Another new addition to my ever growing US Civil War era rolling stock. This big boy(for its time) was made by Atlas and Micro-Ace. I believe the model itself was designed by Micro-Ace and then imported to the states by Atlas, But don't quote me on that!
This particular one I bought unpainted at the same time I bought the C56 for the same price no less. I decided on painting it for the Baltimore Ohio Railroad in freight colors. I took a few liberties with painting as well as naming(a common thing for locos at the time) because even though I wanted to do the B&O, I...well, I didn't like their 'rules' so to speak.
I did some research and found that the B&O was one of the few railroads at the time who followed a uniform paint scheme for passenger and freight locomotives. It was also common for railroads in the early and mid 19th century to name locomotives in a similar manner to ships, but the B&O put an end to that pretty early (around 1850ish) and opted to use numbers because of how many engines they were acquiring. I decided that it needed a name anyways, and I changed up the tender lettering a bit too. Because oh well...
I decided to name it 'Firefly'
As far as running goes, its actually quite amazing given the whole size of the thing. For pickup its got 4 of the drivers pulling power, the rear set being equipped with traction tires and being geared. The tender also provides pickup from all 4 axles and has a nice heft to it to keep contact with the rails. For power we have a teeny tiny 5 pole motor squeezed into the cab, so unlike other smaller engines (most notably the bachmann 4-4-0) there is no driveshaft coming out of the tender.
There also is a working directional headlight with is pretty amazing that Micro-Ace/Atlas managed to fit that stupid thing in there. Its not very bright but hey, its there! Also, a thing to note, the tender boogies are actually fixed into place. Don't be alarmed as the tender is so short, that this causes no problems taking turns and the engine will happily make a 9.75 radius curve. This is also actually something even the the prototype had believe it or not!
sexy rear shot! $5 if you can guess what kind of coupler that is
Out of the box it comes equipped with a pretty standard MT knuckle, but I swapped that out for something else.
One thing to note though, is that this engine, just like the C56 needed to be drowned in oil to get it to work smooth. It was very dry and ran like poop as a result of that. So if you ever get one make sure you lube literally everything that moves. It will increase performance by 100%. This makes 2/2 Micro-Ace locos that came un-oiled so it may be a thing with them, but I'm not certain for sure yet.
Back to the couplers, Micro Trains makes a lot of CWE(civil war era) stuff and as such offers link and pin type couplers for older era trains. Since I started to grow my CWE fleet I though I would try them out. They couple very close and actually look pretty good. almost unnoticeable unless you point them out. they kinda snap into the supplied coupler boxes where you fit a little pin into a hole. though you can get away without using the pin, it actually expands the thin plastic that the link snaps to and creates a stronger hold. pretty reliable and since they don't easily come apart, they make derailments pretty interesting!
Not too bad...
The picture to the left is what they actually look like out of the box. from left to right: the draft box, the link itself, and the pins. the picture above is how it all goes together. Only thing I don't like about them is that they are very unforgiving of up and down movement, and I discovered that some of my cars are actually slightly too high and physically lifted the Moguls tender off the track making pickup an issue. But over all not bad and a neat accessory for older era stock. Though on a side note, I bet it could work really well with some European stuff too. Would definitely look better than those boxy rapidos!
So yea, I really like this thing a lot. And once you lube it up it runs near flawless. I would love to get more but they are kinda rare, but for those of you who model CWE railroads in N scale this thing is a definite to add some heavy freight to your roster!
From front to back: 2-6-0 'Firefly', 4-4-0 'William Mason', 4-4-0 'Alas', 4-4-0 CP 'Jupiter'
