4-4-0 Jupiter Wild West Style Steam Loco

Funny story, Jupiter actually wasn't meant to be the engine representing the Central Pacific an the Golden Spike ceremony. What actually happened was that the CP director's train was hit by a log that had rolled down a cliff and damaged, so they flagged down the next train to come along, hauled by Jupiter, and the rest is history.

There is a very interesting reason for the way the tender is proportioned and the 'coal' is heaped the way it is. Quite simply this locomotive has a very odd design, the motor is actually a ringfield type and is mounted in the tender, but then it drives the loco wheels via a driveshaft.

I have to say this is the very first time I've ever seen this arrangement, I've seen loco's with the motor in the body driving the main wheels, I've seen them with the ringfield type motors in the tender and driving the tender wheels. I've even on some diesels seen a centrally mounted motor driving both bogies through driveshafts and gearboxes. But never this arrangement.

Here's a (not that good) picture of the maintenance leaflet that comes with the loco to illustrate what I mean;

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That’s really cool! I didn’t realize that Airfix was still in the railroad business at that point. For that matter, I always presumed that they sold static kits of railroad subjects rather than powered models.

Interesting too that it’s the classic “American” wheel arrangement and apparently based on a US prototype since I had supposed that most 1/76 scale engines would be British.

Airfix were in the market for quite some time it appears, although this one was a bit of an oddity and maybe why it was manufactured by Bachmann for them as most of their offerings seem to have been British outline designs such as the castle class and other larger loco's along with some tank designs like the 14xx class (aka Oliver). They also had a good range of coaches and wagons available, some of them very highly detailed for the era produced.

But as you quite rightly state they also had a good healthy range of railroad plastic model kits available of loco's, rolling stock and trackside buildings and accessories. But of course in the 70-90s they were probably one of the biggest if not the biggest plastic kit makers in the UK. These days they are just another arm of the Hornby empire...

[Super]

LOL, well looking at those instructions gives a big headache

Thats a very interesting story about the Golden Spike Ceremony, Chrizzly, this old dude is learning a lot.