What a better way to start my collection of Pennsy power for the Spruce St Terminal project than with a PRR T-1?
Unfortunately for the T-1's, they entered service with PRR at the same time the railroad started acquiring their fleet of EMD E-7 diesels. This meant that the T-1's were never used on the premier trains like the Broadway Limited because those trains were the first to run with the new diesel power. Pennsy management knew by 1946 that diesels were the inevitable future for the railroad, and true enough in half a dozen years the T-1's would be benched awaiting the scrap torch.
Fortunately for me, modeling the Spruce St Terminal in Columbus Ohio is a great opportunity to show off the T-1. Most T-1's were used on the Panhandle line through Columbus where they were better suited for the flatter terrain of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois.
One of the great things about being subscribed to the Model Railroader All-Time Digital Archive is being able to search every issue of MR magazine for product reviews of potential buys on Ebay or at shows.
Apparently Broadway Limited Imports has had three runs of the T-1, with the most recent being a Paragon 2 version released just in the past few years. In 2007 BLI came out with a T-1 in their "Blue Line" which were DC only (albeit DCC ready with a DCC plug) but interestingly the Blue Line models had a unique system for DC sound. This required the user to purchase a DC sound unit from BLI which was around $30 but would allow any Blue Line locomotive to run in DC mode with sound. They came with an 8-pin NMRA plug that you could plug a non-sound decoder into but would allow fully functional and programmable sound through the decoder.
The other version of the T-1 was first produced in 2004 and was a dual-mode DC/DCC model that came with a QSI Quantum DCC sound decoder. This is the version I was hunting for on Ebay thanks to a favorable Product Review article I found in the May 2004 MR. The Paragon 2 versions are still fetching close to their original MSRP of $499 on Ebay, but the 2004 QSI models are mostly in the $200-$300 range depending on condition. Blue Line T-1's can be had for under $200 but they are harder to find and are DC only anyway. I was all set to buy one of the QSI T-1's for $289 when this one popped up as a new listing in "mint" condition for $229. I couldn't click on "Buy It Now" fast enough.
So far from just opening the box I am highly impressed with the model. Builder plates are readable (with magnification or at least cheaters on...). It is heavy, the locomotive itself weighs in right at 2 lbs. The picture doesn't do it justice, it is over 16" long with tender, being a scale 122' long over the couplers. It is non-articulated as it was in real life, so to allow operation on tighter radius curves it has no flanges on the center two driver wheel sets. It does, however, come with a spare set of driver wheel sets with flanges if the user has broad enough curves and wants the flanged drivers.
Time to crank it up to see how it runs and sounds!
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| Broadway Limited Imports PRR T-1 #5528 |
Fortunately for me, modeling the Spruce St Terminal in Columbus Ohio is a great opportunity to show off the T-1. Most T-1's were used on the Panhandle line through Columbus where they were better suited for the flatter terrain of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois.
One of the great things about being subscribed to the Model Railroader All-Time Digital Archive is being able to search every issue of MR magazine for product reviews of potential buys on Ebay or at shows.
Apparently Broadway Limited Imports has had three runs of the T-1, with the most recent being a Paragon 2 version released just in the past few years. In 2007 BLI came out with a T-1 in their "Blue Line" which were DC only (albeit DCC ready with a DCC plug) but interestingly the Blue Line models had a unique system for DC sound. This required the user to purchase a DC sound unit from BLI which was around $30 but would allow any Blue Line locomotive to run in DC mode with sound. They came with an 8-pin NMRA plug that you could plug a non-sound decoder into but would allow fully functional and programmable sound through the decoder.
The other version of the T-1 was first produced in 2004 and was a dual-mode DC/DCC model that came with a QSI Quantum DCC sound decoder. This is the version I was hunting for on Ebay thanks to a favorable Product Review article I found in the May 2004 MR. The Paragon 2 versions are still fetching close to their original MSRP of $499 on Ebay, but the 2004 QSI models are mostly in the $200-$300 range depending on condition. Blue Line T-1's can be had for under $200 but they are harder to find and are DC only anyway. I was all set to buy one of the QSI T-1's for $289 when this one popped up as a new listing in "mint" condition for $229. I couldn't click on "Buy It Now" fast enough.
So far from just opening the box I am highly impressed with the model. Builder plates are readable (with magnification or at least cheaters on...). It is heavy, the locomotive itself weighs in right at 2 lbs. The picture doesn't do it justice, it is over 16" long with tender, being a scale 122' long over the couplers. It is non-articulated as it was in real life, so to allow operation on tighter radius curves it has no flanges on the center two driver wheel sets. It does, however, come with a spare set of driver wheel sets with flanges if the user has broad enough curves and wants the flanged drivers.
Time to crank it up to see how it runs and sounds!
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