Haha thanks @David Johnston, you saved me the trouble of searching for that post!
Agree with David, the final gear ratio of 14.77 is quite a bit slower than a "regular" postwar steam loco, which are usually geared around 10:1. Of course the scale Hudson is geared at 18:1, but it has MUCH larger driving wheels. Most people don't regard the 773 as a fast runner.
One mystery that I never solved... The switcher was introduced in '39 and that year's catalog touts the gear ratio as "20:1". Is this just marketing puffery, or did Lionel start out with a TWO-lead worm (which would have been 22:1), and then switch to the faster three-lead worm in the 1940s? I always look for scale switcher mechanisms in junk boxes at York, trying to prove this one way or another. Where's Bruce Greenberg when you need him? :-)
