Milwaukee Road Baltic from Weaver Models

As a model, the Weaver F6a Baltic is nothing short of spectacular. It is among the best-looking and most-detailed brass engines I have ever owned or seen. Mine is one of my favorites. 

Functionally, it's a mixed bag. As delivered, it's short on traction. Most of this is due to an overly stiff spring on the trailing truck. Change that out for a softer one and you double the pulling power right there. There's another issue in that the center (blind) drivers are slightly larger in diameter than the others, causing a very slight lifting of the rear drivers (the ones with the traction tires. We are talking about a few thousandths, but it does affect traction. This can be cured with a very thin shim under the bearing blocks of the center drivers, or by substituting softer springs in the driver suspension, which is too stiff. It may also be that the traction tires fitted to this engine are slippery - next time I run mine I'm going to rough them up with fine sandpaper. Finally, the coupler doesn't stick out very far from the tender body, which can cause problems coupling to some cars and/or navigating curves. I haven't found this to be a problem, but I understand some people have. 

My unit had a couple of other minor issues that are not widespread. For me, the beauty and quality of this locomotive were well worth the trouble to fix the problems, which were annoying but not all that serious. It would have been worth it even if I had had to pay somebody else to do the work, which, fortunately, was not necessary.

Here are some pictures of mine.

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I' ll second everything that SW Hiawatha said.  Thanks for the tips on the traction.  It was a little disappointing.  I put a thin coat of frog snot on the forward drivers and that helped a lot, but now I'm going to try your other fixes.  I'll bet I'll have a great puller then.

I have one of Weaver's NKP Hudsons, and it has similar adhesion problems. I haven't gotten into tuning it up yet, but I imagine that they have a shared chassis or chassis/truck design, so thanks for the hints.

Also, in absolute terms, the NKP model is simply too light; I've never handled the

MILW model.

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("Baltic"? What a funny name for a Hudson...

...Yes, I know that the CMStP&P called them Baltics, and that they designed the first

N American 4-6-4; fortunately they were in no shape financially to actually have

it built at the time, so the #5200 J1a 4-6-4 showed up on the NYC first. Whew.) 

The term "Baltic" derives from a trip to Europe by one of the railroad's senior design engineers, who saw 4-6-4T locomotives pulling passenger trains in the Baltic region. I think this was mainly in north Germany.

I believe the term "Baltic", which he did use in contemporary correspondence, was coined by du Bousquet, the CMO of the Nord [ of France ], whose two prototype 4-6-4's appeared in 1911.  He picked that name because, continuing in the 'body of water' [ Atlantic, Pacific ] theme, they were intended to haul the heavy Nord Express, the sleeper train from Paris to the Baltic area.

Certainly MILW Mechanical personnel visiting Europe could have heard that term in use.

With best regards, SZ

This is probably not worth asking, but why do the Chinese factories put so much effort into a model and then build one that does not run well? We all seem to know that we have to modify our engines to get them to run right, but why do/should we have to do that? Don't they have any freaking manufacturing engineers over there? Sheesh!

I love my Baltic, it pulls my Southwestern Limited Pass train.

RoyBoy, their are alot of people who never run their brass models, they become dust collectors

You know this Milwaukee Road foamer...I'm in love with it! 

You know, model railroading really has more to it than taking something out of the box and plopping it on the layout.  One of the things I really like about my brass steam locomotives (Williams, Weaver and 3rd Rail) is that their construction with sprung drivers allows me to tailor their tractive effort. 

Using thin plastic shims under the base plate, I can put most/all of the locomotive's weight on the drivers with traction tires for lots of oomph on my coal drag and heavy freight locos.  I can also put most of the locomotive's weight on the blind, non-traction tire drivers on my 2-10-0 helper locomotives.  When one of these locomotives is pushing on the rear of a train it does exert some push but it can't shove hard enough to derail cars in the middle of the train on curves.

If you like a little starting wheel slip with a heavy train, you can create that effect with brass locomotives or you can have a locomotive that's a real stump puller. 

Before I fixed the trailing truck, I actually had to use the protoype steam engineer's trick of backing up the train to get some slack in the couplers so I didn't have to start the whole train at once. Now it will start a normal size passenger train just fine, but I still have to do it if I'm pulling a very heavy train. Of course, if the train is too heavy for the Baltic, I can switch to a Northern! (Just like the real railroad.)

Dunno why I was thinking of a Maroon shrouded model, but I did a review of a shrouded Weaver a quarter century ago.  What a spectacular model - and it ran like glass.  No traction tires, of course, but it pulled just fine.  The inexpensive O Scale brass has had really good mechanisms for decades - it is the high priced stuff that causes anguish.

opinion.

I am very happy with the Weaver MR Baltic engine I bought a few years ago.It looks perfect and runs well.I did have to make a custom rear coupler that extended to the proper length.The rear coupler it came with looked like a frightened turtle.I am surprised that the engine is hard to find now.I remember there were posts on the OGF a while back that the engine wasn't a good seller for Weaver.

Dan

Here is a video of the engine roaring through my scenic living room.

Dan

Best, SZ

An interesting point. I should have thought of that, but my German is rusty and I never spoke it all that well anyway. The story I read just referred to Milwaukee Road design engineers seeing these engines in service in the Baltic region, and I believe it referred specifically to the tank engines. The Milwaukee's engineering staff had a lot of Germans and Swedes. These guys would have spent their time in Europe mainly in the north, but the French had some innovative ideas in steam locomotive design so who knows, maybe they went to Paris and saw M. du Bousquet's engines as well? The printed story was not detailed. 

Ah...lightbulb turning on:    Two possibilities if they went after the A's but before the F7's:

   1.  The two 05 class 4-6-4's, which usually ran Berlin-Hamburg, and were placed in service in '35;  one of these led the world record for steam speed until Mallard just barely surpassed it.

   2.  The lone [ at that time ] class 61 of 1936, which was a high speed [ 175 kph ] tank engine, and which ran Dresden-Berlin with the "Wegmann-Zug".

Post A, I'm not sure anybody in Europe at that time could teach Alco and the MILW much about moving passengers fast, if only because of US train weights.  Those two French locos were not very successful, although one is preserved in a museum -- because it was 'sectioned' as an exhibit in the thirties.

SZ

SZ

The Milwaukee Road originally designed what would have been the first U.S. 4-6-4, nicknamed "Baltic," in the mid-1920's, but the company went into bankruptcy and the project was cancelled. The New York Central was the first U.S. railroad to take delivery of a 4-6-4, and its name of "Hudson" became the usual name for a 4-6-4. When it got out of bankruptcy, the Milwaukee resumed the "Baltic" program and the first F6 was delivered by Baldwin in January 1930. I don't think the Milwaukee was all that interested in European technology; they just were intrigued with the idea of a 4-6-4 and the design engineers, who were mostly Germans and Swedes, picked up the name from watching the European tank engines pull passenger trains along the Baltic coast. The Milwaukee started planning the 4-6-4 about the same time (1925) that Lima rolled out the 2-8-4 Berkshire. Lima demonstrated the original 2-8-4 on the Milwaukee Road, but management while they were impressed, decided they couldn't afford to buy. It wouldn't have been a great leap of logic to see the advantages of a four-wheel trailing truck, especially on a railroad that built a lot of its own locomotives. That's the best story I can piece together from what I recall of the printed version. 

The F6 and F6a Baltics were fast, powerful locomotives. They were built to cruise at 100 mph (160 kmph) with a train of heavyweight cars, and one set a speed record between Chicago and Milwaukee. This, of course, was before the even faster streamlined 4-4-2 and 4-6-4 locomotives were built. The streamliners were believed to have hit 125-130 mph pulling a full-length train, but nobody knows for sure because the speedometers didn't go that high. 

Makes you kind of laugh when Amtrak wants you to get excited about 100 MPH zones now some 80 years after that was exceeded with Steam