For more than two decades, the Pennsylvania Railroad experimented with locomotive designs in search of a high-speed, mainline passenger electric. That search ended in 1934 with the GG1, a cooperative effort by the PRR, Baldwin, Westinghouse, and General Electric, based largely on neighbor New Haven's successful EP3 juice jack. Industrial designer Raymond Loewy cleaned up the original riveted body to create a design that looked contemporary for half a century.
The GG1 fleet hustled passenger traffic of all types along the Pennsy's multi-track raceway from New York to Washington and west to Harrisburg, including the famed Congressional and Broadway Limited. With 18 Pullmans in tow, a GG1 could hit 100 mph. Regeared for freight service and run as double-headers, a pair of GG1s delivered about the same tractive effort as a Union Pacific Big Boy, with virtually no noise, no smoke, much less wear on the track, and significantly less maintenance. Many GG1s racked up more than five million miles of service, outlasting the railroad that built them and serving its two successors, the Penn Central and Conrail. If there were a Locomotive Hall of Fame, the Pennsylvania Railroad GG1 would surely be one of the first inductees.
Add this fully die-cast Hall of Famer to your layout as a complete set or in one or more authentic PRR liveries, featuring station sounds for Pennsy name trains, smooth performance at any speed from a crawl to full throttle, dual-motored power to rival the prototype, smoke from the train heat boiler, and pantographs that automatically raise and lower according to the direction of travel. For 2007, we've even added sound effects to accompany the raising and lowering of the pantographs when the locomotive changes direction.
Automatic Pantograph Operation Explained
Users operating the GG-1 in conventional mode will find that by depressing the transformer's direction button to stop the locomotive, the rear pantograph will remain in the up position while the lead pantograph slowly rises up. Once the lead pantograph is in its up position, the rear pantograph will slowly lower into the down position. At this point another press of the direction button will cause the locomotive to reverse making the lead pantograph now the rear pantograph and in the up position.
In command operation two operating modes will be offered; auto and manual. Auto mode will behave similar to conventional mode with the rear pantograph in the up position when moving. The up and down movement of the pantograph will be direction controlled using the DCS Digital Command Control System. In Manual mode, the user will have to raise and lower both pantographs via the DCS System as they wish regardless of directional state.
