Vintage HO: Best Steam Engine?

I have a Model Diecasting 4-6-0 kit that ran well, much better than any brass engine right out of the box. These were offered with 3 pole open frame motors before the days when can motors became the norm. Early Rivarossi did not run very well but their later offerings (70's vintage) are acceptable.

Pete

I seem to recall the Varney Berk was offered in sections, or as a complete kit.

I can tell you one club member back in the day took the Varney Berkshire and made a very passable L&N "Big Emma" out of it.  It ran very smoothly.  Everybody at the club ooohed and aaahed it when he would bring it down.  The "Old Lady" 2-8-0's and "Casey Jones" 4-6-0's (same Harriman style boiler, different running gear) also ran pretty good.

Bowser steam locomotives ran very well also, although a little noisy.  If you were into the Pennsy, you were in heaven.

Mantua's were also fairly good runners, but like their diesels, they tended to run better in reverse.    The Mikado's and Pacific's were pretty plane Jane, but were the basis for a lot of redetailed models.  I bought a Pacific kit for 12 bucks back in '66 or so, spent about 40 more bucks on Cal-Scale over a couple of months (only had a $5/week allowance, and that was only during the school year for lunch money...) detailing it up.  Lettered it for the UP.  It looked absolutely nothing like a UP locomotive, but it was all mine...  Crazy, dumb kid.

Rusty

LAMing, have you seen this page?

http://www.steamlocomotive.com/model/HO-steam.php

A boy down the block had a Mantua Berkshire when I was a kid.  Nice metal engine, but I always thought it was funny that you could see the white nylon worm gear sticking out above the wheels.  (I guess I never noticed that big spur gear between the wheels of my Lionel scout!)

Thanks all for you valued input.

No, Ted, I had not viewed that site before. Thanks for the link.

My hope in this thread is to also hear experiences with the old vintage steam engines that came with the boxed sets from "back when". However, it could be that we're not old enough! I was a child of the 50's... but my first and second (the most impressionable) HO sets contained diesels, so I'm out when it comes to firsthand experience in regards to "when they were new" HO sets with steam engines.

Of course, over the decades my tastes have refined, as well as enlarged, and now I'm interested in learning about the steam engines that came in the HO sets of yore.

So, I still wonder, which HO set steam locomotives ran and/or looked the best? Varney's? Athearn's? AF/Gilbert? Penn Line?

SO much is known about Lionel Postwar, yet there seems to be very little in-depth knowledge about vintage HO.

We're exploring new territory!

I would avoid any loco with the worm gear directly connecting to the axle gear.    A smooth runner will have a gear tower or gear box with a reduction gear between the worm and axle gears.    Otherwise, low speed smooth running is dependent on motor torque which is always weakest at low rpm.

laming posted:

So, I still wonder, which HO set steam locomotives ran and/or looked the best? Varney's? Athearn's? AF/Gilbert? Penn Line?

 

As far as looks, Varney and Penn Line (later sold to Bowser) hands down.  By any standard today they're all going to appear somewhat crude.  These were the days of Zamak-drivin' men (and boys...) 

As we the modelers had to actually build these things, there was some tinkering and sweat equity to get them to run the way we wanted to. 

My long-gone Mantua Pacific, for example, the trick wasn't in riveting the valve gear together (with a ball-peen hammer and a center punch from my dad's toolbox,) the trick was leaving enough "slop" so it wouldn't become one solid piece.  I liberated a small screwdriver from my mom's sewing machine and no fancy small wrenches in my dad's toolbox, used needle nose pliers to tighten the hex head side rod screws...

However, they were pretty bullet-proof once built and seeing that one was familiar with how they were put together, fixing them wasn't usually a problem.

Rusty

Thanks for the input, Rusty!

So far, it does appear that Varney and Penn Line had some pretty nice steam stuff.

Even though that handsome Varney Berk I pictured above likely wasn't offered in a boxed HO set... I'm still tempted to purchase it!! (AND I'm tempted to purchase a Brooks Mogul that was once offered by Arbour Models.)

And YES on the "sweat equity" in the steam engine kits:

Back a few years ago (okay, three decades ago... my God... has it been that long???) I went through a spell that I enjoyed kitbashing and assembling steam engine kits. My choice at the time were the MDC "Old Timer" series with the step gear. Those were very versatile and could be mixed n' matched with boilers, cabs, et al, from other models. I ended up learning how to repower those frames with Sagami 16x30 cans combined with NWSL replacement step gears.

Into this went phosphor bronze pickup shoes, cut-off contacts, and PFM SS2 sound components with the PFM boxed speaker enclosure. They ran great, and coupled with the PFM system (including the "real deal" wire reverb unit and a PFM2 ByPass Filter), sounded excellent. I think I still have some survivors stashed away somewhere?

Anyway, I truly have no accommodation for the above kits once assembled... but they sure are tempting.

Andre

laming posted:

Anyway, I truly have no accommodation for the above kits once assembled... but they sure are tempting.

Andre

 

I've got latter day Mantua Mike and Prairie kits buried somewhere in the catacombs under the Great Plywood Glacier.  Every now and then I hear them whispering my name...

Rusty

Best runners for me back in the 50's?.....

Mantua Mikado...that(I built from a kit.  Ran great...after Dad 'Dinozzo'd' me for rushing the job, ruining the gear on the driver (Mantua replaced it promptly for a fee...from my allowance, of course.).  The lessons stuck with me, though!!!

A Penn Line K4 that I acquired through a box lot from a friend of Dad's...he was getting out of the hobby....lucky me!  Ran like a Swiss watch.  Paint job (by original owner) was anything BUT laudable, though.

Bowser Challenger articulated, 4-6-6-4....with their unorthodox SP vandy tender.  Ran really well.  Pulled like its 1:1 prototype was designed to do.  I still have this engine....don't really know why.  I bought all the Cal-Scale/Kemtron parts to do the super-detail project that was written up in Model Railroader by Bob Darwin.  Yeah, right.  Between girls, high school activities, college, ......life, in general....it never came to pass.  Sold the Kemtron pedestal tender kit I'd bought for the project.  The rest of it is squirreled away in a box somewhere in the basement.  (sigh)

My first HO set was a Varney F3 freight set.  Zinc pest eventually consumed all of the drive-line castings in that growler.  It was replaced by a Globe/Athearn F7 with a Hobbytown chassis.....excellent for its time.

The eye-opener, however, was an Athearn RDC with their Hi-F (a.k.a., rubber band) drive.  Top speed must've been near a scale Mach 3!  Good grief!  The layout was in the attic.....rather toasty in the D.C. summertime.  The rubber bands didn't hold up real well.  But since I was an orthodontist's best patient, I had a pretty good supply of bands....sort of.

All gone, except for the Bowser.  Can't say I miss them, though.  Today's HO is far more enticing.  It's fun to glance through the periodicals of that day and see the ads.....the hype....the ingenuity and creativity that folks put into those early efforts to make them better. 

60 years or so ago...long time.

KD

prrjim posted:

I would avoid any loco with the worm gear directly connecting to the axle gear.    A smooth runner will have a gear tower or gear box with a reduction gear between the worm and axle gears.    Otherwise, low speed smooth running is dependent on motor torque which is always weakest at low rpm.

This isn't universally true.  

I agree that a loco with a low (numerically high) gear ratio will always run better.  Gearing for scale speeds is the main reason why HO locomotives generally run better than their O gauge counterparts.  This trend is changing, though not fast enough!  But adding an intermediate gear adds static friction, and depending on tolerances, could also contribute to jerky operation.  

Meanwhile, the SIZE of the worm wheel (also known as the bull gear) is very important, because the radius of the worm wheel defines the lever arm for the worm, increasing pull-in torque when starting.  Locos with a gear tower or "idler gearbox" almost always have a smaller worm wheel than one with direct drive.  A good practice is to make the worm wheel as large as possible without it dragging on the ties.  You can tell how large the worm wheel might be by looking at the bulge in the underside of the loco chassis.  The size of this bulge tells a lot about the "potency" of the locomotive!

There is also the issue of appearance (which I mentioned in an earlier post on this thread.)  The Mantua Berkshire I saw as a kid had a direct drive, and its white nylon worm was very obviously visible between its boiler and driving wheels.  Depending on the size of the driving wheels, boiler diameter, and how much "daylight" was visible above the drivers on the prototype, a tower gearbox can also spoil the appearance.  

At least one prominent O gauge manufacturer uses a belt-and-pulley system, with a layshaft running throught the chassis and a fairly small worm wheel on the driving axle.  The beauty of this system is that it's almost invisible when viewed at eye level.  And some of the gear reduction lost by using a smaller worm wheel is regained by using a small pulley on the motor shaft, and a larger one on the layshaft.  This is a good system, but working on it in HO scale would be brain surgery.

I'd say the PFM locomotives, once weight was added to them, and the Mantua mike. Have heard good things about most Varney products.

In having a father who got all the different HO steam locomotives in that era (Bowser, Penn Line, Mantua, John English, etc.) and me following his lead in running those vintage beauties, I'd have to say that for longevity and dependability, nothing beats a Mantua.  I've got some of the very earliest Mantua locomotives with the brass construction (I'll have to post pics) and all they needed was a cleaning and lube, they started running like it was 1946 again!  The motor/gearing could sound loud and rough, but they last a lifetime or more!  I got a couple from someone who had them stored for about 40 years, in a wooden box with a ton of original Mantua freight cars, all in gorgeous condition!  Talk about a time warp!

Close second for me are Penn Line.  Someone above mentioned them running like a Swiss watch, and that sounds about right!  Nothing like a Penn Line K4 running smoothly, pulling a line of Pennsy coaches.  Sheer beauty.

Now you have me wanting to fake sick to leave work to go home and do some running!

I agree with vintage Mantua steam locomotives,if the motor,worm and gear is in proper alignment,they are excellent runners once allowed to break in.A good track system like Kato Unitrack or Fleischmann Profi track is a must. The Mikado,Pacific, and shifters 0-6-0's,0-4-0's with tender pick ups are reliable.

Not mentioned previously are the Americanized offerings from Fleischmann (Germany) from 1955-1968. The Fleischmann Mikados and Pacific's are super smooth running locomotives. These are fairly common and easy to find. 

Boomer - I was going to mention Fleischmann as well!  I have a couple of the Americanized ones, as well as some of their stock German models.  Very smooth and reliable runners!  Even their smaller switcher locomotives are very good!

I always liked Penn Line steam engines. Had a ready-to-run Mikado and built kits for the K-4 Pacific and the Consolidation. All were great runners for that era.

Jim

Can’t beat a good old fashioned Marklin as well. 

I'll have to add a vote here for the Penn Line/Bowser family. I still have my K4, E6 and I1.

Heavy, smooth as silk, not as noisy as what's been mentioned here (at least not in my experience), easy to work on and like PW Lionel and Flyer, will probably outlast most of us. 

Also did enjoy MDC and some of the early Mantua all die-cast...

Mark in Oregon

EDIT: I should have mentioned that these were all kits; if you wanted a certain engine, you usually had to build it.

One of the reasons, I guess, that to this day I'm more inclined to "tinker" as opposed to justing running stuff. 

laming posted:

Thanks for the input, Rusty!

So far, it does appear that Varney and Penn Line had some pretty nice steam stuff.

Even though that handsome Varney Berk I pictured above likely wasn't offered in a boxed HO set... I'm still tempted to purchase it!! (AND I'm tempted to purchase a Brooks Mogul that was once offered by Arbour Models.)

And YES on the "sweat equity" in the steam engine kits:

Back a few years ago (okay, three decades ago... my God... has it been that long???) I went through a spell that I enjoyed kitbashing and assembling steam engine kits. My choice at the time were the MDC "Old Timer" series with the step gear. Those were very versatile and could be mixed n' matched with boilers, cabs, et al, from other models. I ended up learning how to repower those frames with Sagami 16x30 cans combined with NWSL replacement step gears.

Into this went phosphor bronze pickup shoes, cut-off contacts, and PFM SS2 sound components with the PFM boxed speaker enclosure. They ran great, and coupled with the PFM system (including the "real deal" wire reverb unit and a PFM2 ByPass Filter), sounded excellent. I think I still have some survivors stashed away somewhere?

Anyway, I truly have no accommodation for the above kits once assembled... but they sure are tempting.

Andre

 

Andre

I have no experience with Arbour kits, but from what I've seen and read, these were not engineered particularly well, and are VERY difficult to assemble. There's a series of YouTube videos of someone (with more skill and patience than I) building one of their (I think it was a Berkshire) kits.

Should you go that route, I for one would love to hear of your experience. Their Berkshire certainly looked like a handsome engine...

Mark in Oregon

Years ago, a friend bought a Penn-Line K-4, Dremeled off the fat running boards and replaced them with brass strip, added a small fortune worth of Cal-Scale parts. From a foot away the rivet counters couldn't tell it from a PFM model.

Back in the ought-60's MR ran a couple of splendid articles on super-detailing the Bowser Challenger/Big Boy. Cal-Scale then produced a complete set of castings for the upgrade. Somewhere, lurking underneath the weight of O scale stuff is mine. Some day. And, BTW, I bought a plastic Big Boy (Monogram?) kit and liberate the tender for Challenger. Before I found a Kemtron tender at a show...

The ultimate Penn Line Decapod was the one with a Cary superstructure substituted for the famished K-4 superstructure  standard with the kit. Got one of those, too, with many Cal-Scale castings festooned upon it. This one is genuine stump-puller.

Nostalgia time here

What........no love for Tycos Chattanooga choo choo???  My brother had one.What a piece of junk that was LOL!

HA! I'd forgotten about that one! 

Okay, truth-telling time: when I first moved here to the Coast in 1975, I actually bought one of those at a local pharmacy; I think I paid $4.99 for it. I ended up using a lot of the detail parts off it for a Tyco/Mantua Pacific project I was working on at that time; since the cab was the same, all the injectors, etc that were part of that casting fit my 4-6-2. I may have used some of the pilot/boiler parts as well... 

Mark in Oregon

I had a mantua 4-6-2 southern railway thing pulled a fair sized train.I had had tyco trains f@!$^ junk!Then I got bachmann trains witch is lightyear better than tyco.Then other great trains but my eyesight things changed.I got rid of my h.o. trains.I always wanted a lionel train so I got a 736 and some boxcars.That was gonna be it so I thought.There was an ad for a company called mth trains.So I brought one locomotive from their railking line.It was a down hill ride ever since.

Wow, this thread has been revived! Cool!

Mark said:

"I have no experience with Arbour kits, but from what I've seen and read, these were not engineered particularly well, and are VERY difficult to assemble."

Too late! I not only purchases a Brooks Mogul... I purchased TWO! 

Here's part of what's in one of the kits:

All my steam kits are on the shelf now, waiting for a "round tuit". When I start my steam theme, I will use my RTR Bachmann DC/Sound equipped 4-4-0's. (Currently working on my diesel theme.)

Looks like a pile of parts, but in my dateless past I assembled this from a similar pile of parts:

So, as long as my dexterity and eyesight holds... good to go.

All fer now!

Andre

About 30 years ago I built a Bowser Pennsy T1 4-4-4-4 Duplex.  Doth drives were powered by their own motor, with a piece of flex tubing connecting the motors together.  Once, out of curiosity, it tried running it without the flex tubing, in order to see if the two drives would slip like the prototype did.  Unfortunately I don't recall the results of my experiment.

Stuart

laming posted:

Wow, this thread has been revived! Cool!

Mark said:

"I have no experience with Arbour kits, but from what I've seen and read, these were not engineered particularly well, and are VERY difficult to assemble."

Too late! I not only purchases a Brooks Mogul... I purchased TWO! 

Here's part of what's in one of the kits:

All my steam kits are on the shelf now, waiting for a "round tuit". When I start my steam theme, I will use my RTR Bachmann DC/Sound equipped 4-4-0's. (Currently working on my diesel theme.)

Looks like a pile of parts, but in my dateless past I assembled this from a similar pile of parts:

So, as long as my dexterity and eyesight holds... good to go.

All fer now!

Andre

Very nice.

Wow, I didn't realize until now that this was an older thread; this ties in rather nicely with the current thread regarding the older Athearn metal rolling stock. The classics never die, it seems... 

Mark in Oregon

RickO posted:

What........no love for Tycos Chattanooga choo choo???  My brother had one.What a piece of junk that was LOL!

You got that right, RickO. I bought that very Tyco set from K-Mart in 1974. The nice-looking 0-6-0 loco "croaked" after hauling its consist a few times around the track loop. Oy vey! That experience soured me on anything HO until 2009, when I took a risk and bought a few Fleischmann and Trix locos just for the heck of it. I still haven't operated them extensively on an actual layout per se, so the proverbial jury is still out on their overall performance and longevity.

BTW, I'm currently "toying" with S hi-rail trains and would consider selling all or part of my small, bona fide or virtually mint American and European livery HO "collection" at very affordable prices... if anybody out there is interested.

Bob,

Might be interested in your HO stuff, contact via email .

Mike

I have old Varney, Mantua, and Rivarossi steam locomotives. All of them are smooth runners and have acceptable levels of detail.

Vintage HO is the part of HO I still am involved in.  I just love it even if sometimes it may appear crude by today's standards.  I built my first Bowser K4 kit with all the super detailing at age 16 and while that was 1985, the kit was still largely based on the Penn Line tool.  It was an acceptable runner, but did look pretty good for its time.  I now have an HO Gilbert with the B6 that has a smoke unit like their Hudson did.  I have lots of MDC un-built kits, a few Penn Line E6s, and a T1, some Tenshodo (not brass), numerous Mantua, Varney, and Tyco steam locomotives from the 50's and 60's.  I also have a very early Walthers HH660 that looks like the late 40's and several George Stock GG1s which were produced from 1935 into the early 50's.  I'd like to track down some of his steam locomotives but they are hard to find. 

My father and my Uncle are much more in depth on their HO collections adding English and a few other's I'm forgetting.  My uncle picked up a Penn Line K4 and a Penn Line GG1 (5 stripes) from the Allentown meet a few years back.  While not uncommon, what was really amazing is that both ran like fine tuned machines at both slow and faster speeds without modifications from the original design.  I was extremely surprised.  It seems that with care and proper lubrication these can be great runners as well. 

This is the Tenshodo Model.  It is a little larger than 1:87 as near as I can tell.

A heavily modified MDC E6 using a Bowser tender.

A article I authored for my TCA newsletter regarding my George Stock GG1s.  Just for fun - I know it's not steam.

Very interesting.

I wonder of you might show a close up of the drive mechanism in that GG1?

Mark in Oregon

PS: nice job on that E6... 

More vintage steam...

For my tastes in steam (i.e. later 19th century, or "TOC19"), my go-to brand has been the MDC/Roundhouse "Old Timer" series. These have a 72:1 "step gear" arrangement so when powered with a good quality motor, the slow speed performance is great. Top speeds are low, but for the type of railroading that interests me most (mountainous w/helpers), this is fine, too.

One of my mostest funnest things to do is sitting at the work bench piddling with a steam project. I enjoy mixin' n' matchin' various components to get individualistic results. Here's some examples on the work bench from a few years back. All of these are MDC kits that have been kit-mingled and modified.

In some cases, boilers from other mfg'ers was used, or a cab from a different MDC model, and some of the frames have been modified (milled) to move the drivers/whatever.

When I'm in the "steam mood", such tinkering is fun!

All fer now.

Andre

Bob G (WNY) posted:

RickO posted:

What........no love for Tycos Chattanooga choo choo???  My brother had one.What a piece of junk that was LOL!

You got that right, RickO. I bought that very Tyco set from K-Mart in 1974. The nice-looking 0-6-0 loco "croaked" after hauling its consist a few times around the track loop. Oy vey! That experience soured me on anything HO until 2009, when I took a risk and bought a few Fleischmann and Trix locos just for the heck of it. I still haven't operated them extensively on an actual layout per se, so the proverbial jury is still out on their overall performance and longevity.

BTW, I'm currently "toying" with S hi-rail trains and would consider selling all or part of my small, bona fide or virtually mint American and European livery HO "collection" at very affordable prices... if anybody out there is interested.

The problem is having the motor in the tender.Instead of the locomotive with the motor in the tender.Not only is it pulling its also has to push to.I like to know who came up with the *** back idea in the first place?

seaboardm2 posted:

Bob G (WNY) posted:

RickO posted:

What........no love for Tycos Chattanooga choo choo???  My brother had one.What a piece of junk that was LOL!

 

The problem is having the motor in the tender.Instead of the locomotive with the motor in the tender.Not only is it pulling its also has to push to.I like to know who came up with the *** back idea in the first place?

Being somewhat of a "purist", I agree..up to a point. 

The Austrian maker Roco  (and probably others) have long been making steam engines with a powered tender; the engine itself picks up current (as does the tender). The idea, I guess is to keep the underside between the boiler and frame "open".

I actually have a couple of those, and they look great and run really well.

BR 58:

BR 42:

The main drawback, as far as I can tell, is that the drivers and associated rods need to be very free-rolling,  and since the engine itself doesn't weigh much, sometimes those drivers will bind. It'll still run, but looks ridiculous doing so... 

Mark in Oregon

Strummer posted:

seaboardm2 posted:

Bob G (WNY) posted:

RickO posted:

What........no love for Tycos Chattanooga choo choo???  My brother had one.What a piece of junk that was LOL!

 

The problem is having the motor in the tender.Instead of the locomotive with the motor in the tender.Not only is it pulling its also has to push to.I like to know who came up with the *** back idea in the first place?

Being somewhat of a "purist", I agree..up to a point. 

The Austrian maker Roco  (and probably others) have long been making steam engines with a powered tender; the engine itself picks up current (as does the tender). The idea, I guess is to keep the underside between the boiler and frame "open".

I actually have a couple of those, and they look great and run really well.

BR 58:

BR 42:

The main drawback, as far as I can tell, is that the drivers and associated rods need to be very free-rolling,  and since the engine itself doesn't weigh much, sometimes those drivers will bind. It'll still run, but looks ridiculous doing so... 

Mark in Oregon

The thing to remember is Hi-Ho Tyco put the drive in the tender to be cheap to build.   It's one of the reasons the Mantua branding was resurrected in the 1980's, to separate products from the el-cheapo Tyco sets.  (It's going to be interesting now that Lionel's bought the Mantua line from Model Rectifier Corp.)

Roco, Fleishmann and Marklin did it to provide accuracy with the boiler and be able to use a larger motor as a lot of the European prototypes had the aforementioned "daylight" between the boiler and frame.  I haven't had a lick of trouble with drivers not being free rolling on my European tender drives.

Rusty

Remember also that Tyco and Mantua did share some common heritage.  The General had the motor in the tender for the same reason as the European steam locomotives described.  I have several.  My biggest challenge with those is not the casting although zinc rot has happened with a few, it's more the fact that the universal connecting the tender to the locomotive is missing on most by now.

Come to think of it, I have a Bachmann N scale General that has the same design.  It is a good runner for that era of Bachmann. 

Tyco made some good locomotives, the Chattanooga Choo Choo was not one of them. 

GG1 4877 posted:

Remember also that Tyco and Mantua did share some common heritage.  The General had the motor in the tender for the same reason as the European steam locomotives described.  I have several.  My biggest challenge with those is not the casting although zinc rot has happened with a few, it's more the fact that the universal connecting the tender to the locomotive is missing on most by now.

Tyco made some good locomotives, the Chattanooga Choo Choo was not one of them. 

. True.

In fact, my first (1970) steamer in HO was a Tyco Pacific; got it in Connecticut while living in Maine. Cost $19.98 I think.

My first (1971) steamer kit was also...a Tyco Pacific. I think the price was $12.98. Bought it from "America's Hobby Center" in NYC. I used to love their pulp flyers and catalogs. 

They both had the large white nylon gear and plastic cab, pilot and tender shell. Later I gained a much earlier Mantua with the enclosed gearbox and cast cab, pilot and tender body. I still have this.

Fun stuff...

Mark in Oregon

After almost 70 years, I still think a best buy in HO kits was Mantua's die cast Pacific.  I think it came out in 1950 or 51.  I built one when I was in high school.  It was the first time that I assembled valve gear.  It had a rave review in model Railroader while 24 inches was thought to be the desirable minimum for HO, this one could take a 14 inch curve (thanks to blind center drivers) - did Mantua take that idea from Lionel ?  

 With an owner who has retired back to Lionelville, the Pacific lives its comfortable retirement on display atop the living room bookcase.  

GG1 4877 posted:

Remember also that Tyco and Mantua did share some common heritage.  The General had the motor in the tender for the same reason as the European steam locomotives described.  I have several.  My biggest challenge with those is not the casting although zinc rot has happened with a few, it's more the fact that the universal connecting the tender to the locomotive is missing on most by now.

Come to think of it, I have a Bachmann N scale General that has the same design.  It is a good runner for that era of Bachmann. 

Tyco made some good locomotives, the Chattanooga Choo Choo was not one of them. 

The Mantua/Tyco General may have had the motor in the tender, but it drove a worm and spur gear on the locomotive.  That was due solely because of space constraints.  Same went for AHM/Rivarrossi 4-4-0's.  Most European outline models have the motor and drive concealed in the tender with nothing connected to the drivers.

The Chatanooga Choo Choo 0-8-0 had the whole ball of wax in the tender while the locomotive free-wheeled.  Under the Mantua label, the 0-8-0 had the motor in the locomotive and used the 2-6-2 tender:

In the 1960's, the Mantua branding was dropped in favor of the Tyco branding and products were indistinguishable from earlier Mantua.  It's usually referred to as the Tyco's "Red Box" era, the "Brown Box" era that began in the 1970's is when cheapening of the Tyco brand occurred.

A company called in the 80's Pemco also had an SP based 2-6-0 and a C&O based 4-8-2 with the drive mechanisms in the tender. The result on the 4-8-2 was a very odd looking Vanderbilt tender.

Rusty

Gee Rusty, is there anything about model railroading that you don't know? 

I for one appreciate all your knowledge. 

I remember when "Railroad Model Craftsman" had their monthly kit bash winner; I'm guessing this was late '70s-early '80s: someone had spliced together a couple of the Tyco "Big Six" 0-6-0s into a short line looking Decapod, using the Prairie tender. I thought it was the nicest looking thing I'd ever seen... 

Mark in Oregon