. In the JD market, a custom painted engine could actually have an increased value.
 
Keep in mind that manufactures continuously, in some cases, updated their locos, so that two "matching" locos may have differences if one was a later model.
 
Thanks for the replies everyone!

OldGuyHO said:
Keep in mind that manufactures continuously, in some cases, updated their locos, so that two "matching" locos may have differences if one was a later model.
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Im still a little on the fence about the direction to take but Im leaning towards using this as my excuse.... I could buy a batch of cheaper matching models and then run the more expensive ones as "updates". OR I could just try and buy 1 or 2 variants so that the whole roster doesn't look like a patchwork quilt. Big difference in price between a Bachmann 4-8-4 and an Athearn Genesis 4-8-4

tootnkumin said:
Piqued my interest, this thread. Went and had a Google. Couldn't find any pictures of real JD Locos, except maybe some Gensets (which seemed to be painted red). But, a lot of Athearn HO, specially train sets, Bombadier coaches even.. The few steam engines shown, including a 4-4-0 American, all looked pretty generic, so I would say, go with whatever takes your fancy. In the JD market, a custom painted engine could actually have an increased value.
Click to expand...

Its pretty different unless you specifically look for them then you might not know that they existed. Athearn makes most the HO and N scale stuff while Walthers makes the O scale items. They started making sets in 1998 I believe and stopped somewhere around 2012. Besides sets Athearn made individual locos (some Athearn Genesis series), cars, scenery, buildings, and of course tractors all in the John Deere paint scheme. The 4-4-0 American set has eluded me for several years now, and the last set I saw the guy wanted $300+ for it. I try to budget $100-$150 a set depending on rarity (Im definitely cheap).
 
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