The Quite Questionable Conrail Steam Saga

[@joemayo8254]

I like to think Mehano originally wanted this to be a model of the Blue Comet but learned the Central Railroad of New Jersey had been absorbed into Conrail and created this, instead.

[@Alerrecks]

Loved it. Your inflections and commentary kept me engaged the whole way through. My only suggestion would be as you said, a proper mic as the audio sounded slightly muffled. Still super fun, I look forward to more!

[@STho205]

The Mantua tooling dates back to about 1966 when Tyco went with a plastic boiler and working center mounted...happy to see ya...working headlight. Typically packaged in Santa Fe and usually #99. My first HO locomitive in 1968 was that slopeback in black. If that is one with tender drive and a free rolling boiler loco, then yes the running tooling is late 70s along with Tyco Chatanooga Choo Choo 0-8-0. However the body, is mid 60s. The tender and cab is late 50s as the older version of this was a die cast boiler with unlighted smokebox top headlight...but the plastic tender & cab in before 1965 and a diecast tender/cab in the 50s...if I recall.

[@lilianaangelesyttfr4451]

Can you make a video about the Jim beam g gauge grant 197 locomotive? Please make a video about this locomotive please 😢

[@BCslostsoul]

At one time, model manufacturers would put any paint scheme on a locomotive if they thought it would sell. I grew up in the 1970s and can remember seeing the Conrail pacific in an ad in one of the model train magazines at the time. Santa Fe's red and silver warbonnets seemed to get put on everything. I can also remember a debate that raged for a while after a decal maker released a set of decals for a Penn Central steam locomotive.

[@OriginalBongoliath]

This. Mainline manufacturers were stuck in the toy train mindset. You were lucky if they decided to try and make a realistic model for the time and AHM dominated in HO doing that (B&O Big Sixes, C&O Hudsons/Pacific/Mikados, Southern Ps4's, RF&P Berkshires, etc.). Your only other option for realistic model steam was brass (not cheap and finicky in their own right).

[@robertknight4672]

Lifelike was doing that up for a while. I have a lifelike f40ph in Union Pacific paint scheme. I don't think the Union Pacific owned any.

[@BCslostsoul]

I hadn't even thought of those but you are absolutely right. I even have a life like f40 painted for Burlington Northern.

[@Davidsladky135]

I had all 3 at one time, the good pld days 😢

[@alexanderpoirier3350]

Very well done and enjoyable, especially with the curse towards Lionel! Fun fact: the T1 WAS supposed to be painted up in Conrail livery in real life at one point but that fell through. I was wondering if perhaps you would be interested in doing a review on the Roundhouse ‘Harriman’ locomotive squad; a 4-4-2, a 2-6-2 and a 2-8-0. All use the same tooling (I think) though with minor boiler length size adjustments and various wheel arrangements. While nice-looking, they do not really resemble the actual Harriman 2-8-0 engines in real life with their boiler design and headlight configuration.

[@ASILLYTRAINBOY2011]

Make a conrail dda40x

[@LMR78]

Next: The Conrail Mallet

[@thatonecaledonian812]

For the pacific, the number 3180 is also on the great northern variant for the pacific and mikado variant

[@Salvacottontail]

I like the reasoning on the third is just "funny"

[@Alerrecks]

💀

[@damiencx5002]

Love it 😀 Fantasy Conrail steam loco. Im actually tempting to maybe get one one day. The Mehano steam loco's are actually not too bad, I own a few and they run quite well. , enjoy your videos and your humour 😂👍 🇦🇺

[@jetseekers]

I wanna do this but with Amtrak. Amtrak needs more steam

[@CoalChrome]

Credit to Lionel that was actually a proposal that would've gone through had Ross Rowland not burn- I mean had the roundhouse fire not burned 2101

[@GrandMerc89]

I've always found it ironic when steam locomotives were destroyed by roundhouse fires.

[@rennethjarrett4580]

The other oddity is the Amtrak very large diesel engines in O gauge. Amtrak as far as I know is the passenger train company brand, and Conrail was the freight line. But as in your latest Lionel video, it's for the fun of the hobby not so much all of the realism.

[@BringMayFlowers]

Mehano has an interesting relationship with Conrail. I bought a Santa Fe-styled N-scale RSD-15 in Conrail Blue that they made in the '80s because I accidentally modeled it in Blender before I knew about the Mehano 3070, and I know for sure the Conrail RSD-15s didn't look like that, I just thought it would look good (and it did, though I added some pantographs just to be different, converting it to pure electric). I don't know what Mehano was thinking besides just Santa Fe being a bigger user of them so they wouldn't need to make a new tooling and Conrail's blue livery being the more iconic. However, I will say Conrail blue steam isn't necessarily out of the question -- the Lionel/Broadway Limited Reading T1 in Conrail blue was based on (read: *is*) a real painting done in June 1978 by the same guy who designed the American Freedom Train livery, Bob Lorenz. It didn't look like any of these, though, especially that 0-4-0 with its mish-mash of PRR roof, PC numbers, and white smokebox front but blue stack and rest of the smokebox. I actually think Bob's CR steam livery looks really, really good, one of the best steam liveries on this continent, personally, and I'm thinking of doing a 2-8-0 or something up in it for my future-Conrail ca. 2050 (where steam is used when electric can't be because oil is $325 a barrel) layout.

[@asteroidrules]

In a weird way I think Chessie is to blame for this. They ran a steam powered excursion called the "Chessie steam special" that had an old Reading T-1 locomotive fully painted up in the then-modern Chessie colors. Almost immediately everyone who made model trains started putting Chessie livery on steam locomotives (and almost none of them used either the correct livery or the correct prototype locomotive), I think it may have started a trend, and I know for certain that the Lionel Conrail steamer is a reference to that because it's using the Reading T-1 as its prototype.

[@mrjsanchez1]

I wish they had those crazy Conrail steam Locos in N scale! I model Conrail and run actual 1:1 scale trains on Conrail Shared Assets in New Jersey.

[@cobramerciless]

I believe broadway limited is dropping a Reading T-1 in Conrail blue soon!

[@JChristiansenLuckythebrony2222]

To be fair to the Conrail Pacific, both Conrail and the USRA were examples of times the US nationalized at least some of it's railroads. Also Mantua _totally_ just did a Conrail for the LOLs, so one there was like "haha funny blue steam locomotive go choo choo".

[@raymondleggs5508]

I like blue locomotives