Model Railroading > The Con-Cor N Guage I Conned Mom Into Buying For Me

At least about 1970, I know for sure that I had a perfectly good reason for Mom to purchase The UP U-50 to pull more cars, and the Alco PA1 freight was of course just as important too.

They were both very state of the art back then, but the U50 was pride of the fleet!
Without pulling the body off the chassis, I think the U50 has dual motors, the front and rear trucks are powered, the front trailing truck and rear leading truck were just idlers, and would derail on switch points and curves sometimes.
The PA was a good puller too.

I'm pretty sure back then I wasn't satisfied with the factory plastic headlight reflects, and installed grain of rice lights into the headlights of both units.

Back then about 50 years ago (wow) I had already went through many plastic custom car model assembly and especially painting,model rocket and military vehicle and airplane painting, so I applied some black grimy smog paint to the PA1, but only some grime to the U-50 front trucks, never got a chance to weather the 2 rear trucks.

The whole motivation behind building a model railroad pike with grades was to see how well these beautiful machines would pull uphill. The PA would pull up to a point, but that big U50 perform beautiful no matter what tonnage I threw at it!

Hard to believe these were and are to this day some of my most precious possessions, no matter how many miles these have traveled with me over the years, and no matter how many years they have not been running, Mom (God rest her soul) bought them for me.
Here's to you Ma! For all the support, and she really loved the Christmas model railroads I created.

Jim Baker
Riverside, CA



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/20/20 08:56 by RailRat.

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A PA-1 in ATSF freight scheme. Back in a more whimsical age. Thanks for sharing.

Where were the engines made? Just wondering if they were made in Japan?

cvrrr

Posted from iPhone

Both were made by Kato so ran well and pulled hard.  I bough multiple U50 and kit-bashed a U50C from a U50B+B and a set of PA trucks .  Also A baby trubine and a double end turbine. really easy conversions

Fun story

Posted from iPhone

King_Coal Wrote:
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> A PA-1 in ATSF freight scheme. Back in a more
> whimsical age. Thanks for sharing.

Thanks King

Jim Baker
Riverside, CA

atsf121 Wrote:
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> Fun story
>
> Posted from iPhone

Thanks 121

Jim Baker
Riverside, CA

Those PA-1s were great little engines!

Bill Deaver
Tehachapi, CA

cvrrr Wrote:
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> Where were the engines made? Just wondering if
> they were made in Japan?
>
> cvrrr
>
> Posted from iPhone

Yes made in Japan stamped on bottom of both

Jim Baker
Riverside, CA

A nice memory, I had a Con-Cor SP U50.  I foolishly sold it off with some other good N equipment at age 15 to fuel HO purchases.  I didn't return to N scale, but it would have been a nice momento to keep.

Rich

I to had an SP U50 from Con-Cor when I was in N scale. It was actually a pretty good runner and pulled a ton. For N scale at the time it was first rate.