rich-art ives olympian centipede

The Richart is 27" overall length. The Brute (which I also have) is 28" overall. I like the proportions of the Richart more.

Mine has never been run. I think I read they were made to run on SG72

I paid $2400 for mine years ago. Be careful with that opened up seam. Its hard to tell, but it looks like the end cap is bent as if it was hit there. That will be hard to fix without a repaint in that area.

That's kind of what I thought jb weld otherwise it would require a touch up or repaint to resolder the seam. Only loco I have ever seen in person that big is a buddy L steam loco and that to was just massive for a toy in the 20's

Mdainsd,

Thank you for the measurement. 

Of course I knew this was standard gauge and should have wrote STG72 and STG42 in my posts for the track size

Enjoy

Frank

Just for a size comparison, according to MTH the Super 381 is 23-3/4" long, or about 3" shorter than the Rich-Art Bipolar. 

mdainsd: How tall is your Rich-Art with the pans down? 

With Pantagraphs down its 6 1/2" from top of the rail to top of the pantsgraph.

Bob

Thank You for taking the time to post all that great information, I really appreciate it. Unfortunately all of your pictures came up as "image not found", but the you tube video is wonderful. That is a magnificent layout and the BiPolar and its cars look stunning. Lots of neat stuff there including all the trains on the walls. I remember you posting pictures of your BiPolar collection last year so I did a forum search and found them. The "little" O gauge ones are beautiful.

    As much as I would love to own a Rich-Art BiPolar I will not be bidding on this one, just can't do it at this time. I hope the original poster Madmax bids on it and wins. 

I have two of the MTH Ives 3245R locomotives in traditional and one matching  four car ( 240 series) set in the black and orange. With that locomotive only having one motor it does not pull very well, which is why I acquired a second one. ( one is good two must be better........) I love the 240 series cars and think they are the best proportioned standard gauge cars out there. As much as I like Lionel state cars the Ives ones just seem to look a tad better. As nice as the locomotives look I seem to have a pair of lemons, the one that came with the set made two circuits of a big test loop I set up after hours at my local hobby shop several years ago ( Big Little Railroad Shop in Somerville NJ....shameless plug for a wonderful shop ) and then it stopped and burned up belching out a cloud of smoke. It went back to MTH and it has never run right, the E unit is very fickle and randomly cycles itself. The other locomotive runs a bit better but it too has an issue with the E unit . I will replace the E units when I get motivated to open them up.

I spent 19 of my 20 years in the Navy ( 1977 1997 ) in San Diego lived for 11 years in Ramona which is just up the road from Escondido never knew about Dick Mayer and his wonderful locomotives until after I retired and moved back to NJ...so close yet so far. But I did spend a lot of time getting to know Frank Cox "Frank the Trainman " at his magical shop in North Park San Diego area....great memories.  

Thanks again

Frank                     

Frank,

You're in luck,  You now are living in the original heart of SGMA territory!  Kirk Lindvig, the founder, first and still President of SGMA, lives near you in a suburb of Philly.  As I understand the schedule, his fantastic Standard Gauge layout and collection will be one of the tours offered to TCA members attending the TCA's 60th National Convention in Philadelphia.  Should be a great time.  But if you can't attend the convention, just join SGMA and contact Kirk.  I have no doubt that he'll arrange for you a special showing of his layout and trains.  Tell him "navy.seal" sent you.

Bob

PS.  I spent 7 of my 20+ years in the Navy in San Diego, i.e., with the Teams on the Silver Strand at NAB Coronado.  Great men, good times, miss it!

As to it's height, if you click on the link above and watch the video, you can see that with its pantographs lowered, a Standard Gauge RichArt Cascade BiPolar easily passes through the arches on both ends of a Hellgate Bridge.

Bob

Southwest Hiawatha,

Thank You for posting the winning bid. I was curious as to how much the locomotive would sell for and I missed the end of the auction. No I did not bid on it, like you I need that kind of money for other things right now. But given that there were only a few of these made and you don't see them for sale very often $1824.00 is not too bad.

Enjoy

Frank   

Went looking online for photos of other RichArt BiPolar paint schemes created by Dick in Standard Gauge including "early" versions of the paint schemes I knew about.  I found several, which I have posted below. 

The first is a picture of an "early" version (4-wheel pilot trucks) of the TriColor "Milwaukee" livery, followed for comparison by a "late" version (6-wheel pilot trucks) of the same TriColor "Milwaukee" livery.  Next is the "Halloween" livery I previously pictured followed by the "Pumpkin" livery I also mentioned but didn't picture.  Then the Brooks Stevens livery I previously pictured, and finally a really neat livery I had not seen before, i.e., an "Olympian Hiawatha" livery, which is the paint scheme Milwaukee adopted after deciding that the Brooks Stevens designed livery they had applied to one BiPolar was too expensive to duplicate on their remaining BiPolars.  Needless to say, finding one of these RichArt "Olympian Hiawatha" BiPolars for sale is now at the top of my search/dream list!

Bob

Bob, what years were these made by Richart?

Thank you Bob, that's certainly much more recent than I had thought; I tend to think of most of these small makers of standard gauge as 1970's - 80's.  

Thanks for posting all the paint scheme variations for the bipolar, there are quite a few - looks like they had fun with it!