AHM O-Scale IHB 0-8-0 Kit Build and 3-Rail Modification

[@railchief74]

Nice Job! It’s to bad they don’t make these kits anymore

[@ROBERTNABORNEY]

IHB was a NYC subsidiary..This is the most powerful 0-8-0 ever built - the class U-4a Numbers 101 to 103 built by the NYC's favorite supplier, Alco. Alco had the American rights to the Gresley Conjugated Valve Gear, used to actuate the third cylinder between the frames. The third cylinder, in addition to adding power, gave more steady torque than a two cylinder machine. Add the tender booster and you had a monster with enough grunt to push endless strings of cars over the Blue Island Hump at a relentless two miles per hour.

[@gacj2010]

WOW this is so great ... You have brought back History ... this is so great ... you are a kid again back in that day when this first came out ...Thats how I see it ... This is like Christmas

[@donaldlamendola8294]

What an amazing find! I had no idea AHM made O gauge kits. It's interesting the model was made for 2 rail which is not as common as the 3 rail contemporaries. That may have played a significant role as to why these kits had a short run, or were limited. Your modification was brilliant, and the model is stunning. Secondly, its amazing how you utilize a 3D printer for parts. I love how the bell Infront of the boiler is accented to the side, and linkage on the tender adds depth. Thank you Darth for sharing this magnificent video.

[@kriscarver-seaboyer9204]

I’ve always been intrigued by these models as they were the basis for many a kitbash of a heavy 2-8-0 as shown in the hobby mags. I’m pretty sure AHM offered them right up to the IHC days but probably not past the mid eighties.

[@moparnut6286]

Beautiful work on that 0-8-0

[@johnknippenberg-LandmarkYards]

I'm an O Gauge collector and runner, just found your channel. Very cool kit, first one I have seen. Lionel Berkshires have the 2nd and 3rd driver wheel flanges removed. Excellent job!

[@davevan8864]

I built one of those back in 1969. Bought the model at Woolco for $9.99 during their yearly train blow out sale. Nice work!

[@Benthetrainkid]

The way the tender has side rods almost reminds me of the 45-tonner rebuilt to S&C #102's tender at Museum of Transportation in Green Bay, WI

[@TheBassPlayer100]

Man that was great! I stared at that box art in the 60s and 70s for hours. Loved AHM products and catalog. I remember these kits but was never disciplined enough to put one together. Thanks for allowing me to relive a favorite memory! Just subscribed!

[@williamgottlieb8723]

In the 1970s, my family had that same box which contained an HO scale train set. It was the same size and the graphics on the front and sides were the same. The wording on the front described the contents, which were packaged in the standard AHM "True to blueprint" window boxes along with track and a power pack.

[@DarthSantaFe]

Might as well make full use of available packaging!

[@MygrandpasTrain]

I didn't know you worked on O scale too! I recently discovered O scale 2 rail and I like the vintage engines that have 7 pole motors and tons of weight!

[@DarthSantaFe]

My collection includes N, HO, O, G and Standard Gauge. :) Of all my stuff in O, my American Flyer prewar Royal Blue might be the most dense for weight. Not only is it all metal, but they filled every last space inside with solid lead!

[@stephendollahan425]

This is a very nice kit, and relatively easy to build if you take your time to to ensure proper fit. I've built 2 of them, one with the motorizing kit. I look forward to seeing how yours turns out.

[@wjsj69]

Fun kit and fun to watch you build it! I really wish you would've de-flanged the middle drivers tho, many prototypes did that bc having the rear drivers flangless throws off the geometry between the engine and tender in the curves. Your solution works tho, and it looks great 👍

[@JerseyBill-x9r]

Train archeology, a new discipline. You are the first professor in this field. lol, Great video, Jersey Bill

[@varus5596]

Hi Darth, a really good video here. I have two of these, one RTR from the factory, and one in kit form that I haven’t built. I thought the plastic parts may have distorted over time, so I was reluctant to start. But from your video it seems to go together well. I have a motorising kit as well, but it was in water at some stage, and the zinc plated weights have some corrosion, but the motor has a lot of corrosion, though it turns by hand. I already bought a much bigger NWSL replacement motor, as the original motor seemed really small. The assembly comments you made will help a lot. And I’ll photograph the transfers first so I can make decals if I need. You inspired me to make up my own kit …)

[@DarthSantaFe]

Cool, if those decals come out well I’ll definitely be interested in getting a set!

[@varus5596]

No problem with the decals, but it will probably be two months or so. I plan to follow the IHB prototype design of the main tender emblem in the slightly squared ellipse. I think Rivarossi simplified it into a circle design, but I need to check.

[@DarthSantaFe]

@@varus5596 Yeah, I did notice the decals looked different from prototype photos, so I wouldn’t be surprised if they were wrong.

[@varus5596]

I looked for an e-mail address for you, in Community etc. But sometime I need to have a way to contact you for an address for the decals. No hurry here. But KZbinrs are different in their approach to contact details. Decals are for free to you, my contribution to your channel. I’m in Australia.

[@NPFIlms-LionelTrains]

This is great! I've got the exact same kit and was wondering how I should go about doing a conversion.

[@1471SirFrederickBanbury]

Great job as usual. Interesting that you ground off the back flanges instead of the middle ones, but if it works, it works.

[@DarthSantaFe]

I was originally going to do the middle flanges, but after doing some testing with the plastic wheels and keeping the springs undern consideration, it actually worked better in this case to remove the rear flanges.

[@leverettrailfan5414]

I've seen these around online, but the difficulty and price associated with finding a motorizing kit has kept me from acquiring one so far. That said, I am the proud owner of a different Rivarossi O scale model that also happens to be a 3 rail conversion. I purchased an A-A C-Liner set at a show one year that had been heavily modified. The shells were more or less stock (although repainted), but everything else was modified. They were bashed into the passenger variant with a B + A-1-A wheel arrangement, using Lionel horizontal motor F3 trucks with can motor conversions in front and dummy SD trucks in back. An E-Unit is located in one unit, and a 2-conductor tether runs to the other unit to provide power to the motor. Both units have directional headlights and a blinking warning light on the roof. A whistle relay was wired up to the E-Unit, though at some point I want to convert them to conventional reversing and add an operating horn. If I have a chance to get a powering kit for one of these locomotives, I'll definitely seriously consider it- the Rivarossi O scale models are very attractive.

[@DarthSantaFe]

That C-Liner set should run forever with those Lionel trucks! The original Rivarossi chassis was a single truck drive with their smallest motor, and I’ve heard it could barely pull anything.

[@041919501]

I saw that model many years ago you did an amazing job 👍👍

[@RailRide]

I have a less intricate 2-rail/3-rail conversion in my future, but loosely related to yours. Earlier this year, I acquired a UK Class 33 diesel made by Lima, to go with a small collection of UK passenger cars also made by the same company. My planned conversion will employ a pair of standard pickup rollers (part number 2328-173), and an Electric RR Co Mini-Commander command board. Though _really_ expensive considering what I'm putting it in, there's plenty of room inside the loco and it will make for a really neat and highly oddball conversion. While this a fairly lightweight single-motor unit, the cars it will be pulling (Lima's Mark-1 UK coaches) are also very free-rolling, albeit with wheelsets that don't tolerate irregularities in 3-rail track very well (I run 072 curves on an around-the-walls loop), so I plan on cutting discs out of thin clear plastic and cementing them to the back faces of these wheels to act as flange extenders. Oh yeah, somewhere along the line I amassed a collection of almost all of AHM's O scale freight cars (3-4 roadnames across four body types), but those will be pulled by one of my less-exotic 3-rail locos :D. In the midst of this activity I found an Ebay vendor who has conversion couplers made by AHM to address their funky hook couplers (which are the same as those used on Lima and Rivarossi's European O scale equipment) With regards to your 3D-printed coupler, I'd suggest looking into modifying the knuckle portion to make it a little thinner. While your present design works, it looks unusually tight-fitting, which brings to mind an issue I had with Menards' first-gen plastic trucks, that being their couplers were mostly so tight they almost couldn't mate with each other, much less slide vertically relative to each other. I found that slightly thinning the far end of the inner face of the knuckle and slightly enlarging the enclosed area behind it greatly improved their ability to couple with each other, not to mention no longer derailing connected cars in curves. If you google "Tuning my Menard's 24-Flatcar Set", you'll find a post I made in 2015 on O Gauge Railroading's forum detailing (with photos) the fixes I made to early Menards plastic couplers. You'll notice their "before" condition (other than being 'operating') had similar proportions to your design.

[@DarthSantaFe]

I'm sure the conversion will go well! As for my coupler, I might re-print it to a better size eventually, but for now, it is working fine even if the fit is tight. No derailments so far!

[@ohiovalleyrailfan]

A very nice build video, maybe in future this engine could get a larger motor and maybe a blunami board for both direction control and smoother running.

[@johnbeck3270]

Loved the vedio! I have the “Casey Jones” that AHM produced about the same time as this one. I always thought they should have produced models of the “General” as well as the “Jupiter” and the “119”. Someone did produce a 1/25 th scale model of I believe the “General”, that was a nice kit. I’m going to have fun with the “Casey Jones” as some of the smaller detail parts have gone the way of un assembled kits. It’s too bad The only difference inthe 2 kits was the 0-8-0 kit came with metal wheelsets whereas the “Casey Jones” had plastic wheelsets and were to be replaced with sets included in the “power” upgrade kit, I think there were other parts in the power kit that replaced plastic counterparts in the original kit. The real irony was to make the “Casey Jones” an operating model, the power kit had to be added as the kit was assembled. So if you built the kit as a static model, you couldn’t upgrade it.

[@DarthSantaFe]

This 0-8-0 also had all plastic wheels as a static model, so the metal wheels all came from the powering kit. The Casey Jones would be another interesting one to build!

[@TroublesomeSlateTruck]

Good Job. 👍🏼

[@williamsantangelo]

Very Nice

[@chicagolandrailroader]

That's really impressive!

[@eanferrell]

Lord Santa Fe, Very entertaining build video, even though I'm an HO Scaler. It's unfortunate with the decals. I make my own by downloading the images and then tweaking the images to size with Microsoft Publisher, and then printing on decal paper.

[@Zebrails]

"Like" number 2-8-4... John

[@austinbrodzinski4444]

Check K4 Decals for the decals, they might have something!

[@parts323]

Hey, I have one of those. Mine is 2-rail O-scale with the motor kit. I got it at a train show in Ohio for $20.00.

[@DarthSantaFe]

Good deal! That’s way less than I paid for mine, but even then I still feel like I got it for an alright price.

[@lorettacaputo6997]

I enjjoyed the step by step assembly of this kit and some of the modifications that you did. When you got to the point of having the engine pull some cars, I was struck by the lettering on the New Haven gondola. Was that a factory made car? I would think that the N should be over the H. Was that done on both sides of the car?

[@DarthSantaFe]

Yes, it's a factory painted car from Menards. Are you saying you've never heard of the "Hew Naven" railroad? :O Their seasonal trains are good for the price, but they don't really put too much into accuracy.

[@lorettacaputo6997]

@@DarthSantaFe I was a member of the New Haven Historical Society and modeled many New Haven diesels and rolling stock, but I never saw an NH lettering to a piece of equipment with the H on top of the N.

[@DarthSantaFe]

@@lorettacaputo6997 Yeah, someone definitely messed that one up. I haven’t heard of Hew Naven either.

[@lorettacaputo6997]

@@DarthSantaFe Maybe it will be eventually be a collectible and be worth some $$$ in the future. Some post war Lionel pieces had printing errors.

[@robertknight4672]

I'm just curious how did you come to the decision that the rear wheel was the best one to file the flange off of? I know a lot of Lionel steam locomotives to this day their Center drivers typically don't have any flanges.

[@DarthSantaFe]

After looking things over, I determined that it wouldn’t sit well on curves with blind center drivers since the rear axle is lightly sprung. It also would’ve taken twice as much work to do those.

[@gacj2010]

WHat A Beauty

[@WWIIREBEL]

I actually HAVE this kit!. But..finding the motorizing kit is like finding a needle in a haystack , and when you do find one, it's expensive as heck. GRRRRRR

[@DarthSantaFe]

Yeah, this one wasn't cheap either. Hope you can find one of those motorizing kits for a decent price sometime!

[@WWIIREBEL]

@@DarthSantaFe I hope so too! . There is a train show scheduled for November near me ,so i'm praying,lol.

[@milissathreatt8014]

Could've left the old decals on to make it look like it was used right up into 1952 when the 0-8-0's were retired

[@DarthSantaFe]

I’ll leave that to the ones who like to do weathering. :)

[@boxcarthehusky420]

You need some 2 rail track

[@williamskirvin2211]

Try K4 decals in Dayton Ohio for your decals!

[@DarthSantaFe]

@@williamskirvin2211 They only have freight car decals for IHB from what I’m seeing, but thanks for the suggestion!

[@raymondleggs5508]

The rivarossi german, French and Italian stuff is even more uncommon over here

[@ernestimken6969]

Three rail is O gauge. Two rail is O scale.

[@DarthSantaFe]

Yes, this was a 2-rail O scale model which I converted to work on 3-rail O gauge track.

[@raymondleggs5508]

3 cylinder loco