All the talk about the forthcoming Vision Big Boy made me nostalgic to run my JLC Big Boy. People speculate that the new Big Boy will use "the old tooling" and that will be fine with me: the JLC is just a splendid loco, very detailed and quite handsome. And it has quite good sound despite its age, great pull and wonderful slow speed control. I've already asked my LHS to order me the new one, but this puppy is a very fine loco in its own right, despite is approaching obsolescence . . .
-->When I looked at the log card was surprised to see it had been a year and a half since I had run it: scale articulated locos will run on my layout - I laid out and tested clearances when I built my "big loop" with this very locomotive on the track to test each section I built, just to make sure - but their three-inch front stick out on 72" and 84" curves looks silly, so I seldom run them. In fact, I've encroached the track with buildings and trees: I had to remove two buildings and fourteen trees to get the clearance for this puppy's boiler to run today. Here is is, freshly lubed and checked and pulling 39 PFE and SF reefers with a caboose. My big loop comes out of "the mountains" and loops around behind main-street and back down through a tunnel and under itself before heading off for "the plains" -- this train is long enough that I can actually get the loco and caboose in one photo (#3).
