Kevin and all, here are a few remarks I made earlier today on a live steam forum regarding Ralph MacAllister:
The locomotive now listed for sale at Discover Live Steam, is a 14-1/8"
guage 2-8-8-4 built by Ralph MacAllister from Boulder, Colorado. It's
patterned after the Rio Grande's 3600 class 2-8-8-2's except he put a 4
wheel trailing truck under the firebox and built the tender with 4-axle
trucks! I never got to see this engine run, but Ralph had a roundhouse
you could walk through with full-height ceilings. The tracks were
elevated about 2' off the ground so the running gear was at a convenient
elevation to work on. He had a 32' long Armstrong turntable to turn the
engine on as well. Ralph had a couple of interesting challenges to
overcome in building this engine. He had already built his loop of
track and sidings when he started the 2-8-8-4. The curves were
supposedly built with a 50' radius. Ralph claims he went to sleep
trying to think of a solution so many times that it actually came to him
in his sleep. I'm ashamed to say I don't remember what the solution
was, but later on, when I was older and a little wiser and got to see
the engine again in person, I took some measurements and discovered that
he somewhat scaled down the prototype dimensions to get a workable rigid
wheelbase dimension that would work. If he had built the engine full
scale, it probably would have measured out a foot or two longer.
Another unique feature that never got incorporated on this model was an
operating auger screw-type stoker, about 3" or 4" in diameter. All the
up-front valves have reach rods running back to the cab to allow the
engineer to open and close valves from the cab, just like on the
prototype. The engine weighs about 14 tons as I recall and has a 26"
diameter boiler. Ralph grew up on a farm in South Dakota and so was
around steam powered equipment his entire life.
Ralph lived on two large city lots in Boulder. His layout was a loop
with a couple of sidings on one long side of the loop and a reversing
crossover track bisecting the loop like so many 4'x8' HO layouts we all
have built at one time or another. The roundhouse and turntable were
inside one of the reverse loops.
Ralph also had a Bill-Daney built 4-4-0 which he converted into a 4-4-2
Atlantic with a Vanderbuilt tender. He also built a scaled down version
of a Gilpin County 2' gauge two-truck Shay using a Locomobile 2-cylinder engine.
This engine has a lot of SS and brass trim. His workhorse was a model
of an RS-1. It had a Ford 6-cylinder engine and a 3-speed tranny. (You can see it in the background of one of Tim Schreiner's photos of the steam tractor Ralph was buildng.) He
said he never knew how fast the RS-1 would go since he always had to
slow down for one of the curves before he could shift into second gear! He had built a
few flat cars and hopper cars, a caboose, tank car and a
pretty sharp business car that he outfitted with miniature furniture!
My aunt and uncle lived in Boulder and contributed greatly to my getting
infected with the rail and steam bug. I was greatly saddened when they
told me years ago that Ralph's house and operation was gone. I'm guessing this was in 1987 or so. We later
discovered that as his health was failing, doctors recommended that he
move into the higher elevations. So, he donated or sold the collection to an
antique car museum near Canon City and moved to the Buena Vista area.
The entire collection was kept in a nice climate-controlled metal
building for at least 15 years or so before being sold to Lee Merrick in
Wisconsin. I think Lee and Darrell have regauged the Atlantic but I
haven't seen any of the other equipment show up in 16" gauge.
Personally, I would love to see John Bishop at the ATT&NW acquire this
locomotive and regauge it to 15" gauge and operate it with his 4-8-4 in
Missouri. I've dreampt of getting to run this engine myself but I think
you would need a lot of real estate to do it justice, not to mention
starting with a small fortune to build a decent RR to run it on. It's
too bad Ralph built it to 14-1/8" gauge. Even though that's the correct gauge for 1/4 full
size, it's still a very odd-ball gauge.
Sincerely,
Rob Gardner