3rd Rail SP Mogul - Received and Running

Oh mann, did you ever make a mistake!!!!  The darn thing runs so well you won't be able to take part in a single OGR crabfest when it comes to a can-you-top-this story with respect to bad performance. You will be forced to endure endless hours of just watching the thing run without having to do much of anything except tend to the details of running your railroad.  You have my sympathies....

...mine runs just fine - no problems

Bob:  Does this mean you're going to forsake the Milwaukee Road??? 

As to quality, I still think that 3rd Rail does a very nice job with their imported engines.  I just wish that they would tool up for and make a Milwaukee Road K class 2-6-2.  I'm even willing to pay, new-as-announced prices for one of those.

Paul Fischer

Not hardly. SP is the local railroad here in Tucson. In fact, the United States bought this entire part of the country from Mexico (i.e. the Gadsden Purchase) to facilitate the building of the SP between Texas and the West Coast. SP is pretty much my second railroad after the Milwaukee. I have three Cab Forwards (2 old brass 3rd Rail ones and an MTH with PS/2), a 3rd Rail Harriman Mikado, a Lionel Consolidation, the Mogul, and a diesel or two. My layout is modeled after the Chicago, Milwaukee, and Southwestern, an imaginary joint venture between the Milwaukee and the SP to provide through freight and passenger service between Chicago and Southern California via Kansas City, running on Cotton Belt rail from KC to El Paso and SP from there on over to San Diego and Los Angeles via Tucson. The flagship train is, of course, the Southwest Hiawatha. 

There is an SP Mogul (class M4) preserved in a covered enclosure at the railroad station in Tucson. It's been quite nicely restored and they are still working on the final touches.

If this engine is trouble free, it will be my first with 3rd Rail. I own or have owned half a dozen; no major problems, but a lot of little this and that. About half of the problems were attributable to engineering or assembly errors by 3rd Rail, the other half were electronic problems with outside-vendor stuff (QSI and Lionel). I'm looking forward to trying it out. I have the 3rd Rail brass C30 wooden caboose that will make a perfect match for it. 

I agree with you about 3rd Rail making the 2-6-2 Prairie. I don't know what Scott Mann has against Milwaukee steam, but he's drawn a perfect circle around the Milwaukee with steamers from all its major competitors: Great Northern, Burlington, Northern Pacific, even the sorry C&NW - but no Milwaukee Road. I've given up. 

Hmmm . . . with only a little bit of provocation, we might be able to have a big Milwaukee/Cinders & No Weeds bar fight.

Love 3rd Rail, and we been pushing for a 2-6-2, especially in ATSF!

I did a magazine review on the thing, and gave it high marks. It is more accurate than the Harriman Mike, if that means anything.

i pulled the throttle on that M-4 when I was a kid.  It was being used in the movie "Oklahoma!" and was tied up at Fairbank.

You got a great deal on that one.   It is a great little runner and a nice change from all the large brass steamers.   I'm hoping Sunset 3rd Rail balances out their offerings with more smaller locos.   

I have two of these little guys in two rail and they are very nice I believe.

Mickey

It is more accurate than the Harriman Mike, if that means anything.

From curiosity, what are the flaws/inaccuracies in the 3rd Rail Harriman Mikado? I don't know an awful lot about the Harriman Standard engines, my thing is more the Milwaukee Road. I like the little Mikado, now that I've got the mechanical problems sorted out. 

I don't have one, but I sure would like too It is on my "I'm gonna get one of those someday" list.

Just curious, how good of a deal did you get on it(I KNOW, that I am going to be Jealous).

Doug

Aw, shucks. I've had a 3rd Rail M6 Mogul on the OGR sell list for 3 months at $595. LN/OB. Gets buried and it's not proper to bump it. Hope you got a good deal on ebay.

I have two of these, hence my reason for selling one. They are very nice and excellent runners. There's a photo book published on the SP Moguls - Monte Vista Publishing. I reversed downward the bell cranks on both my engines per the prototypes. The blowdown mufflers are different on different engines. The SP 1727's and 1729's (M6)blowdown mufflers should be moved forward between the center and third drivers. But I'm not going to change them. I run the 1729 a lot; the 1727 sits because I want to sell it.

$561, shipped. I thought that was about as good as I could hope for, in that condition. I was surprised the bidding didn't go higher; my max wasn't much over that. I didn't really expect to get it at that price. It may have helped that the auction closed on Easter Sunday, as fewer people would be online when it closed. I believe the original pre-order price in 2007 or so was 799, which went up to 899 before they were actually produced. I'm not sure what the final price from 3rd Rail was, if it got another bump upwards or not. I know it took 3rd Rail a long time from announcement to final delivery - two or three years, I think, but my memory could be off. 

I'm looking forward to getting it, especially with the favorable reports from a couple of owners. My layout is only 13x13, so smaller engines are appropriate. 

Southwest Hiawatha, you got a great deal, I AM Jealous.

mtnhi7, that sounds like a pretty fair price, I may be interested in the future. I have three tables reserved at swap meet in Eugene, OR April 13+14, Hope it goes well this year. I have some work that I have to do to my pick up, I think a couple of injectors are bad. If the swap meet goes well, I may be emailing you about that Mogul. I like the BIG articulateds as much as most, but I really liked the looks of that Mogul, and it is on my list of future additions to the roster. I can't make any promises, but I hope that we may be able to make a deal.

Doug

Challenger 3980, I hope everyhting goes well for you.  The 3rd Rail Mogul is extremely well detailed.  SW Hiawatha was wondering what the orig price was - $899 by the time production was completed and they were at 3rd Rail.

Third Rail SP Mikes, Decks, and 4-10-2s came with a straight boiler.  The prototypes were noticeably tapered.  The Mike suffered in the tail beam/ trailing truck area, but that should not affect 3-rail operators, since tail beams are generally missing anyway.

Early 2- rail brass was peculiarly restricted - big locomotives used fairly heavy brass, but the smaller locomotives were made from very thin sheet.  Sunset followed that prescription for a while - I believe the Mogul was the first to use decent thicknesses of brass on a small model.  The cost for the extra brass is minimal - pennies per model.

That is very cool that you found the Mogul on The Bay in 3-rail.  I've been looking for one there.  There have been two of them posted but they were both 2-rail.  Matt

Great find, that's an engine that I have admired for some time.

John.

Bob2 - Thanks for the info. I'm a bit surprised that 3rd Rail would miss something like basic boiler shape, but it is what it is. For what I paid for my SP Mikado, I'm not going to worry about it too much - especially since it's the only SP Harriman Mikado you can get in 3-rail. 3rd Rail actually might do well to think about a reissue (with a correct boiler), since the one I have is from about 15 years ago and has QSI OEM electronics. I'm waiting for the PS/3 conversion kits to come out, then I'm planning to upgrade it. 

Man, I wish that I had seen that loco; you'd have had a bidding war on your hands!

I'm envious.

I am not sure that the 3rd Rail 2-6-0 is a model of this loco, and I don't have the info

at my fingertips, but I believe that the SP had the largest Moguls ever used in N. America.

The class designation I forget. They modernized them and used them up until the end of steam, I think, and had the same TE as some good-sized Pacifics.

My 3rd Rail Mogul is M9 #1813, built by Brooks in 1908. The M9 was a big Mogul at 174,000 pounds engine weight and 33,320 pounds tractive effort, but the M-21 class was the biggest ever at 215,720 engine weight and 42,360 pounds TE. The M-21's were built largely out of parts from scrapped older Moguls and retired 2-6-6-2's. 

Hey Ed and D500, mtnhi7 has one listed in the sell/trade board, for a pretty decent price. I wont be able to do any thing myself about for at least a couple weeks, and that even depends on how my sales do at the swap meet, I am (unfortunately) not able to commit yet to buying mtnhi7's Mogul, if either of you are interested, ask him about it. I would Love to get it, but can't right away, and it wouldn't be fair to him to not make a sale because somebody thought I was in line first.

Doug

Here's an update. I received the Mogul a couple of days ago. Unboxed it, started to lubricate it for a test run, and noticed that the tender wheels didn't roll freely. After some fairly intricate surgery to get them off (mostly due to tiny screws holding tiny wires in place). I discovered that the bolsters, which are thick pieces of flat brass stock, were slightly bent, causing some friction at the journals. I have no way of knowing if this was a factory defect or something that happened in the custody of the previous owner. It would take some pretty substantial force to bend the bolsters, and the unit was cosmetically perfect, so I'm inclined to think it left the factory that way (The original owner displayed it but never attempted to run it,) While I was fiddling with the tender I discovered a very dead 9v alkaline battery inside; I'm glad I found that before it started to leak. 

Once I got the tender trucks sorted out, the little Mogul ran perfectly. Nice slow start with four distinct chuffs per rev, puffing smoke, decent sound considering the tiny speaker and no room for a baffle. Tons of smoke - so much that I double-checked to make sure the switch was set for TMCC. This is the best-smoking TAS unit I have. 3rd Rail rates this engine for 054; the only loop I have wired at the moment is 072 so I did not test it for minimum curve. I like the whaleback tender. The Mogul in 3-rail was only available with the whaleback (2-railers could choose the whaleback or a Vanderbilt). I'm sure this is because there wouldn't be room in the Vanderbilt for the Train America electronics package. 

This is going to make a nice little unit for my small layout. I'll get out my matching 3rd Rail C30 wooden caboose and a few steam-era Atlas cars will make a perfect small-layout combination. The hassle with the trucks was annoying, but all in all I'm a happy camper.