Future layout video #1, Unboxing the Broadway Limited Baldwin Centipede A-A Set PRR 5829 and 5817

This is the 24th video on our exploration of the model railroading hobby. It is the first video about a possible future layout we might eventually do. As such, the locomotive in the video is a little harder to see than normal because it is on a temporary layout on the lower shelf of a table my son was using for a Lego city.

My son, my granddaughter, and I generally model N scale trains. We started with a simple N scale layout in November 2000 and expanded it, then tore it down and built a completely new layout (our videos about layout #2 show this). Last month, we built a new layout, very much like our first one, and gave it to my granddaughter in Houston. What we did not mention too much, is that the obvi9ous generational nature of this is actually a little longer than this. My father modeled HO trains for as long as I can remember.

Since we started making the videos to keep our family and friends informed of our progress, we have managed to get some of my fathers old train kits from the 60s. My older brother also gave us some of his old trains that were also HO. A friend of mine had some of his HO trains from when he was young and he also gave them to us. This led us to build a small temporary train layout in HO gauge, if just to test and display some of the old trains.

Well, then one of the better (IMO) model train companies announced they were going to make a new model of a very unusual locomotive set, but it is in HO gauge. Broadway Limited Imports (BLI) decided to sell an HO gauge model of the Baldwin DR-12-8-1500/2 locomotive, commonly called the centipede. If you want to decode that model number, it means it is a diesel road locomotive with 12 axles, 8 of which are driven, powered by two 1500 horsepower engines. When I said it was unusual, I meant it. Besides the axle count, there were only 54 of these locomotives built between 1945 and 1948. None of the locomotives survive today, all having been scrapped.

So, this video shows our unboxing (for a very short time) on the new BLI Baldwin Centipede A-A Set with Pennsylvania RR markings, in Brunswick Green with road numbers 5829 and 5817. The set is equipped with BLI's Paragon 4 DCC decoder, which lets users run the locomotives with either DCC or analog DC control. Even with DC control, you will still hear some of the sounds, though you cannot have them on command like with the DCC control. The PRR ran all of their Centipedes permanently paired in back-to-back configuration. BLI decided to honor this by selling the pair as a set, and even included a draw-bar you can use to permanently couple the locomotives, replacing the couplers. We did not use the draw-bar because after our test, we put the locomotives back in the box to store until we decide how to build the HO layout and get the money to pay for it.