I have 5 Mehano/IHC locos in my collection, 4 of which are steamers. They are all from the "Presidents choice Insiders collection" which is actually a grocery brand that sold HO trains sets in their respected grocery stores in the 1990s and early 2000's at Xmas time. I have the 4-6-2 pacific in a special semi Streamline CP shell that is painted similar to your custom job. It's gorgeous and since it's from the late 1990's it's motor is extremely powerful and it pull 8 Rivarossi/AHM heavyweight coaches with not a single issue. I also have a 4-6-4 Hudson (CNR 5702), 4-8-2 Mountain (CNR 6060) and a Santa fe 2-10-2 (CNR 5100) all fantastic runners!
I own several locomotives that were sold by AHM (IHC’s predecessor) these locomotives still perform flawlessly. These particular locomotives were manufactured by Rivarossi. The only problem Is, they won’t run on code 83 rail because of the deep flanges.
As it happens, I've been experimenting with grinding down the flanges on old Rivarossi locos for that exact purpose. I'll make a video on it eventually.
I have a couple of the Mehano 2-8-2 Mikado's, one I got back in the mid 80's is the famous #4501 Southern Crescent and the other is a L&N light Mikado. Both are smokers and the #4501 is my favorite engine. Cheers from eastern TN
I love the way my IHC steamers run and it's not so hard to add little details to match your favorite railroad. I model the DL&W and I still need to get 2 more of these Pacifics. Then I'll have enough... yeah right. Also, really diggin' the into and outros of this video!
I was waiting to add my own bits of information which most people often miss about these engines, but you absolutely NAILED it!! Perfect video chronicling this model, and yours looks fantastic! (Promise me you will paint the handrails though!)
Thanks! Painting the handrails is definitely on the list of things to do, along with adding a cab interior, changing the bell, and adding a working front coupler.
I have one of those but it is lettered for New Haven. I don’t run mine very much anymore but I still love it even though it is not really detailed. One thing I did to mine though which I think really improved it was I removed that molded in coupler and modified it to have a kadee on the front. Making it useful for switching or doing run around type operations
Great video going over this interesting locomotive. I have 2 of these. One by AHM and one by IHC. I noticed a significant step up in the details of the IHC over the AHM. Both run great, just seems the IHC is a bit better. The AHM locomotive is a Southern Pacific in a Daylight livery. The other is Southern Railway and is The Tennessean.
This is a great video! I’ve always LOVED the IHC locomotives! They just run so smoothly and quietly and still hold up pretty well to this day, and those shiny pistons on them are amazing imo! I love the USRA 4-6-2s, but I personally prefer the Mikados. I own one in the Durango & Silverton scheme (even if it’s horribly inaccurate to the real deal), and it performs spectacularly and instantly became my favorite HO scale locomotive (mainly because the D&SNG is my favorite railroad). Anyway I loved the video, and great work on the modifications to the Pacific! I would never have the patience to repaint a locomotive as greatly as you did!
Excellent work and research! I recently inherited my father's trains, in which he had 3 IHC steam locos (2 Pacific and 1 Mogul). I never owned IHC locos and thus not sure of the quality or history behind them. After doing my own research, I was not able to decern when these were manufactured and if they are decent runners. Your video helped answer a number of questions. Well done.
I bought a AHM 4-6-2 in Southern paint at Woolco in New Orleans. After some small adjustments it is running. Interesting history of model production in the 70's.
Great stuff. My first steam loco was an IHC Pacific, purchased around '97. It got knocked off the train table in about '99 and I was so upset I just put the wreckage in the box and hid it away. I couldn't bring myself to triage it! There may have been a few tears... Flash forward 'till 2022 - something made me think of my old train stuff all packed away for 20 years, so I opened up the boxes and was delighted at all the beautiful things I had picked out 2 decades earlier, most of it in good shape! I examined the 4-6-2 and realized it wasn't really that badly damaged! In fact, I tested it and it ran perfectly! There was no damage to the drive at all! I spent an afternoon gluing, filling and painting, and if you saw it you might never guess it had ever been damaged. I love it, and I've been making a point of picking up some other IHC (Mehano) steam loco models when I spot 'em at a favourable price. I now have, besides my beloved resurrected Pacific, a Hudson (from one of the legendary President's Choice grocery store train sets - really nice!), a very attractive Mogul, a Mikado which bears a STRONG resemblance to the Pacific (I've added some scratch built detail and minor shape alterations to make it look more like the CN Mikados I've referenced) and I've just closed a deal to buy a VERY handsome IHC 4-8-2 Mountain with the elegant long tender at a bargain price! Totally stoked about that! BTW your CP paintwork is magnificent! It just looks smashing! Love the grey boiler and black smokebox, quite a switch from the usual!
Great video. Love the "model genealogy" detective work and seeing your enhancements of this model workhorse. (I am in the midst of converting one to Nova Scotia's Dominion Atlantic livery.) I also admire your joyful cinematography of the running model!
4:56 I think the Chessie scheme was supposed to be a representation of the Chessie Steam Special. In the late 1970s Chessie repainted Reading 2101 (one of the locomotives that had pulled the American Freedom Train) in a version of the Chessie System livery to celebrate the B&O's 150th anniversary. For obvious reasons a lot of model train manufacturers wanted to sell models of it, but for unknown reasons pretty much all of them got some details wrong, in this case they got both the model of locomotive and the color scheme wrong.
I have a number of these engines. Like you said, they are very reliable. You talk about paint schemes though- I have a Pacific in B&O's 1927 olive green scheme and it is awesome.
There is one important spotting feature the distingishes the era of the models. The type of flanges on them. Okay, this is were it gets really confusing and unpredictable. Oh hell, if you can figure this out let me know! My head is now spinning just thinking about it. The code 100 flanges and the NMRA standard flanges seem to change from one manufacturer to another. Another fun fact is the Chattanooga infamous 0-8-0 (its really the 2-8-2, but they tried to trick us - hah take that tyco!)
The 70's Model Power and Like Like versions of the Mehano Pennsylvania A-3 and USRA 4-6-2 had honest NMRA 0.025" wheel flanges (but not he tender of the A-3, which had Rivarossi style split plastic wheels). I still have a set of 4-6-2 drivers and trucks with the small flanges in my scrap parts bins.
I just discovered your channel with the 2-6-2 conversion. Comments were turned off but I wanted to say that was a very nice conversion and a beautiful engine when finished. Your narration is very good and the humor is a cool addition.
Thank you! I learned a lot from that project. I had comments turned off in the early days of the channel because I thought it would take too much of my time to moderate them. I was pleasantly surprised at how nice everyone was when I finally turned them on.
I'm also a model railroader, from Canada. I have that same engine as Canadian Pacific 2468 and it has never caused me any problems. Beautiful paint job on your CP 2223.
I think Model Power was bought by Lionel Trains last year cause I saw some HO buildings that were now under the Lionel HO brand. Meaning Lionel could make scale detail versions of Model Power’s engines with railsounds, smoke, electronic control system, and few other things that Lionel puts into their O gauge trains.
Lionel's history with HO is sketchy at best, but it'll be interesting to see what they do. They did make some interesting diecast locos with sound a while back.
The IHC offerings were the best of the run, being at the end of the development...25 years ahead. The Pacific and Mikado details are much cruder than the Mogul and 440 that they offered (best of the lot in every way). Plain black paint is best. Compared to the unprototypic Rivorossi (deep flange) and Mantua (tiny cab) versions of a Pacific....these are pretty good models if viewed at distance. They run great...which is a big advantage over the competition mentioned.
I just recently bought one of the IHC versions after having killed two Life Like versions (Smoky 3 pole motors, nylon gears, etc - One of them was the original, original Atlantic Coast Line one from 1973 with offcenter decals) but the IHC version is silky smooth and a great hauler. Lovely paint job on that! Which satin clear coat did you use for the finish? Looks especially good in fitting with the scenery and color palette of your railroad! I've repainted my previous one into N&W colors, but the one that I recently obtained just happened to be N&W already - I wonder just how many schemes they offered outside the catalog, as I've not seen it documented elsewhere, but it's definitely a factory job.
Thanks! The clear coat I used was Tamiya TS-79 Semi-Gloss Clear, the same stuff I used on the passenger cars. It's one of my favorites of the many spray clear coats I've tried.
One of the things I remember was Walthers advertised a decal set for a Chessie steam locomotive. This was before Chessie had done so or had plans to do so. Apparently Chessie liked the idea so much they copied the Walthers decal on Reading 2102 for a couple of years for the New River rambles. Talk about life imitating art.
And all of them (back from the early '70s onward) were produced by Mehanotehnika (toy factory from Yugoslavia) for IHC, AHM, Life like, Model power etc... - those were all mainly trading companies and not manufacturers.... Mehanotehnika factory changed it's name in the late '80s to Mehano (located in Slovenia after split of Yugoslavia).
I have had and still have a few. I use em for base’s of more prototypical locos. I found it works great driver wise for a wide range of Anthractie road locos and as a heavy mod stand in for a NYC K11 (try finding a browser one for under 100 today) my only complaint is tender swapping is difficult with all these locos.
@@BlaxlandRidge3 more so a lot of tenders are too short, draw bar on tender, or is Bachmann. Also some of the pacifics are bar on loco and some are bar on tender, depending on year made.
@@wilks3620 Thanks! I got the music from Epidemic Sound. You can listen to it on RU-vid, but you need a subscription to ES to use it in videos. Here's the song from the beginning: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-_DPpmHvsWN4.html Here's the song from the end: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-zKJGxHvjcSI.html
I hate to spoil the love of USRA WWII design, but the Southern Pacific NEVER owned a USRA version and most of their Pacifics, Mikados, 0-6-0's, 0-8-0's and 2-8-0's were of their own design and vanderbilt style oil or coal tenders. To make it worst, they never painted a 4-6-2 or 2-8-2 in the full Daylight scheme. I had the Daylight Mikado and it ran bueatifully for over 20 years! Then the driving gears snapped and it was considered 'scrapped'. I still have her and hopes to get her rebuilt (Becoming an Athearn or Bachmann version lol) someday.
I have a couple of the older no metal hand rails and that work well! In the middle of repaints on all them as well. Only issue is the bells fair poorly. I was going to ask if you are a Dr Who fan based on the Bad Wolf fishing trawler, but then saw the Tardis. :) all the best and great video!
Thanks! Yes, I'm definitely a Whovian (and a Trekkie, and a fan of sci-fi in general). Some of these locos (mostly earlier ones, it seems) had plastic bells, while later ones like mine had brass bells. I'll probably replace the bell on mine with a more detailed one from another loco eventually.
@@michaelramsey81 I need to loo into some after market bells then, good idea! Me too when it comes to Trek! I’m old so watched the original series, in reruns not live, before any other trek was out though did watch the ANIMATED SERIES as it was broadcast. Really am enjoying Strange New Worlds! Take care!
My model railroad club has one of the original life like ones, we mainly just have it siting in the roundhouse nowadays due to it not running to well and being pretty weak
I have one of those but mine is for FEC. I did some mods to mine such as fill old headlight and moved to high mount and also moved bell and replaced with a more realistic bell
I was a little tickled when you mentioned the mikado with the same body shell. I own one of these, but its listed under the bachmann label and has the backmann name molded into the chassis
My favorite which i plan to have 1 day is a model of reading- blue mountain and northerns #425 on the lehigh gorge line in PA. Its a very nove blue color with white stars on the wheel centers.
I actually considered painting this one as #425. Ended up deciding not to because I wanted to keep the tender lettering. I might get another one at some point and do that.
@@michaelramsey81 425 is going for her 1472. Thats the required inspection every 15 years or 1472 operating hours. Same for Strasburg #90. Hopefully 425 is put back in service. They have to tear it down inspect and rebuild it. Hopefully it is done in a timely fashion. I beleave they use the Altoona shops for 425.
I have an older Canadian pacific one with a boiler that came painted grey and a marron tender. For the price their pretty sold little locos, and rival most of Bachmann’s offerings in terms of performance. Definitely worth investing in the older models! One thing that I found helped with the slow-speed running on my example was removing the old bulb, as it seems it was drawing a ridiculous amount of current. I haven’t installed an LED yet, so I don’t know if that will hinder the performance, but seeing as most modern LEDs draw very little current, I can’t really see that being an issue.
I didn't really notice a difference on mine, but I definitely wouldn't be surprised if removing the old bulb did help. When you install an LED, be sure to add a resistor so it doesn't burn out (I usually use a 1K, but you might be able to get away with one as low as 600 ohms).
@@michaelramsey81 Thanks for the tip, you just saved me an LED (maybe more), as I would not have thought to add a resister. I think some LEDs have resistors already attach as well, so I’ll bare that in mind as well!
@@modelrailfan37 Yep, depending on where you buy your LEDs, they may be pre-wired with a resistor. If not, it's easy enough to add one. Also make sure the polarity of the LED is correct, otherwise it will only light up when the train is moving in reverse. (If this does happen, swapping the two wires should fix it.)
I actually have the mikado version of that engine. It served as the big engine of my fleet until 2021, when I got newer spectrum and Bachmann dcc ready engines. It no longer runs with my main fleet, as I have converted the entire layout to dcc, but I still have a small loop of track for it to run on. My parents bought me that engine way back in 2017 when I first started model railroading, and I was happy with it until newer engines came along. Now it just sits in its box, collecting dust. Also, where did those red Pullman coaches come from? I’m interested in getting some for my own model railroad.
The coaches are Rivarossi 60' commuter cars. They were originally grey - I repainted them in Tamiya TS-11 Maroon. I believe they're discontinued, but you might still be able to find some used ones.
Thanks! I've had a few encounters with the more common "Docksider" 0-4-0 that (I think) used the same chassis as the teakettles. I think they were trying to make an American equivalent of Hornby's cheap little British 0-4-0s, but what they actually made was the most poorly designed piece of junk I've ever seen. Mantua's die-cast metal 0-4-0 was far better.
@@michaelramsey81 Here's the real Chessie Steam Special with exx Reading RR 2101. Broadway Limited Imports has this loco out in this livery plus it's original Reading livery and the American FreedomnTrain. www.american-rails.com/images/1059973j1750072570670.jpg
Been looking into a pacific for my railroad. It’s either this or Bachmann’s 4-6-2. The models I have found are a $149.99USD in a purple box, and a $75.00USD in the older yellow box.
I'd go for the yellow box one. The only difference, as far as I know, is the handrails. If you're going to spend $150, you might as well spend a little more and get the Bachmann.
Also, just wondering, i have an athearn/roundhouse 2-8-0 that i got used on eBay, and i doesn’t really run that well. It stops on strait track (it still gets power, but basically shuts down.) any servicing tips?
@@katies6426 Those were based on the old MDC "Old Timer" kits. As a result, they have some odd quirks. I've found the motors in the Athearn/Roundhouse ones to be a little on the weak side, so there could be a gear issue that's causing it to bind, but it could also be an electrical issue. Gremlins like that can be hard to track down, unfortunately. On the plus side, they're reasonably easy engines to take apart - just watch out of the wires between the engine and tender, as they go through a hole in the rear of the cab, so you can't completely remove the shell without unsoldering them.
I have one from in the Southern Livery, and I love it. However it doesn't pull well, and has suffered some falls via derailment, and a cat. I got mine at around $60 in an unopened box.
@@michaelramsey81 nope not missing anything before the cat, and my layout is on a slight grade. Only small details are gone, and no traction tires. It pulls about 7 heavyweight cars with very small wheel slip.
@@michaelramsey81 nope no nothing was missing, it came in an unopened box brand new. Layout has been packed for about a week now due to my new job at NS as a conductor
So I’ve been looking at getting a Bachmann 4-6-0 and you seem to have lot of experience with them. Do you think I should look for a older spectrum model or a newer one?
Definitely an older Spectrum model if you can find one! They are much more detailed and run better than the newer blue-box ones. If you can, try to find one you can test run before you buy it.
@@LMR78 For that, I'd look for a the low boiler version with 56" drivers. If possible, try to find an undecorated one - they came with an alternate wood-style cab that looks more like #20. It's never going to be a perfect match because #20 is narrow gauge, but you could get pretty close to the right overall look.
It's 18". This is about the longest loco I can comfortably run on it. I did once manage to squeeze a Big Boy around the loop, but it was lifting up the inside front wheels on some of the curves. The video is on the BC Hobbies channel.
4-6-2s are much easier to find in HO than 2-6-2s. the IHC 4-6-2 is pretty good for what it is. If you want a bit more detail, Bachmann currently makes one as well.
I haven't tried Bachmann's newer Pacific, but it seems well reviewed. It's certainly more detailed and better looking than the IHC version, but I have no idea how its performance compares.
Oddly, the tender has pickup, but only for the backup light. A fairly simple mod is to wire the tender and loco pickups together, so the tender pickup can provide power to the motor as well. After that mod, they're just as good on switches as any newer loco.
Thanks. Im trying to make a model of a Southern pacific H8 and they have Vanderbuilt tenders. I have a riveossi one but I wanted to know if it was possible to wire pickups from that tender to the loco I’m using. (Sorry if I’m bugging you)
@@jasonanderson6583 Yep, that should be a fairly easy swap. Wiring the pickups together is pretty easy - just make sure to route the wires carefully so they don't rub against the flywheel.
@@michaelramsey81 so that’s why they have tender pickups! I’ve always been sooo confused by why the contacts were there since there’s no wires between the locomotive and tender. I honestly don’t know how I didn’t think of that lol. Also, what’s the music in the video?
@@modelrailfan37 All the music is licensed from Epidemic Sound. I don't remember all of the pieces I used, but the two main songs are "Martini on the Run" and "Move Like This", both by Jules Gaia. You can listen to them on RU-vid, but you need a subscription to Epidemic Sound to use them in a video.
170 is way too much for one of these. Some sellers, unfortunately, just want to get as much money as possible and hope the buyer doesn't know they can get the same thing cheaper elsewhere.
2024 Update: I have three Pacifics and one mikado in GN Colors, two pacifics and the mikado are fitted with mantua Long haul or vanderbuilt tenders I love these things
Actually, it wasn't entirely metras' fault. Actually, Metra tried saving it, but the owner of the engine refused to move to, and Metra was forced to scrap it. Then the owner sued, and that failed
