In the late 70s, my dad put together a B&O train consisting of seven Athearn “blue box” heavyweight passenger cars pulled by a blue Mantua 4-6-2 Pacific. He built the cars a couple at a time from kits, upgraded with Kadee couplers and a lighted drum head on the observation car. The engine was a gift to him from my mom. It was the best rolling stock of my dad’s HO collection. Sometime in the early or mid-80s, the family had switched from HO scale to O gauge, and my dad’s HO collection sat in boxes until I got a little older and was allowed to use all of it on my own layouts, except for this set. Using that set required special permission, which I think was only granted temporarily. I’m sure he was proud of the work and money that went into it, and wanted to keep them in good condition. Despite this, I remember that set being basically useless at some point when the draw bar between the locomotive and tender broke, and the coupler on the tender broke. By the time I was a teenager, I wanted to repair it as a favor to my dad and so that I could use the set again, but in the pre-Internet days, I didn’t have a way to find replacement parts.
Sometime in the late 90s or early 2000s, my dad lost most of his model train collection when the contents of his storage unit were sold at auction. I assumed this included the B&O passenger set, but I was pleasantly surprised this summer when he told me that he still had it, and offered to give it to me. I gladly accepted it this past summer on a visit back home, transporting it safely in a carry-on bag that I took back to Pittsburgh in addition to my regular luggage, specifically for bringing this set back to Seattle with me.
The set was basically in the same condition that I remember it being in, except for a lot of dust (looked like sawdust) that had built up on the engine, since its box had been in pretty bad shape since before I last saw it. The engine wouldn’t run until I took it apart and cleaned out all of the dust. Now it seems to run fine, although maybe a little slower than it used to (runs faster in reverse), but it’s still fast enough to not worry about it. After seeing it again for the first time in over 20 years, I remembered some other damages it had suffered, including a small crack in the plastic cab, a missing step on the tender, and no coupler on the tender. It looks like I tried at one time to replace the broken coupler by gluing a new one on with Elmer’s glue. Unfortunately, that attempt didn’t work, and left the screw hole, which is part of the shell, filled with glue. I attempted to clean out the screw hole, but managed to break the hole in the process. Now it appears that the only complete “fix” will be to replace the tender shell. So I’m currently watching eBay for these three replacement parts, or an entire unit being sold at a reasonable price, in not-so-great condition, to use only for its parts. I’ve already purchased the type of Kadee coupler needed for the tender.
The cars were also in good condition, aside from three or four missing coupler springs which I’ve already replaced, and some surface rust on all of the weights, which I will eventually clean off. The passenger car boxes, however, look like they have taken on quite a bit of moisture damage, but are still mostly intact. The cars have metal wheels for power pick-up, and I might try one day to add interior detail and lighting, perhaps with something like the NCE Light-It.
