11-04-2010, 05:31 AM
Re the 70-tonner chassis - I have some of the Roundhouse/MDC bodies for use on my Erie RR 149th Street Harlem Station layout, but went down a different powering route. Bachmann UK made some cartoon-character, underground trains to co-incide with a TV series called "Underground Ernie, and you will find the locos still available on Ebay.uk . If you remove the moving-eye mechanism, and make a new Plastic card base to fit around the mech and into the underside of the body, although there is only one powered bogie (they pick up on the other), they are quiet and run very well. They benefit from a sheet of lead under the roof, and I filed down the sides of the plastic bogies, cast some new ones in car body filler resin (using the sides of a 44/70 tonner to make the mould in modelling clay), and then epoxied those to the sides of the bogie frame. A lick of matte black paint and they look, and work, fine. BTW if you decide to go this route, don't use the inspection car - it has a complerely different single bogie mechanism - suitable for 4-wheel critters, but not for the boxcabs.