Picked up this Lionel Santa Fe type T-1b 2-8-4 Berkshire locomotive Class 4193 a few days ago for what I thought was a good price.
I was told that none of the functions worked for the locomotive. I took it home and sure enough nothing worked. I did a quick reset of the locomotive and it turned out everything worked fine and the locomotive was fully functional.
The T-1a and T-1b Berkshire locomotives were built for the Boston and Maine in 1928-1929. The first batch produced were the T-1a's and the second batch produced were the T-1b's. The big differences between the two were the sand dome on the T-1a was more triangular shaped while the T-1b was more rectangular in shape. Also the T-1b's had a larger tender with 6-wheel bogies while the T-1a's tender had 4-wheel bogies. This site in the link below has pictures of both the T-1a and T-1b Berkshires.
https://sites.google.com/site/.../b-m-class-r-s-and-t
In the link above there is a nice picture of #4020 T-1b which Lionel's (formerly K-Line) model is a very good representation of. All the details are spot on. I tried to match the angle of the photo of Lionel's model to that of #4020 to make comparisons easier.
In 1945 the AT&SF was having a power shortage due to the war effort. The Boston and Main sold 7 Berkshire locomotives to the Santa Fe. Unfortunately, the locomotives that the B&M sold to the Santa Fe were the type T-1a and not the type T-1b. Thus, the sand dome on the model is not the same shape that appeared on the actual Santa Fe 4193 class locomotives. However, the T-1a and T-1b locomotives are very close in appearance and for me it is not a big deal. The tender seems to be accurate for Santa Fe #4198 which is the sister in the same class.
https://www.railarchive.net/randomsteam/atsf4198.htm
I did not pick up one of these when they first came because I was told and the catalog illustration was for a similar, but different A-1 type Berkshire used by the Boston and Albany. However, from the pictures B&M #4020 it is clear the the Lionel model is of the type T-1b Berkshire.
