Shore River working the Declan Grain complex.

Bruce

   

i need some ho #4 brass turnouts before every one jumps on the nickels silver band wagon brass performed well for me in our dry climate , brass is getting hard to find shop in Tucson has none . if any one has some in junk box pm me . 
jim

https://www.wral.com/former-rolesville-m...18%20years.

Missed the engine power on WPMA-61 which had all empty grain cars for the Agway and Declan grain elevators.  Caught CR 7560 (GP10), the power for WPMA-29, running light thru Lubbers Run.

Bruce

   

I went to a swap meet last Saturday. Both to buy and sell. Did well on both counts.
   

I hadn't seen this many Juneco orange boxes since a 90's hobby shop. I even found the super-rare 'O' scale CN express reefer kit.
I also found one of the branchline blueprint series Canadian Pacific single window coach, after which a friend gave me three more. Which brings me to my question

   

The car kits come pre decorated in what they call 40's-50's CPR red. I have never seen this color before and if they were trying to replicate CPR Tuscan red it seems a little too light compared to the Factory painted C-liner and my Rivarossi pullman that I airbrushed wit Scalecoat's CPR tuscan. Did CP have this color or was Branchline's paint matcher out of it when choosing the red?

Hello,

most of the cars of US or CDN prototype you can purchase today are running flawless just right out of the box.
This is also valid for cars built out of kits, but here you are more responsible in terms of accurate building, choosing the right wheelsets (metal wheelsets are more preferable over plastic ones), the right coupler (Kadees are still the best) and mounting them according to NMRA Standards.
Since the Kadee Patents have expired, there are more manufacturers of coupler heads on the market. The spectrum is stretching from clones of the old Kadee #5 and operate superb, over some plastic types which operate only in short trains satisfying and hav some difficulties in smooth coupling, to really junk type: remove-and thrash.

For my private affair, when i became a modeller of US railroads, i wanted to avoid the many mistakes i had made with my German prototype model railways. And to complcate things more than necessary, German Modelleisenbahn (aka' camouflaged toy trains) is a de facto world of non standards. Of course there are standards, but traditional and propertiary works standards and not compatible to other works standards. There was urgent need for uniform standards, but hassle was the rule.
In short term you wanted consistently standards.

So from the beginning onwards of my career as US model railroader i choose the Kadee #58 as my standard coupler. And from the beginning on i mounted this type of coupler on all of my rolling stock.
Next item were metal wheels, if not fitted by the manufacturer, i replaced the plastic ones with Kadee or Intermountain wheelsets.
Next item, i dislike wobbling or tilting. In many cases you have only slightly blewing with puckered lips to get the car tilting and rocking.

As an example i will descrbe here what i do with a new purchased car:


This is an Atlas Master 50' FMC 5077 box car just out of the box.
Atlas has mounted Accurail "sclale" couplers in their very special boxes.
The replacement couplers, Kadee #153 whisker type, are in the foreground.





The factory mounted coupler. I made my own trials with this type of coupler. They revealed failing in soft and smooth coupling action in comparison with the Kadee #58. A substantial "crashing" was necessy to engage these couplers. Further they showed failures under strain (we run trains on the meetings up to 14m (app. 45.9').
So they have to go.





Removing the truck.





Removing the bolster with ther own very special coupler box.





Fortunately Atlas has enclosed bolsters with normal coupler boxes which accepts Kadees.
And as i am not a friend of wobbling, one of the bosters got anti stagger supports in form of two suitable pieces of styrene. This may be small pieces of sprues.





They accept Kadee #153 whiskers.





Controlling the wheelsets. In US about 98% of the wheelsets are within the tolerance standards and so the 2% hassle creating wheelsets are found and can be adjusted to standard measure.
The car was reassembled.





Next controlling: Coupler heights.
Here it is O.K. If not, this is probably the reason for mysterious uncoupling during running. And according to Murphy's laws this (and derailments of course too) happens only in the very back of your layout in an area which is nearly unreachable.





Ready for ops.
But wait a little bit.





Now it is ready.


Lutz

anyone here have a MRC tech 7 1278  new or used for sale or know of where one could be attained ?
Jim

This has long been a method to stabilize our cars. Just recently someone suggested this
http://www.proto87.com/HO_Proto87_car_st..._help.html

[b]"FAST AND EASY" CAR STABILIZERS SUSPENSION UNITS
[/b]
has anyone had occasion to make use of them??

Hi everyone.

Cannot believe I joined this forum years ago & this is my first post. Well here goes.

I have a athearn genesis sd45-2 in pan am livery & its factory fitted with tsunami sound. It has a small packet of ditch lights pre wired & I would like to know how they fit. I purchased the model second hand & I cannot seem to see anything in the paperwork that covers fitting the ditch lights & I wondered if it was missing the instructions that covered it.
I've been out of the hobby for a long time & so I'm a bit rusty.

Thanks 

Si

This is HOn3.  Other than the wheels, motor and some brass wire this is all 3d printed (gears, too).  Runs great, too!  Painted with buck-a-bottle craft paint.

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