Garden Clockwork : Unique Art

Cool timing Bruce. I photographed my boxed passenger set last night in preparation for selling off my Unique Art. Interesting he has two Garden Cities in his set, like mine. No City of Joplin. Those wide curves sure make it nicer, mine is pretty fast and without a load behind it, will not stay on the track. Not bad pulling the cars though.

 

Steve

 

Same speed issues with mine in relation to the tight curvature..Its a great clockwork well deserving of a new equally appreciative home. The next garden railroad I do will be elevated and dual gauge as to run clockwork..they look terrific on those tangents and smoother turns. I had to add some weight to the cars for the same reasons.

I had the opportunity to run some of my clockworks (and see many others run) on a wonderful dual gauge garden railroad last year at the Spring Windup.  The track was all handlaid, nice broad, sweeping curves with easements and superelevation.  It was a mistake... I have been wanting to build an outdoor track ever since.  Just not enough time for all the projects... 

great video, Bruce. Really like the Unique circus sets too but everyone is jumping on the bandwagon lately and prices going up and up.Picked up a cattle car a few months back, got very lucky on that one.

 Nice video.

 

 First time I've seen a Unique Art train run,even on a video

 

 Noisy little sucker,but I liked the bell,reminds me of my Dad's first train,a Hafner windup with a bell,thanks for sharing !

Pretty neat train. Too bad UA didn't last very long.

 

 

I took this some time ago and it shows the color scheme differences between the electric version and the clockwork version in case anyone happened to be curious about it...

 

there were two versions of the electric 1950, w and w/o headlight. The w/o used the same bulls eye front as the windup 742.

 

Bruce, do you have the rarest of the rare?

I have a 742 modified with a Lionel can motor chassis with blue driver wheels. Looks pretty cool and runs well.

 

Unique Arts trains are unique, indeed. Too bad they only made two, (or maybe three if you count both versions of the hopper) freight cars.

 

Supposedly they made a flat car with a crane on it, but I have never seen one.

 

I also modified a Rock Island A-A unit by adding Williams motors and gear boxes, plus recessing the headlights.

Unique kind of forced Marx to begin producing 7-inch 4-wheel consists in order to compete with their pricing, not sure if the Marx 21s or the Unique Rock Islands came first but I have never collected either. They seem too big for the other Marx or Unique freights, even larger than the Hoge 900s and you must need 072 turns turn to keep them from derailing. Have never seen the crane car either but have seen a few flat cars and a pole car that appear to be just 3905 boxcars or 1950 tenders with shell removed. The black 1950 tenders are a tough find also, have only seen two.

Jim
Last night I ran my Unique Art RI diesels on 031 Fastrack. No issues.

Steve