Steamer Sunday run with the Lionel LionMaster Big Boy

As promised, here’s the full cut of my first outdoor setup!

Given we had a deck build in progress, I saw an opportunity to have some Fastrack fun!

Here is my Lionel LionMaster Big Boy #4004 hauling an auxiliary water tender and my Super Chief consist For the UP purists out there - I apologize! My UP consist is packed up and inaccessible for the time being. But this still looks and sounds GREAT, and I loved capturing as many angles of the action as possible.

Something really interesting happened while I was shooting this. I noticed my Big Boy started to stutter a bit around certain sections of the track. I initially thought this was dirty track…but investigating the dirty track theory produced a single, fine thread metric screw. Thankfully, I recognized this screw as being a truck attachment screw, turned over the big boy and found the forward truck missing its screw! Replacing the screw resolved the issue.

Beyond that, the other fun challenge was just setting up the track! Believe it or not, that whole loop only use led two power inputs…and given this was Bluetooth controlled I didn’t know the difference. The floor joists are 12” on center, and beyond one area of curve this worked out just fine.

I hope you enjoy this!