The United States Railroad Administration, USRA, was the Federal organization which ran and supervised the railroads in the US from 1918 till 1921. In an effort to streamline production of railroad materiel during the war years, the USRA standardized the designs of the most widely used locomotive classes. The majority of these projects were good results, and many were used right up till the end of the steam era in the States. The most commonly used of the 12 base models was the 0-8-0.
Okay, there's your brief history of the USRA 0-8-0 switchers and, besides the restoration and preservation of great vintage steam locos, we're seriously into real world railroad history. We're also into the lore, if you will, of model railroad locomotives and this particular IHC 23730 0-8-0 has some "lore" all it's own.
Over the years, most of the historic model railroad manufacturers produced locos with mysterious road numbers and/or questionable prototypical correctness. Besides causing us to waste a lot of time on research verifying this subterfuge, we can only assume their motivation to be strictly economic. Plastic injection molds and metal castings are expensive. To recover this cost AND to offer their products at an affordable cost, manufacturers often used the prototype tooling to also produce non-prototypical products. To make an already long story shorter, such is the case with our 23730. First, the AT&SF had no 0-8-0s allocated to it by the USRA and, to our knowledge, never had an 0-8-0 #556. Finally, Santa Fe bought its last new switcher in 1913, three years before the advent of the U.S.R.A. "Thereafter it converted Consolidations and Moguls into switchers, occasionally using boilers from Atlantics. None of the resulting engines could be considered modern: few of the 0-8-0s and none of the 0-6-0s, for instance, had outside valve gear. Santa Fe chose to put its money into locomotives that made money--long haul, over-the-road power--and either build switchers out of materials on hand or use locomotives that had been superseded in mainline service." (From "Guide to North American Steam Locomotives compiled by George H. Drury.) Still a great looking and great running locomotive.
FEATURES:
Upgraded C-8 Mint Condition with Good Original Box.
