With Atlas now owning the Walthers/Life-Like molds. Do you guys think there might be a chance of a retooled BL2? I’d love a demo unit with sound.
I expect that we will see one at one point. Back in my HO days, many years past, many of my fellow HO scalers had one. Everyone seemed to have a B&O 0-4-0T (with their favourite road name hung on it), a BL-2 (was it AHM that sold them, back then?) a Blue Box Athearn F-unit and one of the TYCo steam locomotives. The only one that Atlas has announced thus far is the FA-1, which is not a bad choice, as many roads had them, including several "first tier". No "first tier" road had any, but, still, they were popular in HO just because they are unusual. I expect that we will see Eries before we see the BL-2s, though.
I have a few BL2s to commemorate the years I spent on the BAR railroad. The BL2s were long gone by the time I got there but I did operate an ex BAR BL2 in Wisconsin years earlier. Odd how things happen..
As WM appears on my pike, I can. I also have one on the roster of my non-historic. Here are the original owners: Bangor and Aroostook Boston and Maine Chesapeake and Ohio Chicago and Eastern Illinois Chicago, Indianapolis and Louisville Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Electro Motive Division Florida East Coast Missouri Pacific Western Maryland B&M had four that it used on the Boston commuter trains. I do not know when B&M scrapped them. All of B&M's had steam generators but no MU fittings/lines. When I was living in Massachusetts as a child, I barely remember them. I saw one only a few times. We lived on the "Inland" North-South Main of the B&M that ran through Lawrence and Haverhill. When I was a child, B&M ran them mostly on the "Sea Shore" North-South Main, through Salem and Newburyport. B&M had two main lines. The North-South ran Boston-Portland. It split in Boston to inland and seashore lines that re-joined in Berwick, Maine. The East-West Main ran Boston to Troy, New York, although B&M passenger trains had trackage rights into Albany (either D&H or B&A, I guess) C&O's won out over RS-1s to work the Père Marquette. WM only had two. Both of them exist. I have seen both of them. At one point, both of them ran, but I do not know if either still does. WM was a modeller's dream road when it came to mixing types in its motive power consists. I have read in more than one place that WM had a rule that the BL-2s could not run in MU with each other and when they ran with other units, they had to be in the lead. Supposedly, WM's were constantly in the shop due to stress cracks in the frame. They did wind up working the switch yards with yard slugs. I have heard of other roads' shop men complaining about BL-2 stress cracks, but, I have never heard that any other road had the MU rules that WM supposedly had.
B&M's westbound Minute Man and Morning Mail both terminated at Troy station. Neither train had through cars to Albany. Rutland's Green Mountain Flyer also terminated at Troy, but it had a through car to New York's Grand Central Terminal. This car was transferred across the Hudson to the Albany station by a NYC switcher, where it was hooked to a NYC train.