Buy anything cool lately?

I added some Weaver rolling stock.

Two MTH Premier All-door boxcars.  Excellent graphics!

Tinplate Tom posted:

I know a lot of British and European model railroaders who would challenge the notion that the SP Daylight is the most beautiful train.

They would say "real steam locomotives don't wear skirts"

Kerrigan posted:

Tinplate Tom posted:

I know a lot of British and European model railroaders who would challenge the notion that the SP Daylight is the most beautiful train.

They would say "real steam locomotives don't wear skirts"

All the pretty ones do!!!

Kerrigan posted:

Tinplate Tom posted:

I know a lot of British and European model railroaders who would challenge the notion that the SP Daylight is the most beautiful train.

They would say "real steam locomotives don't wear skirts"

The Devil, you say!

That would be one of them with a string of Gresley teak, articulated coaches.  The Australians would put their Victorian Railways Spirit of Progress in that category.  Others in the running would include South Africa's Blue Train, Germany's Rheingold Express, the British Southern Railway Golden Arrow hauled by a Bullied Pacific and of course the famous Orient Express from Paris to Istanbul, none of which are painted in garish colors like red, orange and black.  

Doesn't everything tinplate come in garish colors like red orange and black?

No some come in blue, green, yellow, etc. 

Went down to Menards to pick up my city block along with a tank car for a friend. Really nice looking buildings. Pics..........Paul

paul 2 posted:

Went down to Menards to pick up my city block along with a tank car for a friend. Really nice looking buildings. Pics..........Paul

Very nice Paul!!  It will look great on your layout !  Mine is supposed to be delivered to home today!

Got in my dream car, but it is 1/43rd the desired size, worse luck. It is a  NEO 1937 LaSalle coupe. Didn't think Brooklin or anybody would make the right year. Been on my bucket list since childhood rides in my great aunt's sedan.  Came within a hair of owning a 1:1 twin for my g.aunt's but ran into a storage problem.  The owner of my RR will drive this, parked outside the two story station main offices.

colorado hirailer posted:

Got in my dream car, but it is 1/43rd the desired size, worse luck. It is a  NEO 1937 LaSalle coupe. Didn't think Brooklin or anybody would make the right year. Been on my bucket list since childhood rides in my great aunt's sedan.  Came within a hair of owning a 1:1 twin for my g.aunt's but ran into a storage problem.  The owner of my RR will drive this, parked outside the two story station main offices.

I hear you about a dream car, but those older cars are total maintenance hogs.

Mine was always a WW2 Jeep, which I have in both 1:1 and 1:43. The funny thing is I almost didn’t even get any Jeeps for the layout at first, even though I model the WW2 years! Note the model Jeeps in the left of the layout shot, I have three of them scattered around.

My 1:1 one is a unrestored (but maintained since sold to the public in 1947) Willys MB, a 1944 model. I had a nasty cough that lasted almost the entire winter, so I did almost nothing with it as I didn’t want to be out in the cold and rain (this was the rainiest winter in decades, they say) with it, so I really need to get the battery charged, fire her up and change the oil and do the pre-good-weather checks…

p51 posted:

colorado hirailer posted:

Got in my dream car, but it is 1/43rd the desired size, worse luck. It is a  NEO 1937 LaSalle coupe. Didn't think Brooklin or anybody would make the right year. Been on my bucket list since childhood rides in my great aunt's sedan.  Came within a hair of owning a 1:1 twin for my g.aunt's but ran into a storage problem.  The owner of my RR will drive this, parked outside the two story station main offices.

I hear you about a dream car, but those older cars are total maintenance hogs.

Mine was always a WW2 Jeep, which I have in both 1:1 and 1:43. The funny thing is I almost didn’t even get any Jeeps for the layout at first, even though I model the WW2 years! Note the model Jeeps in the left of the layout shot, I have three of them scattered around.

My 1:1 one is a unrestored (but maintained since sold to the public in 1947) Willys MB, a 1944 model. I had a nasty cough that lasted almost the entire winter, so I did almost nothing with it as I didn’t want to be out in the cold and rain (this was the rainiest winter in decades, they say) with it, so I really need to get the battery charged, fire her up and change the oil and do the pre-good-weather checks…

I need one of those Lee! Except it needs to say U.S.M.C. on the hood!

mike g. posted:

p51 posted:

I need one of those Lee! Except it needs to say U.S.M.C. on the hood!

Here you go! Just know it's more like 1/50 scale...

p51 posted:

mike g. posted:

p51 posted:

I need one of those Lee! Except it needs to say U.S.M.C. on the hood!

Here you go! Just know it's more like 1/50 scale...

LOL thanks Lee, I mean a 1:1 scale!

1934 ET&WNC timetable. Neither of my parents (who are each above 80 now) were even gleams in anyone's eyes for another year or so...

Jim R and Tinplate Tom

Thank you for clearing up my confusion/ lack of dedicated reading regarding the MR Rib Sided passenger cars.

Since I have Lionel's version of the Rib Sidded cars ( used to have Weavers version with the green film in the windows) I no longer need to feel that I have to have the F7 to feel prototypically correct while running them behind the Atlantic (saved me a fair amount of $$$).

The information of the other manufactures making the Atlantic was also useful.

Union Pacific Railroad Passenger Cars Volume 2 1940-1949

G.B. Davies (1977, 228 pages. Book No. 40)

Nice book, mainly photos & diagrams.

Here are two version of SuperStreets vehicles, the NASA van by K-line, Angelo's Pizza K-line by Lionel.  Hub caps aren't the only difference, NASA is significantly heaver, beefier pick-ups and from the underframe possibly even a bigger motor.

Next two separate e-bay purchases garnered a K-line die-cast Alaska RR hopper that I've wanted since K-line introduced them and finally got the bargain price I was looking for and a K-line ARR extended vision caboose.

Even though I already had a 1087 I think K-line did I great job with this style caboose and always keep an eye out for the ARR and several other road names.  Always limit my bids to about $40 depending on shipping because I don't really need any more cabeese but will gladly rotate out a square window or northeast style caboose for one of these at the right price.

Got this Bangor & Aroostoock 50' Plug Door Boxcar at the Hookset, NH train show today.  Another nice car from Weaver.  Always can count on Weaver for local road names.

Have I bought anything cool lately?  Why yes, yes I did. 

I picked this up at the Eastern O-Scale meet in Strasburg, PA yesterday.

I think it will look perfect on the layout, eventually.

George

God help me, I have a diesel now. Bought it on the Tacoma Trains hobby shop's final day.
I'm going to do some detail additons, paint and letter it for an Army Loco and put a GI in the cab...

I couldn't get over how heavy it is, I doubt there are many plastic parts in it from the weight.

If I run it in op sessions, it would only be used with army rolling stock or tank cars. I can justify it in that way and stick with my original layout concept.

Lee,

I thought the same, for a long time in HO and then in O gauge, I only had steam.  Once I bought an F3, then I ended up with a couple more early diesels.

Mark Boyce posted:

I thought the same, for a long time in HO and then in O gauge, I only had steam.  Once I bought an F3, then I ended up with a couple more early diesels.

The issue for me is that my layout takes place in 1943 on a narrow gauge backwoods layout in the Blue Ridge Mountains. A diesel in such an environment is frankly silly (as the RR I model didn’t get a diesel even after they abandoned their 3-foot line for the standard gauge portion, getting rid of steam in 1968).

As my concept is for a fictional branch line that is co-run by the US Army during the war, I figured I could justify one diesel as a stretch to that concept without being too laughable. But even then it is quite a stretch. The justification I’ve found is to be able to run with what we’d call HAZMAT cars today; such as boxcars full of explosives of one of the two tank cars I have on the layout.

I will eventually add some details (and a sound card), paint and letter it for an Army unit (probably painting it black with white lettering) and weather it very lightly.

But no, you will NOT see another diseasel on this layout and you probably won’t even see this very often.

Lee,

I understand what you say.  Your focus is narrow, and you are doing a great job with it!!  I tried narrowing my focus a number of years ago, but decided to loosen my focus when I came to O.  1950 and West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Virginia roads, lead to extra possibilities 

Sacrilege! A diesel? You will be excommunicated!  My railroad's connection to Class 1's that ran into or through Colorado Springs in 1940 would justify some very colorful covered wagons, from Rock Island, MP, and Grande, but evil temptations must be resisted. Oops! I have sinned. Today l bought the shell of a Lionel RDC-1 (there is no smoke stack on it).  The plan is to find the shell of the Lionel RDC-? that went with it and kitbash a scale length RDC-3, using the chassis of an RMT shorty RDC-1, in hand, that l acquired to power gas electrics. A future project...

I got this off ebay for a very good price. I only wanted the tender, to make a MOW water car out of it, representing a former locomotive tender.

I stripped down the locomotive in about 10 minutes with a screw driver. Only one axle had gears on it, the rest went along for the ride. If I can’t get the gear off that axle, I’ll just grind/pull the wheels off that axle. The front pilot axle looks nice and I might place that at the end of a spur somewhere after hitting it was a lot of rust weathering powders. The other drive wheels/axles, I’m torn between making a gondola load out of them or placing them around the Army spur area as a training aid for soldiers. I’m tempted to make a shed out of the cab, as that was done in yards back in the day (some steam cabs existed well past the steam era, some into the 80s, in more obscure locations on RR property as sheds). I will saw the smoke box lid off the boiler shell, drill out the bolt heads to make it look like it was removed with tools like a real one would be but I’m not sure what I’d do with it otherwise. The other parts (headlight, domes, piping, air tank, bell, etc.), I’ll probably just throw into a box in case I ever need them. I can’t just scatter the parts around as rusted cast-offs, as that stuff would have gone to a scrapper right away due to the need for scrap metal for the war effort. Such a shame it couldn’t have been a broken ten-wheeler as I would have stripped the engine down, put it on blocks, and made it look like the Army was rebuilding an ET&WNC locomotive.

Picked up a Lionel set at estate sale over the weekend looks to be a 1954 1503WS set. Dirty but not abused. Lubed all the points and gave her a test run and she ran and whistled like 1954. 

For me, the best part is doing the clean up and oiling the works. The smoke unit is clogged and found a screw stuck by one of the drivers but overall its in good shape.

I'll post a "after" video soon.

Thanks for looking, Frank

Nice find and I agree with you about some oil, a little cleaning and away it goes !!

Guess am one of the lucky four.

franktrain posted:

Picked up a Lionel set at estate sale over the weekend looks to be a 1954 1503WS set. Dirty but not abused. Lubed all the points and gave her a test run and she ran and whistled like 1954. 

For me, the best part is doing the clean up and oiling the works. The smoke unit is clogged and found a screw stuck by one of the drivers but overall its in good shape.

I'll post a "after" video soon.

Thanks for looking, Frank

Nice to find an old good looking set like that.  You said that "the smoke unit is clogged"     What did you do to unclog the the smoke unit.

Steve

Steve,

I first used sharp tweezers to carefully loosen the old smoke pills that were stuffed in the top part and applied voltage to melt residue to see if I could get working again. It smoked a little but was not puffing out.

so I had to pop the top and clean the years of smoke pills out.

Just use a small screwdriver and pry the tin cover off. Now you can see the big junk of melted smoke pills.

I used cutters to carefully chip away the old residue.

This is what it looks like cleaned up, carefully replace unit and we should be good to go.  

Working again I will have to get a video

Frank

You did replace the fiberglass, that you cut up, right?  It is the reservoir for when the pills melt.  Did you clean out the small air hole and clean up the piston so it can puff?

Gene Anstine

Gene,

Thanks, I did clean and check the piston and air hole for any residue. I like to wipe down the piston and cylinder with WD40. I also installed new wicking material.

Frank

Thanks for the tips on cleaning out an old smoke unit.  I picked up a Lionel 2025 last year that I found in an antique shop in Helper, Utah.  She runs good but she does not smoke.   When I get the time I will add this project to my things to do list.

Steve

Not much to look at, but I have a sound card/speaker coming for my Whitcomb 50-tonner. Now all I have to do is get started with making it into an Army unit...

franktrain posted:

Gene,

Thanks, I did clean and check the piston and air hole for any residue. I like to wipe down the piston and cylinder with WD40. I also installed new wicking material.

Frank

 

 

Great, I didn't want someone to see it and think they wouldn't have to replace it.  I think I would stay away from the WD-40, some times it gets gummy on the piston.  I always clean it good, with a dry cloth, and put it back.

Gene Anstine

I thought there was a "what did you buy at York" thread going but I can't find it so I'll post here.  Today I bought a 4-foot, curved chord Warren truss bridge from East Coast Enterprises.  Very pricey but I think it's a stunning model and worth the price.  Here is a photo I snapped back in my hotel room in Harrisburg, PA.  I can't wait to get it home and install it on my layout.

Very nice bridge Joel!!

I like it

I like it a lot