Parmele & Sturges EP3

[Dennis Holler]

Well, It's a little rough but it's mostly all there and seems solid. Will have to rebuild one panto and fix the other, straighten some handrails junk the 80 year old rectifier inside... Guess I need some passenger cars too now.....


It does have twin motors and all twelve wheels are gear driven. Looks like the drive wheels are just turned steel which may mean it is postwar Baldwin production. Would like to understand more about the timeline eventually....

[J. S. Bach]

My green one (posted over on the OGR thread) has the same drive assembly:

Note the wire is there to hold the roof on during shipping; I had just unpacked it.

EDIT: Thanks to Shutterfly it is now here, too.

[Dennis Holler]

Your's looks nice. Is it missing the little whistle looking threaded rods that are supposed to hold the roof on? Looks like yous is two railed? Looking closer at your picture, also looks like it may be missing the spring pads the body rides on? That's kind of a neat feature.

[De Bruin]

WOW!! congratulation to both of you guys, I love these, my impression they're as massive as the Alexander GG1 though somewhat more rare in comparison. Jim had one pass through here many years ago and it was amazingly powerful albeit quite loud, having a motor that sounded and spooled up like Waring blender. Nice looking model Dennis please let us know your experience/impressions in operating it.

[J. S. Bach]

Your's looks nice. Is it missing the little whistle looking threaded rods that are supposed to hold the roof on? Looks like yous is two railed? Looking closer at your picture, also looks like it may be missing the spring pads the body rides on? That's kind of a neat feature.

I do not remember seeing those on any of the ones that I have/had; on one example, the builder soldered the entire body together, roof and all.

I think that I currently have three; this one and another NH plus a black one lettered for DENVER & INTERMOUNTAIN (D&IM on the side) that I found floating in the bay back in 2013. I suspect that none are powered with the same drives as, other than the green one above, I have not looked at them for awhile; they are currently packed away.

EDIT: I found a photo of the D&IM unit, again taken as it was being unpacked and inspected by the Road Foreman of Motive Power :

I never did take a photo of the drive; what little that I can see by blowing up the photo, it is not the same as the green NH one. The front pilot truck was not MIA, it was loose in the box.

[bob turner]

Guess I should re-post mine. You have seen it a gazillion times - it does have the spring pads - the side castings are drilled almost to the roof, and a giant coil spring resides therein. You can only see the foot. I repowered using six CLW gearboxes and two giant Pittmans. There is a bit more to the story, and I may get to it, but the castings came in a giant box with a whole lot of other stuff about three decades ago.

[bob turner]

Yeah. Here's some history: In 1991, Fred Jacobs of Connecticut sent me a huge box of stuff. All he wanted in return was a restoration of this thing and a couple other trinkets - a re-powered GG1, a pair of repowered B1 PRR switchers, and a Conrail paint job. Fred was apparently buddies with the earliest O Scale modelers, like Watson House - it was great making his acquaintance.

Anyway, back to the EP3 - study these photos. Note that the body castings are different, and the truck side frames were cast using those stamped Lionel journal box covers. In some ways this is inferior to the later Parmele & Sturgis kit, but it is so close I am guessing that it was simply a first attempt. This was restored/assembled, and maybe powered here and returned to Fred. A few years later it showed up on Frank Thomson's mantle - I used to have Philly overnights, where visiting Frank, and once in a while Billy Davis, was on the agenda. Frank's collection was auctioned a few years later by Maurer, and when I was doing shows I would occasionally see a piece I had restored/powered for Frank on a vendor's table.

Here you go - probably as rare as they get in O Scale:

[J. S. Bach]

Nice units and thanks for the history lesson. Things like that always interest me.

[Erik C Lindgren]

Nice ❤️

[E7]

The first time I saw one of these things I thought it was sort of neat. I still do, I guess, but for the practicality factor, I need one like I need a hole in the head!

[steamaheadstephen59]

I think there neat too, and with Bob's help I have the important castings. Ive managed to cut, out of brass plate the sides. The windows are placed as they would be in latter years. Im not sure yet how I will handle the roof area, and drive.

[R.K. Maroon]

An early model of the EP-3 was offered by a company called Silvermine Associates, which was in Connecticut. As I recall, this model pre-dated the P&S version. It could very well be that Silvermine developed it, went out of business, and P&S picked it up -- though I have seen no evidence of this. I have not seen an example known to be a Silvermine, but it could be that Bob's lesser model is one of these early versions.

P&S sold the EP-3 with at least three different drive configurations, each one an improvement of some sort over the previous. Baldwin picked up the model after the war and put in their own drive. So these are seen in a number of configurations. The P&S version and its various drives are discussed at length in issue #98 of O Scale Trains, Jul-Aug 2018.

Jim

[Dennis Holler]

Jim,
Which version is this one?





I think Dave was saying his is similar to mine. But Carey's motors are mounted a little differently and the gear set up is different. The brass plates in my drive mechanism kinada looks home made or carelessly shop made.

[Dennis Holler]

Compare those to Carey's drive in the other threads:



Top two are his EP3 and bottom one is the P&S NYC loco

[R.K. Maroon]

Dennis asks a couple of good questions. Let's start with the last photo:



As best as I can tell from the early adverstisments and P&S circulars, the first version of the P&S EP-3 was equipped with a two-axle-per-truck drive. This was the drive shown in the photo above but without the chain drive to the third axle. I have a model so equipped. The second version added the chain. A later version had a three-axle drive with all axles powered with gears -- no chains.

The motor mounting configuration is less clear, and there seems to be a lot of different configurations out there. I believe Carey's EP-3 shown here is in the original configuration, which is distinguished by the upside down motor and the spur gears to the worm shaft:



The lower worm shaft can be seen in this photo:



This drive could be set up with either one or two motors. In a one-motor setup, a speedometer-cable flexshaft connects the two worm shafts. This shaft would not be necessary with a two-motor setup like Carey's, but it could be used to improve starting performance. I would be interested in seeing photos of the underside of this model to see the rest of the drive configuration.

More documentation on the EP-3 has surfaced since the article in OST #98 was written (five years ago). A P&S blueprint shows a motor setup similar to the one on this model:



I have also seen the chassis for this setup sold on eBay:



Note the three-axle gear drive. I am not sure why the motor brackets on Dennis's model are so crude, but perhaps the originals got lost, or perhaps this is a conversion from an earlier setup. The original tower setup does not have a particularly strong bearing design for the tower gears. I might guess that these would wallow out sooner than they should have and that people would reconfigure the drive to keep the model running.

Jim