Hudson

[Martin Slater]

Hi Listmates
It's possible that this topic has been done to death already but I'm a newbie to the forum so here goes.
Some of you are undoubtedly aware that a set of plans (almost complete) for a 2 1/2" gauge Hudson is regularly on sale on ebay. There are no clues as to the designer except for the name MILLER printed on a few of them. Can anyone provide more information? The parts that are not in the set largely relate to the cab and fittings, but that is not such a big deal.
I realize that no parts are probably available any more - I'm just curious.

[GWRdriver]

Hello Martin and welcome,
I've seen the the 2.5"ga Hudson drawings on eBay (How could one not see them!) There is quite a bit of old paper of all kinds which is copied and sold on eBay and my initial thought about such things is usually "What gall", but on second thought, considering the design involved is now quite old, possibly as old as the 1930's, but in no case later than the early 1950's, I suppose it's better this than to have the design disappear completely, as some fine old designs have and more are in danger of. No doubt there is a date somewhere on the drawings which will confirm the period.

I have no idea who L.R. Miller is (or was) although the design bears a striking resemblance to the Little Engines 2.5"ga Hudson. I can't say for certain without further study of the drawings but it is not out of the question that this may be a redrawing of the L.E. Hudson design done by Mr Miller, not for commercial use, but to incorporate L.E. castings and details and adapt the locomotive to his own taste. The L.E. 1/2"scale/2.5"ga Hudson, as were all the 1st-generation L.E. locomotive designs, was patterned after Southern Pacific/Harriman lines locomotive practice which is distinctive and difficult to convert to any other appearance, and in addition the L.E. design always seemed to me to be somewhat heavy-handed, "dated", and not particularly well proportioned.

There was for many years a US company called "Miller's Backyard Railways" but they specialized in larger gauge, rather clumsily proportioned non-scale ride-on equipment, and so far as I know they are now defunct, and in any case I don't think this was a product of Millers Backyard Railways.

However the drawings in question portray what is in my estimation a decently scaled and detailed locomotive, in a period when some designs were not so well scaled or detailed. The cylinders, for instance, call for some quite fine detail in the castings. The boiler however is very old technology and is poorly detailed (technologically) in that it attempts to be too much like a full size boiler in construction detail, especially with respect to plate work, staying, and riveting. The excessive flanging and rivetting in some areas, the double rows of offset rivets around the mud ring, for instance, are impractical and useless in that in the end they add little if anyhting to the strength of the boiler and would not appear at all in a modern model boiler design.

The exception to my statement about period designs not being particularly well scaled or detailed is the work of Henry J. Coventry. His work in 2.5" gauge exceeds this in fidelity and technological detail and were finely scaled models of either B&O or Pennsy designs. These wre done in the late 1920s through the 1940's and most survive. Mr. Miller's drawings, like the L.E. Hudson, do not appear to be of a specific locomotive or to a particularly high standard of scale fidelity, but rather are a generic approximation of a typical Hudson.

2.5"ga was during the pre-war years a very popular gauge on both side of the pond, but after the war it had essentially become obsolete. However, although I don't know about the rest of the world, 2.5"ga has recently gone through a mini-renaissance of sorts in England, and to a lesser extent in the USA, fueled to some extent by old locos, loco carcasses, derelict castings, and such once again coming to light as older model builders pass on and their workshops are cleared. Still the numbers are very small and track facilities, especially in the USA, are not nearly as plentiful as they once were.


[This message has been edited by GWRdriver (edited 10-13-2005).]