LGB Forney

The Forney is a steam engine concepted, patented and built between 1861 and 1864 by Matthias Forney. As a tank engine it carries its water tank on-board instead of in a tender. The wheel arrangement was originally a 0-4-4T with 4 driving wheels followed by a truck with 4 wheels as can be seen in this old photograph

Courtesy of Wikipedia

Typical for the Forney type is the size difference in the 2 pairs of wheels. Many other locos with a 0-4-4 or 4-4-0 arrangement have been called Forneys, albeit incorrectly. They are basically all 4-4-0 American.
Another characteristic is that the second pair of driving wheels have no flange. That ensures that the loco would not derail in any curves: The first wheel set with flange ensures to stay on the rails and the second wheel(set) could then slightly slip sideways on the rail while the bunker/cab  had its own 2 pair of wheels to follow easily.
Lastly, the coal bunker and water tank were placed over the four-wheel truck.

The Forney was used in big numbers in commuter railroads in the burgeoning cities of New York, Boston and Chicago since she was fabulous in small areas, tight curves and ideal in short range usage. The Forney was also used on the narrow gauge railroads of Maine. Here the Forney was soon converted to a 2-4-4 by adding a pony truck which improved her tracking ability.

One such conversion was later done by Disney Railroad, see below

Courtesy of Disneyland Railroad

To rebuilt the Forney LGB wanted to honor Forney's idea of curve manageability. Their solution was to add a peg/gudgeon to the gearbox enabling an pivoting connection to the engine chassis above. Thus the little engine could do a (narrow) curve with the gearbox while the housing would slightly lurch away from the gearbox without derailing the loco.

These Forneys (LGB #s on left, first year of production on right) were built by LGB over the years:

2025	1992
20251	1993
21251	1995
20252	1996
21252	1996
23252	1998
72350	2004
24251	2005
25251	2005
26251	2006
27251	2006
28251	2006
70120	2006

The first LGB Forney was announced in the 1992 "New Items" brochure just with a photo of the old prototype Forney #22 by Sandy River & Rangley RR and a technical drawing of the locomotive:

This Forney was originally built by Baldwin Locomotive Works for Eustis Railroad (part of P&R, Maine) in Maine in 1904 as a 0-4-4T original Forney Steam Loco. It was one of the largest and heaviest Forneys on the Maine narrow gauge RR's and was so heavy that it literally destroyed the 35 pound steel rails of the Eustis RR but the RR only needed them to carry logs to the Berlin saw mill which was close by. The mill closed in 1908. This Forney was No.9 at Eustis RR. When the decline of the saw mill industry closed several small RR's The Sandy River and Rangeley Lakes RR bought out and / or got receivership of among others the Eustis RR and their locomotives. They renamed the Forney S.R. & R.L. No. 22. She was scrapped in 1935.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++to be continued....