S. Berliner, III's Z-Scale (1:220) Model Railroad Page,
For modelers, the BERLINERWERKE (HO) Story, the story of the HO pike and Horsehoe Curve.
The full prototype Horseshoe Curve story will appear shortly.
The Z-scale Berlinerwerke-Z Saga is on a separate page.
My own LIRR pages may be of interest, as well (the Pennsy owned the LIRR from 1904 to 1966, having bought it out to gain access to Sunnyside Yard for Pennsylvania Station, and see also the Steinway System).
Visit these courtesy and official home pages:
Long Island Rail Road Historical Society
Long Island Sunrise - Trail Chapter
(National Railway Historical Society)
Sunrise Trail Division
(Northeastern Region)
(National Model Railroad Association)
(all new links)
* - If you are a Pennsy fan (how can anyone NOT be?), there are endless sites to surf, some of which are listed at PRR Links; however, for me, the première site must always be that of the
The PRRT&HS Philadelphia Chapter runs a fantastic PRR Discussion Forum.
[Fans of Pennsy relative NYNH&HRR will be pleased to hear that the New Haven Railroad Historical and Technical Association, Inc. (NHRHTA) now has "THE NHRHTA NEW HAVEN RAILROAD FORUM"
(their site is wholly framed, meaning no separate direct URL, so you must go to the right-hand frame
and click on the link down near the bottom of the frame)
.]
One site that really got me, however, is Rob Schoenberg's, on which he has a PRR station sign maker, which allows you to assemble a Pennsy-style station sign in color, letter by letter. I'm trying to go Rob one better by adding a space, a hyphen, and an apostrophe. He has since superimposed a keystone outline (ya gotta have a keystone to make it a REAL make-believe Pennsy station sign!).
Rob also has on his site most of the PRR Equipment Diagrams! These are detailed below under PRR Links.
Also, for Pennsy fans with good imaginations (or strong stomachs), ya gotta see my Berlinerwerke Apocrypha page and its continuation page 2!
The rest of the links are at PRR Links.
B60A End-Loading Baggage Cars - This is posted as
a service to the PRRT&HS; "diesell48" had a photo of a PRR B60A
end-loading baggage car and I offered to scan and post it if he sent it to me,
so here it, #6262, is:
(12 Sep 2005 scan of photo from "diesell48" - all rights reserved)
[Thumbnailed image, click on picture for very-much-larger (1Mb) image]
The hand-writing below the image indicates that car numbers "6151, 6157-6158,
6261-6263, 7312, 7315, 7318, 7319, 7322" were assigned to this class, for 11
cars. "diesell48" was responding to a thread on the
Modeling Forum about "PRR B60 baggage cars"; he'd like to know about
the travels of the battery box and possibly some other underbody appliances
from one version to the next and hopes that someone out there in Pennsyland
can use the number (6262) to tell us just what variant this is.
The funny thing (for me) is that my copy of the Oct 2005 issue of RMC came in
the same post and there, on page 114, is Bethlehem Car Works' HO model of
the very same car!
Cary Locomotive Works
(continued from pre-Bowser on
PRR page 0)
Elsewhere on these pages, especially under
PRR Modeling on PRR continuation page 0, I give some background about
Cary Locomotive Works, now absorbed into Bowser (see
below). Bowser's history relates that, because of health problems, Don
and Dolores Stromberg decided to offer their business for sale and the
Englishes felt it would fit right in with their production. All the small
parts, bodies and boilers (except the N1) are available.
Here's a bit more Cary nostalgia for you Pennsy modleres and Cary fans;
scrounging around in my cellar for something unrelated, I ran across this box
for my long-since kit-botched N1 boiler (part of my secret project that has
been languishing lo these many moons):
(09 May 05 photos by and © 2005 S. Berliner, III - all rights reserved)
The faded postmark appears to be "FEB 9, 78". Note that Don used the
incorrect hyphen in the model number, "N-1" instead of "N1", as
Bowser does to this day.
Bowser Manufacturing, Incorporated, and Lew English
Oh, this is simply inexcusable! In further featuring the old Cary
line (above), I realized that in all these years I gave no specifics about
Bowser! Once
upon a time (on 01 May 1961, to be exact), Lew (Lewis K.) and Shirlee English
had the bad judgement to purchase Bowser Manufacturing and
they've been stuck with us model RR nuts ever since! Bowser had been
founded in 1946 in Redlands, California, by Bill Bowser, and was then acquired by
Don Acheson around 1955. Lew and Shirlee moved Bowser from
Redlands to their basement in Muncy, Pennsylvania, but there were no Pennsy
locos in the line; however, the Penn Line Company, which first
advertised in Jun 1947, was sold at bankruptcy and Lew and Shirlee purchased
the tooling and inventory for their E6, H9, I1, K4, L1, and T1. With the
whole English family working part-time on them, they were still unable to get
them all ready at once and so, in 1965, decided to work full time on Bowser
and moved to Montoursville, Pennsylvania, near Williamsport. Then Felix
Bass offered them the Pennsylvania Scale Models line of trolleys and they
snapped it up. When Pittman advised they wanted out of the hobby
motor business and offered Bowser the tooling for their line of electric motors,
the Englishes jumped at the chance to make the popular and powerful DC-71
motor (and others). Next, they acquired Selley Finishing Touches
and the tooling for some of the Varney steam locomotives and the Penn Line
GG1 (and much of the Aero Train).
The PRR M1 and M1a were introduced late in 1986. The E6, G5, H9, I1,
K4, and L1 were all converted from lead to zinc. The PRR A5 was
introduced in Feb 1992. In Jun 1985, they purchased Cal Scale from
John Anderson and Harry Parker of Fresno, California, and moved it to
Montoursville. Bowser is in full production with this line of lost-wax
brass castings and are adding diesel detailing parts to the Cal Scale line.
Then, in 1987, they adapted their mechanism kit to the Bachmann/Lionel PRR
K4. In May 1988, Cary Locomotive Works came aboard (see above).
In 1990, Bowser purchased Menzies from the D.J. Baker Co and then, in 1991,
purchased Arbor Models. In Feb 1992, they finished the dummy Aero
Train and bought the Delaware Valley Car Company (N scale freight cars) in
Jul 1999. Bowser Manufacturing acquired Stewart Hobbies in Oct 2004
from Steve Stewart, one of the founders.
Bowser's Internet web site
features an on-line search of over 80,000 Bowser part numbers and the
capability to show nearly all the parts they sell and has an inventory of well
over a thousand photographs, drawings, documents and images.
Bowser sells plastic models and retail through their full-line hobby shop,
English`s Model Railroad Supply, in the same facility. Bowser's
full company history from 1946 to the present can be seen on their
Website.
The preceding history was liberally extracted from Bowser's own history.
Railroaders Memorial Museum
Altoona, Pennsylvania, 10 Jul 2005
On my way home from a drive to Texas and Ohio, I stopped at the Railroaders
Memorial Museum in Altoona on 10 Jul 2005, and took a mess (literally) of photos
under a broiling sun while wearing sunglasses over my regular thick lenses and using
my ancient Olympus XA 35mm pocket camera (NOT an SLR!). The
photos ended up a bad combination of extreme brightness and deep shadow AND
were ill-framed, but here's the lot; I have cropped away unneeded space and
enhanced them to try to show as much detail as possible, but balancing the sunlight
and shadow is well nigh impossible -
First, I had to get more film and the drugstore that was open on a Sunday and
carried film (that's getting hard to come by) was directly opposite the Altoona
transfer table; naturally, I misframed and caught the Cyclone fencing:
(10 Jul 2005 photos by and © 2005 S. Berliner, III - all rights reserved)
[Thumbnailed images, click on pictures for larger images]
Then, at the parking lot, there was this old scale test car:
I toured the museum building first and spotted this old tender parked at the
northwest corner (from the stairwell):
Once outside in the yard, I wandered around (these are NOT in any particular time
sequence); there was a nice Industrial Brownhoist crane, decorated for Conrail,
with a nifty old boom car (this is a montage of two pictures):
I had to brighten the picture so much to show any details of the black crane
that here is the picture of the boom car by itself, unaltered:
They have a really-tiny Brookville industrial switcher and there was massive GG1
#4913 just beyond and the temptation to compare the two was irresistible:
#4913 is suffering from too much exposure:
Lastly, I took a whole slew of photos of the PRR's gigantic #470245 Class FD2
Depressed-Center Flat Car, the 123' 3" long Queen Mary (Altoona, Apr 52); I have her
in brass and love her and her four huge
4F5T1 trucks salvaged from J1 tenders, arranged under two span bolsters to give her
a conservative 250-ton capacity. First, from the second floor of the museum:
Whadda monster! Unfortunately, her vast deck had been converted to a stage,
with steel tube arches over it:
Her immensity dwindles a bit when viewed from off her quarter:
End on, it's difficult to sense her enormous length:
(10 Jul 2005 photos by and © 2005 S. Berliner, III - all rights reserved)
[Thumbnailed images, click on pictures for larger images]
There's a great shot of the Queen Mary when new on pp. 14-15 of the PRRT&HS
Summer 1996 issue of THE KEYSTONE and two in color on page 35
(as green PC #766163, 1976) and in Pennsy Tuscan (1973) on page 36 in Henry
Maywald's Classic Freight Cars - the Series, Vol. 6, Loaded Flats and Gondolas.
More to follow.
Because of page size limitations, the main page PRR Page
is now continued on Continuation Page 1, et seq.
THUMBS UP!
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S. Berliner, III
To contact S. Berliner, III, please click here.
© Copyright S. Berliner, III - 2005,
2006
- All rights reserved.
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