Art Deco–
Never too late to live a dream by Keith Wills
O
ne could say our hobby has its share of modelers charmed by the allure of Art Deco proto-
types, some from the dark days of the 1930’s Depression and wanting minia- tures of them. We have examined Art Deco tinplate elsewhere, when children coveted the latest streamlined trains making headlines and movie news- reels.
(Remember them?). American
wider than NMRA standards, as it was designed to run on Lionel’s T-rail and tubular 072 track.
Lionel,
Flyer, Marx and Hafner were quite happy to turn them out by the hundreds or thousands to satisfy demand. They were “now,” immediate. Scale modelers, however, had to wait until after World War II before accept- able models arrived, and then mostly as Asian brass. Let’s start with an ear- ly example, the locomotive for the Mil- waukee Road’s Hiawatha. The Hiawatha had a handsome Otto
Kuhler-designed shovel-nose stream- lined cowling over a large 4-4-2 Atlantic engineered for fleet running between Chicago and the Twin Cities at speeds of 100 to 120 miles per hour. The first, Nos. 1 and 2, were out-shopped in 1935, with Nos. 3 and 4 arriving in 1936 and 1937. They were retired between 1949 and 1951. Kuhler’s color scheme was a restrained orange and light gray with a horizontal maroon stripe and touches of black. Lionel introduced a ¹⁷/₆₄″ semi- scale version in 1935 with tinplate com- promises: deeper flanges and treads
1950 PENN LINE T-1 WITH PROTOTYPE
The stamped tender had six-wheel, shiny-journal box coupler trucks. Yes, it was scale of a sort, pretty good for the era, and often seen on home and club layouts either with Lionel’s inappropri- ate M-10000 coaches or Walthers’s cor- rect ¹/₄″ scale consist, including the fa- mous (or infamous)
“beaver tail”
observation car. It would take until the 1980’s for Overland Models to intro- duce a true O scale Hiawatha, an Ajin Precision import from Korea. Overland Models ran a full page ad with a side elevation of the locomotive and close up detail shots illustrating how far Asian brass had come. Photos of the open smoke box and coupler doors, ten-
GEM-OLYMPIA MODELS, S-1 1965
der hatches, interior cab details and brake rigging between the locomotive and tender are quite remarkable. There is no indication of its length but Lionel’s was 23³/₈″. From 1935 until 1941 O scale operators had nothing but Lionel’s. I can’t help but wonder if a buyer of the brass version finally satis- fied unfulfilled yearnings he had for the Lionel never received at Christmas decades earlier. Pennsylvania’s 1939 S-1, 6-4+4-6 Du-
plex was a one-of-a-kind prototype on display at the 1939-1940 New York World’s Fair where it exhibited its ki- netic power under steam on rollers for visitors to see. It was sleek and looked fast just standing there. It was also too
88
MAY 2013
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100