It’s finally time.

After a year and a half of trial, failure, and redesigning, and exactly one year after we originally planned to, Cale and I are pleased to announce the first ever Brick Model Railroader steam locomotive kit.

The locomotive we have chosen to model is a Reading 4-8-4 T-1.

This is a locomotive we are very excited about. The Reading Railroad was located in the eastern part of the state of Pennsylvania, and the BMR Model Team (Cale and Glenn) are Pennsylvania residents, making the Reading a home road for us. The Reading T-1 felt like a natural choice for a prototype for both Cale and myself. It has been on both of our “to do” lists for a while, but other projects have taken priority since. The T-1 will fit well with all of our current transition-era Premium Instructions models, as all of them were used on the Reading and could very well have been seen behind a T-1 at any point during their service life.

I’m sure many of our readers are wondering why it’s taken so long to get to this point. Allow me to answer a few questions you may be having.

The Story

Our story really begins with two entirely separate locomotives. Cale has always wanted to model a particular locomotive with plans to be sold as a full kit under his own name. We’ll leave that locomotive unspecified for now, but this was our starting point. After some discussion, and before the first two bricks were assembled, I convinced Cale to switch to another locomotive; a Nickle Plate Road S-2 2-8-4 Berkshire (the operating Nickle Plate 765 was our prime example). This locomotive was our primary task during the fall and early winter months of 2017, and during that time we even were able to photograph and ride behind the 765 in Ohio.

We had a running and presentable model at the Greenberg Train and Toy Show in Lebanon, Pennsylvania, where we tested it to work out bugs. A few were found, and the model was corrected and brought again to the World’s Greatest Hobby on Tour (WGH) show in Monroeville, Pennsylvania in January 2018. After another trial, we found several more issues. Our main problems were the powertrain, which was not as robust as we had intended. This, along with several other design choices we had made, really disheartened us. Thus our engine sat in a box for a while. At this point, I (Glenn) was going through the most rigorous part of my college career, and we found we had no time to come back to our 2-8-4 model.

While we were at the WGH show last January, we had the privilege of speaking with Mr. Forrest Nace of the American Steam Railroad Preservation Association (ASR). The ASR is currently in the process of restoring Reading T-1 #2100 (the first T-1 ever built) to operation. After talking with him throughout the weekend, while also mentioning the fact that we would like to model a T-1 at some point, I showed him a mock-up T-1 I had designed on Lego Digital Designer. This got the wheels turning.

All of these things, with a lot more conversation between Cale and myself, convinced us to switch our locomotive choice again to the T-1.

The T-1 model was also not without fault. We initially had a few powertrain issues, but these were quickly corrected, resulting in one of the most robust powertrains I have ever seen. As with the S160 model for Brickmania, once it was assembled, we have never (meaning not once) needed to do any maintenance on it. (However, we always look over our engines before operation, so we’re not saying you should never think about it again after assembly, that’s just good practice. 🙂 ) Next, we discovered a few traction issues and tracking issues. We quickly found that not enough weight was resting on the drive wheels, which is Steam Locomotive-101 (a real DUH moment). Our prototype was designed and assembled in Cale’s basement leading up to the NMRA Train Show in Kansas City in August 2018. We even had our T-1 at the show, but there was never a good time to try it out. After the show, we began to sort out the remaining issues.

Cale took charge of the engine from this point on, working through all of the traction and running issues, building the rest of the boiler, cab, and tender, and adding some details (while I had creative influence from afar).

The T-1, along with some appropriate rolling stock, was boxed up and shipped to Adam Stasiek of Brickmania at their Woodfield mall store. While we were in Illinois for the Cantigny Park show, we picked up this box from their store and displayed the locomotive on the NILTC layout. Some of you may recall this teaser photo (planned from the start) from Adam as well as Scott Hoffemeyer.

We tested the locomotive on the Saturday of the show while working around the hundreds of people standing around the displays. We began by running the locomotive light around the outside loop to find any flaws. One was found on one corner of the layout, which was taken care of (it was a track clearance issue, trees to close). After we were satisfied, we added four cars to the engine and started over, running around while gradually increasing speed. We eventually had nine heavy Reading passenger cars (equipped with BMR wheel sets) and one Railway Express Agency refrigerator car (no bearings). The reefer was later removed to have a Reading-only passenger train.

We ran the locomotive for nearly an hour, steadily increasing in speed until we reached full throttle for a good 15 to 20 min, with no issues before we wanted to give NILTC their track loop back, but we were fully satisfied with the engine.

In the few weeks following this show, the engine and cars were shipped back to Cale’s house where final details were applied. I went over the locomotive adding in what I reasonably could while bearing in mind it will need to be feasible for another person to build using instructions. There are still a few details we need to address, mainly the area under the cab and tender, but we are comfortable enough to make this announcement and include good images.

One last note, the T-1 shown in the photos and the video is a prototype. The final, boxed-kit version of the model will vary slightly (mainly in details). Our model will handle curves as small as R56, but we recommend using R72 or greater for best running. For those who may be upset over the fact that it cannot negotiate R40 curves (regular LEGO curves), we tried, and we tried very hard. The wheelbase of just the locomotive is longer than the radius of an R40 curve. To negotiate an R40 curve is asking the locomotive to literally turn 90 degrees within a space less than its own length. There would have been a lot of design changes that neither Cale nor myself wanted to make, and it would have sacrificed a LOT of the signature look of the T-1, as well as interfering with other details that make a steam locomotive look correct (what I call “good practice”). At the end of the day, it’s just one of those decisions we had to make.

Our Plan

As a first for Brick Model Railroader, we will be offering this locomotive as a full kit. As such, you’ll get everything you need to build and run the locomotive right from the box, just as with the S160. We do not have a set price yet, but it will cost more than the S160, which is natural given that the T-1 is a much larger engine.

This kit will be offered directly from our website on a pre-order only basis. The BMR Model Team still only consists of Cale and myself, and it’s just not possible for us to fund even two of these kits out of pocket. Therefore, the pre-order system makes more sense; we’ll produce as many as we can sell. We’ll have more details on this at a later date.

When our kits go up for sale, we will be using some of the funds from sales to donate to the ASR to support their restoration efforts. Mr. Nace has been instrumental in the design our T-1 model and has provided numerous photos and a lot of detailed information to aid our efforts. A donation to their cause was a goal for us from the start; Cale and I are avid steam locomotive fans and we aim to support restorations where we can.

We will also have Premium Instructions for the Reading passenger cars shown in the video. Those specific cars are several years old and belong to a friend of ours who has allowed us to borrow them. We will have new and updated models available as Premium Instructions along with our locomotive, likely for a limited time. These passenger cars will represent the famous Reading Iron Horse Rambles trains of the 1960’s, when the Reading brought out four of their T-1 locomotives (all of these four survive today) to pull passenger trains over Reading track. These trains used genuine Reading passenger cars and are regarded as some of the best railfan trips in history.

Why are we making a full kit? This is BMR’s first locomotive to be sold of any type, and thus we want to make this one special. It’s no secret that a full steam locomotive kit has been a dream of Cale’s for many years, and we are both very big steam fans. We felt the best way to do that was in grand style, by making it a full kit.

We understand that this locomotive, as a kit, may not be feasible for some individuals, and that is perfectly okay. We have set-in-stone plans to release steam locomotive models under our Premium Instructions line in the future, hopefully in 2019. We even have one picked out, and we have a diesel locomotive selected too. We won’t be as secretive with these and they will be much easier to produce and more greatly available. Certain constraints will force us to work on these Premium Instructions models much later in the year, but we can definitely say that we have made some progress towards these ends.

The Future

We will be posting more details regarding the T-1 kit and the Rambles passenger car Premium Instructions in the future as we get closer to making this kit a reality. In the immediate future, we will be working on adding the finishing touches and getting this massive engine through the LDraw phase, along with the passenger cars (while keeping up with our regular Premium Instructions releases). This will all take some time, of course, but we hope you will continue to be patient with us as we work out the details, of which there are many. We will also be exploring our options regarding kit production and assembly. We always want to deliver an excellent model, but we always keep presentation in mind. The box, the instruction book, part packaging, and more are details we will need to address.

It’s pretty clear at this point that we set our sights pretty high. The T-1 is a big locomotive on its own, but adding the passenger cars to achieve a proper Rambles train was an opportunity we couldn’t resist. We still have a lot to do.

Thank You

It’s been a very long journey to get to this point, and we’re still nowhere near the end. As mentioned, there is still much we need to address. Putting together a model of this size is a lot of work in its own right, let alone the fact that we will be producing this as a kit. We would like to extend our most sincere thanks to everyone who has been patiently waiting for our locomotive to be released. We hope that you like our choice of locomotive and our prototype model. And lastly a thank you to the rest of the community for their support which has driven us to this point. We wouldn’t be producing a T-1 kit if it wasn’t for our friends and fans, and we genuinely appreciate your support and encouragement.

Thanks for reading. We will be posting more updates as we can.

Your friends in the hobby,

Glenn Holland and Cale Leiphart