Buy anything cool lately?

Bill DeBrooke, I like the Circus cars and one day was looking at the Grzyboski’s web site and found these.  K-Line, there are others not pictured....It’s a fun Hobby.

Bill DeBrooke posted:

The four aluminum cars last week.  The red & yellow set earlier

This is all Williams product.  The aluminum cars are from 1976 when he did the Bicentennial set.  Three hundred remaining sets were sold to Andrew Kriswalus of KMT who did the circus design.

The Painted set was sold unpainted to Calvert Train Corp. of Baltimore, Md.

Does anyone have any advertising paper related to either of these two set.  If so I would like to purchase copies or the original.  Thanks, Bill

Hey Dennis, is this old and broke enough for you. Fortunately it was broke when I

bought it, otherwise USPS would have made it so.  If anyone has any idea what this is

please let me know.

John

My sister bought this bad boy for me on Ebay as a birthday gift, I only have pictures from the listing so far. But I should have the model on Friday, according to USPS. Hopefully I will be able to test it fully at my local club this weekend, if it arrives on Friday.

Few quick notes on the engine. It's brand new in the box, and it really looks like it spent it's entire life in the box; it's got the same electronics as my broken Amtrak Dash 8, but I won't cannibalize this model to fix mine; and I got it for around 250 dollars, which is a steal if it really is brand new in the box and untouched.

No freight cars for now, but those will come if this engine is in 100% working order. Of course I will watch over this engine like a hawk, since I would hate to see my Amtrak Dash 8s distant cousin also suffer from the same fate.

MichaelB posted:

My sister bought this bad boy for me on Ebay as a birthday gift, I only have pictures from the listing so far. But I should have the model on Friday, according to USPS. Hopefully I will be able to test it fully at my local club this weekend, if it arrives on Friday.

 

Very nice engine, Michael. I can’t figure out why, but I really like that BNSF paint scheme. Your sister is definitely a keeper   

Well if you ever decide you want to fix that dash 8, I have 3 or 4 of those boards in my parts stash

Apples55 posted:

Very nice engine, Michael. I can’t figure out why, but I really like that BNSF paint scheme. Your sister is definitely a keeper   

Yeah I definitely owe her big time, without her this would not have happened. Mainly because my mom likes that I can actually get out of the house and do something fun with my life, instead of sit at my computer all day and play video games. But she doesn't want to spend a ton of money on a model that doesn't look that interesting.

Then there's my dad, he's pretty supportive on the hobby. But whenever I mention buying something new, he says he can buy something like a TV for the same price (which is kind of a lie to be honest). But he has a fair point, it's an expensive hobby. But I can't do much about the prices of brand new models.

And that's mainly why it's been about 7 years since I have had anything added to my collection. That and I took a long break after my favorite engine got sabotaged by some little brat at my local club. No I didn't have proof that he did it, or the engine would have been fixed a long time ago and at no cost to me.

Sorry for going on a tangent, I felt that I should clear that up so people can understand why I have a love/hate relationship with the hobby, 60% "love" and 40% "hate." But yeah, it's most likely going to be a great addition to my collection and an awesome workhorse at my local club in 2019.

Matt Makens posted:

Well if you ever decide you want to fix that dash 8, I have 3 or 4 of those boards in my parts stash

I would love to take you up on my offer, but those boards will most likely not work (since I won't know how to wire them up) and my sister is a bit sketched out from your offer. I mean, your intentions seem great and I think your a nice guy. But the internet can be a very dangerous place to send out your personal information, so I think I'll pass. But thank you very much for the offer!

?

beardog posted:

Hey Dennis, is this old and broke enough for you. Fortunately it was broke when I

bought it, otherwise USPS would have made it so.  If anyone has any idea what this is

please let me know.

John

Hey John, I don't think it is Buddy L, but that is something I thought of when I looked at the pictures. I don't know anything about that, but when I was a squirt in the 1970's, my Uncle showed me something from one of his Model Railroader mags from I think the 1960's-70's of someone who had had pictures from the 1920's. That is about all I know about that, but here's a link talking a bit about Buddy L.

http://www.tcawestern.org/buddy.htm

You may want to pop that engine over in the Tinplate forums or such, they have some great things over there(sure you already know that though). Good luck.

Wow, I'm amazed that you knew enough to take the old board out put new FETs on it and put it back in but aren't skilled enough to put the exact same board back into the loco you already to the board out of. IT's the exact same board that's already in your engine!!!! I'm just not sure how you can say it wont work but I'm done trying to help you out. 

Thanks, Dave. My  first thought was perhaps Dayton, but the seller says he saw a pic some

where and its french, maybe I will start a new topic on it so everyone can see.

beardog posted:

Thanks, Dave. My  first thought was perhaps Dayton, but the seller says he saw a pic some

where and its french, maybe I will start a new topic on it so everyone can see.

Glad to try and help, someone will know exactly what it is, that I'm sure of.

About the Buddy L trains, I remember telling my Uncle something to the tune of, "wait, they're riding on those" or something like that. I think they had some small stuff, but the outdoor railroad stuff kids could ride on or such. Vague memories, but one can always do a search to find something to trigger them.

I am familiar enough with Buddy L to be pretty sure it is not

Ah, well, hopefully it is something that no one has seen in quite a while.

I just bought a Z Stuff signal bridge. I like that it uses sensors to detect trains. Pretty expensive but I think it was worth it.

I have Z stuff crossing gates.  They operate on Infra Red sensors .  The crossing gates go up and down depending on where the trolley is in relation to the two sensors.

Also my Ross switches operate on Z Stuff motors.  

It is definately  worth the money !!

My guests love seeing the interactions. 

Adriatic posted:

The smaller stuff is built dual purpose, model and toy. The toy sales on earlier styles likely isn't strong as anything from the 50s on just because of lack of exposure to to early autos... as you noted, we lost many candidates for restorations in recycling for wartime metal, there isnti as much exposure.

Larger scale models for collecting can be more highly detailed, and that is the attraction to those who buy road vehicles to display vs trains. Look to larger scales and the offerings seem a little more evened out by era... imo.

To return to an old topic and a dead horse, I agree that most 1:43 (and 1:45 and 1:48 scale) scale die-cast cars were built for the toy market as much as for collectors. However, I believe that the development of scanning and 3-D printing has made it possible for vendors to offer models of 1:43 and 1:48 scale automobiles without having to make huge investments in dies and tooling and losing their shirts if modelers won't buy.

I'm not so sure that your claim that World War II's scrap drives eliminated quite so many candidates for modeling as some people might think. I just made a search using the net (August 31st, 2018 ca. 10:50 AM CDST) that showed a fair amount of old iron that survived World War II and survived long enough to get photographed and/or scanned and uploaded.

So my new engine came today, and it really is brand new in the box. But it's got a manufacturing defect, which I'm not too upset about.

I checked the insides of the model and the only thing that is close to that area is the metal antenna. So I believe the person who assembled the model didn't allow the antenna to cool after soldering and thus the heat caused that area to warm up enough to where it got deformed like that.

The engine runs with absolutely no problems, so it's a keeper in my book. I don't really mind that melted spot, in fact I think it adds a bit of character to the model. I could give it a story of a tree fell on it, or something like that.

In any case, I can return the model in 30 days if that part of the engine starts bothering me.

Wow, Michael!  It would drive me crazy!  Just my opinion.

Mark Boyce posted:

Wow, Michael!  It would drive me crazy!  Just my opinion.

Fair enough! It mainly doesn't bother me, because I have so many other things to worry about in my life other than model trains. Yes, it looks bad for the most part and I was pretty frustrated when I saw that. But it adds some character, and it gives a perfect opportunity to try and weather it like something really heavy fell on it in that area.

Of course, if I complained about all the little problems with the hobby that I have and also got furious from stuff like that. I would not be able to enjoy it as much as I do!