12-21-2008, 12:14 AM
Your chances of finding the exact loco for which you're looking are, in my estimation, nil. BN, BNSF, and BCRail were all created after the demise of regular-service steam, and any reasonably close model of a Santa Fe loco that I can think of is BIG. That leaves you with only Canadian National, and, as any Canadian modeller can tell you, nobody makes an accurate and affordable model of a Canadian steamer, save for the TH&B version of the Broadway NYC Hudson, something, I think, that's not generally available and wasn't that good of a deal.
In my opinion, your best bet would be to buy a painted, but unlettered Bachmann Spectrum Consolidation. These locos are available with DCC and sound. Skip the smoke - it leaves a residue on the rails that's a poor conductor of electricity and it doesn't look very realistic, anyway. The Bachmann loco is a great runner, good puller, and has good detail, and it will run on your 22" radius. I have seven of them and I'd buy more of them if I needed more locos. If you want to do quite a bit of modification, these locos can be converted to fairly accurate models of several classes of CNR 2-8-0s, but my suggestion is to merely letter it for CNR and enjoy it as it is. Or, letter it for one of your other favourites - nobody here is going to report you for modelling something that never was - I have a basement full of that kind of stuff.
I modified four of mine to look like this: (click on the photo to see the front end - I don't know why it's cut-off here)
[album]164[/album]
The other three will be re-built as CNR locos, and will involve a lot of modifications.
Wayne
In my opinion, your best bet would be to buy a painted, but unlettered Bachmann Spectrum Consolidation. These locos are available with DCC and sound. Skip the smoke - it leaves a residue on the rails that's a poor conductor of electricity and it doesn't look very realistic, anyway. The Bachmann loco is a great runner, good puller, and has good detail, and it will run on your 22" radius. I have seven of them and I'd buy more of them if I needed more locos. If you want to do quite a bit of modification, these locos can be converted to fairly accurate models of several classes of CNR 2-8-0s, but my suggestion is to merely letter it for CNR and enjoy it as it is. Or, letter it for one of your other favourites - nobody here is going to report you for modelling something that never was - I have a basement full of that kind of stuff.
I modified four of mine to look like this: (click on the photo to see the front end - I don't know why it's cut-off here)
[album]164[/album]
The other three will be re-built as CNR locos, and will involve a lot of modifications.
Wayne