I wish I could say this was like an auto road test, with two parallel tracks, a dropped checkered flag, and push buttoms
holding power from wide open throttled ZW's released, but..no such luck, since that is not the reason I dug these two out.
Nor will I be doing the same with their tenders coupled back to back, and aimed in opposide directions. I was looking for a tender for the 2-8-0 Lionel kitbash I did, without having to scratchbuild it. And I got to visually comparing these locos (maybe timely since Weaver is closing). First the tenders: they are very similar ins size and appearance: and neither has the rivet pattern of the Alco version I need, but the Wms is almost a plastic version of Weaver's. They also look
like taller tenders but very similarly shaped (to each other and the Alco's). The Weaver has a sloping back coal board as did the Alco, but it is very solid metal and not as receptive to modification. The Weaver tender is also is much more finely detailed... ladders, handrails, etc., than the Wms. plastic ones, which maybe should be filed off and replaced with wire. Which I would do if modifying it with a sloped coalboard and taking maybe a half inch?? out of the height all the way around. It has no backup light, and I would need to add that. The Wms. tender wins the bash choice, IF after apart, a Vanderbilt can be fabricated on its chassis without radical changes. Its body would then go on a fabricated or bashed frame as tender for the kitbash.
Having found a possible tender source, I looked at the engines, which I have thought would make classic shortline power. Both of these locos are heavy metal (do not drop on your foot) engines, but, again, detail is cast into the Wms., and
added on, generally, on the Weaver. A distinct difference is the apparent age of prototype of the two. I would think a
shorter, lower, earlier style of tender (maybe not off the General!) might be appropriate for the Wms., even without a cabbage stack, or large box kerosene headlight. It looks like an earlier loco, with its dome, cab, and stack shapes, certainly than the Weaver. The Weaver also has much more valve gear detailing than the appropriately simpler Wms.
They do look like shortlne power you might find in a weathered and sagging engine house, on a road visited by Beebe and
Clegg. The Wms. maybe the first acquired, as a jack-of-all-trades, the Weaver Baldwin as bigger freight power back
when business once boomed.
