Vintage set of the week: Thatcher Perkins Locomotive
Posted by Huwbot,
This week's vintage set is 396 Thatcher Perkins Locomotive, released during 1976. It's one of 4 Hobby Set sets produced that year. It contains 438 pieces.
It's owned by 410 Brickset members. If you want to add it to your collection you might find it for sale at BrickLink or eBay.
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33 comments on this article
A bit too many colours for a Thatcher Perkins locomotive, but otherwise this is a great set for 1976!
This thing's off the rails!
@MCLegoboy said:
"This thing's off the rails!"
I liked how they used to take sets outside and use nature as a backdrop. Much better than a plain white background!
Nice old set! I would assume when kids were playing with this set back in the days, the cowcatcher must have been falling all the time since it is only attached with a few studs.
Edit: looking at the instructions, the whole thing must have been quite fragile. Smokestack/chimney: 2 studs, cowcatcher 4 studs both parts with lots of leverage to break them off. The bumper must have been quite fragile as well. This was a 10-wide loco!
"Thatcher Perkins" sounds, to me, like something or someone out of Thomas the Tank Engine.
@MCLegoboy said:
"This thing's off the rails!"
So, presumably, this is a Crazy Train.
Look how many decapitated minifigure heads have been used!
Does Thatcher want his locomotive back?
I won this set in January of 1978. I was one of the first people to buy a technic set, 851, when they came out in September of 1977. Because of that I could participate in a draw for one of three kids who could win a trip to Legoland Denmark. I didn't win that but I won one of the other prizes which was this set, I still have it. I also still have the letter that came with it.
Cool set. Other hobby sets are also look nice. Check them out. I'm especially impressed with the Renault.
Hmm....'Road Train'...Must be in Australia...:D
@HOBBES said:
"Nice old set! I would assume when kids were playing with this set back in the days, the cowcatcher must have been falling all the time since it is only attached with a few studs."
It’s a fragmentation cowcatcher! It doesn’t hook the cow off the tracks. It shreds it as you punch through. Clearly, this is the first Fabuland set.
@HOBBES said:
"I would assume when kids were playing with this set back in the days, the cowcatcher must have been falling all the time since it is only attached with a few studs."
The cowcatcher was falling all the time, the catcher is falling all the time. I don't touch it, just look at it on the shelf - where it has been standing for 48 years now. A true legend!
From the time before SNOT... Still an impressive set, and one that I drooled over seeing it in the LEGO Catalogue as a young child.
For everything wrong with it, this is still a mighty impressive set for the time!
And let's be fair: Apart from maybe the rubber tires, this isn't any less accurate that the locomotive in the Orient Express set.
Do the smokestacks on the real versions of this train also get that hilariously wide towards the top?
@Brickalili said:
"Do the smokestacks on the real versions of this train also get that hilariously wide towards the top? "
It does. Pretty common on wood fired steam locomotives, a so called spark arrestor.
@Bart_66 said:
"I won this set in January of 1978. I was one of the first people to buy a technic set, 851, when they came out in September of 1977. Because of that I could participate in a draw for one of three kids who could win a trip to Legoland Denmark. I didn't win that but I won one of the other prizes which was this set, I still have it. I also still have the letter that came with it. "
That’s pretty cool!
Hope you still have that Technic set from 1977!
Which one was it?
Fashions change: Wild West, Civil War, Cowboys and "Indians" (sic), huge in the 1970s to 1990s, minority now.
The original is in the B&O Museum and looks not much like this.
Have a look at the chassis arrangement of 76405 - Find a way of making that skinny boiler and this could be a really nice large scale loco. If anybody was interested any more.
NO NO NO! This Locomotive is not for turning!??
@lemish34 said:
" @Bart_66 said:
"I won this set in January of 1978. I was one of the first people to buy a technic set, 851, when they came out in September of 1977. Because of that I could participate in a draw for one of three kids who could win a trip to Legoland Denmark. I didn't win that but I won one of the other prizes which was this set, I still have it. I also still have the letter that came with it. "
That’s pretty cool!
Hope you still have that Technic set from 1977!
Which one was it?"
Yes, I still have that set as well, it was set 851.
That is a beautiful. Something about it: the colours, the blockiness, is the perfect image of what a LEGO model should look like to me.
Before my time, lest you think that's pure nostalgia.
@Zordboy said:
"Does Thatcher want his locomotive back?"
"his"?
You obviously mean "her"
I mean, what could be more befitting an "Iron Lady" than a steam engine ;-)
"Thatcher Perkins"
The guy named Perkins: *Grabs a bucket of tar* I will do what I must
@AverageChimaEnjoyer said:
""Thatcher Perkins"
The guy named Perkins: *Grabs a bucket of tar* I will do what I must"
Considering that it was you who posted that, I now have disturbing ideas about the Eagle, Raven, and Vulture Tribes...
This is based on a real locomotive in the B&O museum in Baltimore. Of course LEGO got the colors wrong and is missing the tender, but a fun model for 1976.
The real thing had a roof fall in and crush it once. The B&O's rebuilding of all their crushed equipment is one of the strangest stories of train preservation in the 21st century.
Baltimore & Ohio 4-6-0 number 147 "Thatcher Perkins" was built in 1863. This predates the 'Iron Lady' Margaret Thatcher by a good number of years. Here is a Wikipedia picture of the Thatcher Perkins decorated for the 150th anniversary of Lincoln's death: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/da/B%26O_Lincoln_Funeral_150th_Anniversary_Locomotive_%22Thatcher_Perkins%22.JPG/960px-B%26O_Lincoln_Funeral_150th_Anniversary_Locomotive_%22Thatcher_Perkins%22.JPG
Since this can be seen as a scaled-up version of the loco from 726, I've sometimes wondered what the results would be of scaling up other locos like 7810 in the same way.
This set is almost the right size to be crewed by Technic figures, except the cab's too low. Rather similar to the way normal-sized trains had to get taller when minifigs were introduced, so a driver would fit in the cab.
Love the steam engine rods though Im guessing yellow was the only way the could represent 'chrome' or 'steel' at the time. Its amazing how long it took for these to come back to a LEGO train (and even then it more TECHNIC in an Ideas set). I would love to see these special parts made again.
I was contemplating getting 71044-1 when it was available because of an urge to have a LEGO train set - very similar style train. I never bought that set though, just too much £££.
This was the best ever christmas gift that year
Loved that the inside black cardboard box could be used as a stand for display the locomotive
Still have it all in my collection
Technically, the model of the engine is a 6-2-2 not a 4-6-0. This is because the driving rods only go to one set of drivers. So, It's basically a Crampton-style 6-2-0 with an extra set of wheels added at the back.
@Brickalili said:
"Do the smokestacks on the real versions of this train also get that hilariously wide towards the top?"
Pretty much. But it's even worse than you think. Wood was so much more common than coal in mid-1800s America that wood-burning locomotives with spark arrestors became stereotypical. For example, do an image search for "Currier and Ives train" for the endlessly-reprinted iconic lithographs of American trains from the era. They became *so* stereotypical that the average person forgot the purpose of spark arrestors entirely, and just associated them—along with huge square headlights—with old trains. At the same time, wood became more expensive than coal, so modern trains needed no spark arrestors, thereby reinforcing the conflation of the wood technology with just being old-fashioned.
Fast-forward to the birth of the tourist train industry. Diesels were rapidly replacing steam, short lines were disappearing, and a few scenic routes suddenly turned into tourist attractions. And what did these scenic routes do? They decked out their locomotives with fake balloon smokestacks and fake square headlights. The Denver and Rio Grande was an early pioneer in this ahistorical aesthetic train wreck of a trend. The D&RG was a for-profit freight railroad that found itself with a suddenly profitable scenic line on a 3-foot narrow gauge network that it otherwise really wanted to abandon. The line was already an anachronism, so they played it up even more with brutally ugly retrofits of a locomotive fleet that had only ever burned coal.
https://www.picclickimg.com/BfAAAOSw1~dkzvAT/Vintage-1960s-Durango-Silverton-Narrow-Gauge-Railroad.webp
https://storage.googleapis.com/hippostcard/p/65acd1a6dd6a4acbc82fba3b5b568809-800.jpg
The trend became widespread on early American tourist railroads, and there are still a few abominations rolling around even today, although thankfully the pendulum has swung back toward a strong preference for historic accuracy.
This one is from my childhood. my father bought and build it and then it became part of my lego bin. Still have most of it...