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~ D&RGW PILE DRIVER "OB" ~
Circa the 1940's Forward... |
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This is one of those "We Just Couldn't Resist" Photos that come along
occasionally. Our old friend Dave was watching something entirely different
when his photo was snapped, but photos in Rob Grandt's
"Narrow Gauge Pictorial Volume VII"
depict a bunch of guys getting the prototype "rigged" and would you believe?
There's a guy in a pose similar to Daves in one of those photos! Like I said,
we just couldn't resist...
( Robb Grandt's Narrow Gauge Pictorial Volume VII contains excellent photos of all the the D&RGW's M.O.W. or "Maintenance-of-Way" Equipment. If you like work equipment, we highly recommend this book! And of course, you can get it from us too! Click Here to go to our Online Catalog...) What Railroad could have gotten along without serious M.O.W. ( Maintenance-of-Way ) Equipment? Sure, it was usually seen languishing in some yard somewhere, but when it was needed, IT WAS NEEDED! And speaking of being needed, in the case of the "OB", more often than not it could be found in operation on the R.G.S. as regularly as it saw use on its home road, the D&RGW! The R.G.S. had a whole lot more wooden trestles to maintain! The Narrow Gauge operations of the D&RGW were little different in this respect than a dozen other railroads, Class 1 or otherwise. Except in the case of "The Narrow Gauge", it's yards were smaller... So the M.O.W. stuff could be more easily spotted and chronicled by an interested modeler or railfan... The "OB" as it was numbered ( lettered?) was in the Chama Yards until just recently when it was moved to Colorado Springs for a major rebuilding... Compared to the other rolling stock on the narrow gauge, the "OB" was HUGE! Whereas a standard 30'-0" Boxcar was scarcely 6'0" tall in the center, and only about 10'-0" high from the railhead, this monster was closer to 13'-2" off the rails! If you look at how the thing was made, there's like a flat car, with a "bull wheel" ( Huge Gear! ) on top of it, with another complete frame on top of that! And so it's no wonder that it looks huge eh? As you can see from the "Click On Images" below, the boom on our model can be posed upright and the platform rotated... And like the prototype, if it gets rotated too far one way or the other, it can tip over... ( See the R. Robb Book Narrow Gauge Pictorial Volume VII as testimony to this fact...) It comes complete with its own special "Boom Flat" #06008 too. These models were available Factory Painted to suit the era you model: For the 1930's ( Freight Car Red w/White Lettering.); Or for the 1940's (M.O.W. Gray, Black Trucks, Black Lettering, as you see above.) |
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