John, You probably already know this little bit of history: During WWII, the M&StL went shopping for new steam locomotives and tried out an SAL 2-6-6-4. I do not know exactly where it ran on the system, but the company tried it, licked it, and wanted to order several copies.
The War Production Board, however, would not allow it, and the M&StL instead ordered two A-B-A sets of FTs. What might have been! If the Board had allowed the order, those articulateds would have been stomping through western Illinois, into Iowa, and Minnesota with steam identical to what the SAL had. Tom ________________________________ From: [email protected] [[email protected]] on behalf of John Degnan [[email protected]] Sent: Tuesday, November 06, 2012 6:45 AM To: ; Subject: {S-Scale List} For the record / I'm just sayin'... Just to make my recent off-road wanderings make sense to those who were wondering... My recent interest in the UP Big Boy and Challenger is due to two things... the first, and main reason is that I have a local friend who swears he would convert to S if, and only if, he could get these two locomotives in S... and he (like me) doesn't care if they are brass or plastic! The other, less relevant reason, is that I, personally, am a HUGE fan of articulated steam locos! SAL had a few examples of articulated steam, but was not a big user of it. So I have to go off-road to get what I want/like in this category of interest. So... I'm just sayin'... if ever the Big Boy and Challenger are re-done in S, S will gain another supporter (at least one), and I will be buying a few, myself... brass or plastic... ... as long as a much better job is done on them than was done on the originals, 25 YEARS ago on the Challenger and 31 YEARS ago on the Big Boy. Given the amount of time that has passed, I don't see why there wouldn't be enough interest in these locos to see the models done. John Degnan [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>
