@atlpete posted:Yes please pictures, and what kind of drive does it have?
Less well-healed O scale modelers used those AHM IHB kits to model their prototype of choice, I loved seeing them in MR and RMC back in the day (60-70’s) given a new, remotely accurate, steam locomotive class model might as well have been a new Cadillac to me. The smart/flush bash-builders then though did drop the $ to get a decent drive (usually CLW conversion kits though there were others using retrofitted Hines or A&S chassis etc) to replace those stock AHM/Rivarossi HO drives which were/are "Flintstone-ish" but would work as long as you managed them and didn’t expect them to run like a decent CLW, AN or KTM or sadly even the PRC stuff.
Artful Dodger, 700E and Woodsworks nailed the rest of the aspects of using this model as a bash basis, the prototype booster equipped IHB 0-8-0 U4a were a numerically small (only 3 of them) class engine based on the heavy USRA design, albeit this one on steroids, given its massive boiler diameter, tender booster and three piston cylinders. Big engine, small wheelbase. A kit bashers dream, but the frame and drives were and still are always “the tall pole in the tent.”
Note though, for that very brief period back then if they had an HO version, they did an O version too? How cool was that? I've read in one of the Vane Jones era O Gauge News, that AHM was seriously contemplating reproducing their heavyweight and lightweight passenger cars in O scale, but then, apparently sanity/reality returned to the production planning meeting and ..... you know
great info
