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Introduction.....
Since we Muffins are coming into the hobby from HO, or as Mrs. Muffin calls
it "N-O," 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.
Mrs. Muffin and 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.
Our collection concentrates around this late steam - early diesel era,
therefore we have lots of 40' freight equipment and Madison, or Heavyweight,
passenger car sets.
We also have been able to collect and enjoy about 20 of the currently offered
steam engine models by both Lionel and Mike's Train House.
We hope you enjoy this short summary of our collection - thanks for looking!
Our collection displayed in the new house....
Moving into the new house, we pulled everything that we had in storage and
loaded it in the basement. With hired help of the high school football player
variety, we assembled a slide through the basement windows and slid all of the
cases of trains into the basement. With piles everywhere, building the layout
has been a constant process of moving around piles of boxes. We built all of the
shelves we had room for in the train room, then at the bottom of the basement
steps. Finally Mrs Muffin suggested that the Mr could display a few trains in
her soon-to-be equipped "exercise" room. Say no more - construction
commenced...... Here are links to the photos of the results:
At the foot of
the stairs
Entering the Exercise Room
The
passenger train wall
36'
Reefers and Milk Cars
The other wall of assorted rolling stock
Hoppers and Reefers in the train room
40' Reefers and Box Cars
Our Collection Summary - Updated March 2010
- Atlas O Reefers
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From my understanding, 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 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, Mrs. Muffin and 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 have 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 and as of this point and time we have at least one of every design of the
36' reefers that have been issued - 126 in total. While we haven't succeeded
in recollecting all of the 40' reefers again, we do have over 166 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 Reefers
and we have been able to collect them as they have been released. The latest run includes Lehigh Valley lettered cars and we are really excited to get
those.
- Steamers
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As we described in our history, Mrs. Muffin was 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. Mrs. Muffin's hands down favorites in our collection are the steam
engines. Actually, if she had her way, all we would have would be steamer
after steamer running around the track without a hopper car or passenger car
to slow things down.
To date, we have 55 steamers from all four O Gauge manufacturers - the 3rd Rail Division of Sunset
Models; Lionel; Mike's Train
House (MTH) and Weaver Models. All of them have command control capabilities, so we can run them
with other engines on the same track.
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." Mrs. Muffin bought me Lionel's Hiawatha
Atlantic for our anniversary - now that's a day to celebrate!
We also have MTH's Premier Triplex
in Virginian and both Erie's; the Western Maryland Challenger; 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 and Pittsburgh and
Lake Erie livery. MTH released in the Fall of 2009 5 different versions of
the NYC Mohawk. Between Mrs. Muffin and Jimmy of the Homer City Poor House,
I ended up with 4 of them. Not bad since they were all sold out and I failed
to preorder one!
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. Mrs. Muffin bought me the B&O Q4b with that fabulous tender for our
anniversary - a very nice Muffin!
In Weaver, we have a pair of the NKP Hudson's; a Milwaukee F6a and the
Lehigh Valley John Wilke's.
- Diesels
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I don't understand how, but as we have been concentrating on
acquiring steamers, we still managed to add about 145 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.
We have quite a collection of electric engines from the Pennsylvania
GG-1's in at least 5 different liveries, to the large New Haven EF3b and
Milwaukee Little Joe's to the Milwaukee EP units.
- 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 Dreyfuss streamlined
passenger cars and the recently released NYC Empire State Express sets. From
our inventory, we are approaching 70 sets of
passenger cars - I need to sell some of these - what were we thinking!
- Other Rollingstock
- 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 160 - plus over 40 of the Lionel milk cars. In total, we
have nearly 800 pieces of Atlas O rolling stock and over 100 cabeese. Got to
have cabeese.
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