Buy anything cool lately?

I bow to the master!

@Mark V. Spadaro posted:

Bob - don’t know if I ever told you this in person, but I have a doozy of a “hide my trains from wifey” story.
Many years ago, I lived across the street from a woman who sold wigs. One day I came back from a trip to the supermarket to find a police car in front of my house, the wig seller talking to the cops, and my UPS driver sitting on the back of his truck. As I pull up, and get out of my wife’s car, the wigmaker starts screaming “There he is! There he is! Arrest him!” to the cops. I had given my UPS driver a key to my car and he would open my trunk with his key and drop any UPS deliveries in the trunk. He had made a delivery that day, and my trunk was open. The wig seller called the cops, thinking that he was stealing her wigs and putting them in my trunk.  And she wanted me and the UPS guy arrested. The cops straightened out the story. And, of course, the wig seller did not apologize, but I sure had some explaining to do to my wife.
I want someone to top that story!

As a retired UPS driver, I can believe this story.   Several people made arraignments with me to have their packages delivered in places other then their front door.   

@Mark V Spadaro, Mark, now that’s a hum dinger of a story indicating our purchases in this hobby sometimes need discretion on exactly how they get to our layouts, man caves. Our wives or better half’s sometimes get excited when we say, Lionel is coming out with a new VisionLine Big Boy, it’s only $2500, may I place my BTO order now???
WOW, here’s my little story, after being out of the hobby for 6 years,  (ended 1989), a friend contacted me in 1996 telling me about the new TMCC Command Control, I was amazed and wanted it very much… My wife, is the controller of our finances and would have never said yes to a $1,000 train set… So, I ordered the new 1996 Sante Fe F3 ABBA and the 7 passenger cars over $1K…. Now, I paid for the set with bonus monies set aside and given to my dealer, Phillips Toy Mart of Nashville, Tennessee. It arrived, it was paid for, but how do I set this up on my layout without World War 3, this was scary… I had a brain storm, “what if I Won the set”, so here’s how we pulled this one off. I called my friend Lou DellaPenna, I explained my situation, I said I let’s pretend that Phillips had a Christmas prize drawing and my name was pulled out of the box?? He agreed, then he called my wife, trying to get ahold of me and she said I was at work. He told her that I had Won a nice toy train set from Phillips and they were trying to call me. She immediately called me with the great news, she was so happy for me, and that worked for me. I’ve won several trains, all in fun….. Ok, here’s my new purchase, The Frisco HoBo Box car, sounds car… It works… Happy Railroading Everyone

SIRTOA Train

@Dallas Joseph posted:

Nice Mr. Subway CEO.    Are you going to add passengers to the set Corey ?

Thanks! Yes, I definitely plan on adding figures.

@Apples55 posted:

Another great set, Corey, and another line I spent a lot of time riding when I lived in Midwood (in those days, there was a 4-track line… the D was the Express, and the M was the local). I used to get the local at the Ave. M stop - sight of the old TrainWorld!!! Unfortunately, I never remember delay announcements EVER being that clear on one point, I must respectfully disagree with you… taking the subway to college in the early/mid-70’s and work beginning in ‘78, I saw way too much graffiti to ever buy a train that has it

Thanks! Yes, I've seen a lot of graffiti also, that's probably why I like it. The announcements definitely were not clear when I was growing up!

I see the foreman was closely supervising you when opening the boxes.  I think he is mad at you for taking away his piece of styrofoam.

That is a nice set.  I grew up about 15 miles outside of NY in NJ but didn't even know there was a SIRTOA.

The purchase isn't anything special, a Lionel flatcar.  The plan if all goes well is to turn it into a ca. 1930s pulpwood car.  Next step is to hit the store for some strip wood.

Well, one of my locomotives received a "present" today (a day before my b'day no less). This K-Line Boston & Albany Berkshire has been in my collection since 2004, according to the receipt still in the box. I think I may have had it out one time since taking it home. It finally gets to see daylight after I excavated it from the bottom of one of those Home Depot storage shelf units, surrounded on all sides by stacks of train boxes"...

So, what was the present? Almost 20 years after the above locomotive was released, we have JR Junction's custom-run B&A caboose:

Bringing the two together, we see the 1407 with it's new partner:

Out of curiosity, and since B&A 1179 is the new kid on the block, I thought to compare it with it's Rugged Rails predecessor from 2001, the 33-7802:

Wow, look at the difference in end-platform detail, eh? Not to mention the truck placement.

Well, to be fair, the Rugged Rails car only cost me $25 or so at a Greenberg show, after 22 years of depreciation. MTH's website doesn't even show a retail price for this piece

The 33-7802 by itself, so you can flip back and forth.

I shot quite a few more photos today...but there are enough in this post already. Make note of the sunlight levels between here and the third post I make here today

[Previous: Spring York 2023 haul] -- [Next: my upgraded N&W Class A with aux tender + N&W caboose]

---PCJ

You let that jewel hide for nineteen years,  you need help

But Wait, There's Moooooore!  ('course there always is)

So, back in April York I bought a Protosound-1 Class A, and found a PS3 steam upgrade later on the last day of the show, thanks to JustTrains. Although it's not visible in this shot, the two have been joined, and now this Class A is a PS-3 model:

At this past Greenburg show in Edison, I found this N&W auxiliary tender. Okay, so it's striped to match a J-class. Still a N&W. Good price too. Only wish I had noticed the dealer had grabbed the wrong box when I said "Sold". He had a Virginian aux tender next to this, and it's that box he grabbed. So it took a little digging about to identify this one. I think it's a 20-3126 from around the turn of the century, so naturally it's equipped with a Proto-1 electrocoupler. I don't think I would have hooked it up anyway

And so here's the Class A, with some extra H2O for excursion service

When I bought the Class A, I also got a caboose to go with it. Hitched behind the water tender is a 30-77368 extended vision caboose. These two will accompany the Class A on whatever adventure I concoct for it...when I finally make time to catch up to the stuff I haven't run yet.

And now for a few views of the whole assemblage:

I must say, it wasn't fun jockeying this beast back into its styrofoam pocket perched upon this narrow platform. Had to wheel out the luggage cart to bring it back inside via the front steps, as I wasn't about to hand-carry that 16-pound bulk inside it's box-less styrofoam clamshell back up the basement stairs, (I carried it down them) owing to how steep as they are

One more set coming up, my recent Cabin Fever wins at yet another MTH warehouse auction.

[Previous: K-Line B&A Berk + JR Jct B&A caboose] -- [Next: Cabin Fever 8/13/23 MTH Warehouse auction wins]

---PCJ

@Bill N posted:

The purchase isn't anything special, a Lionel flatcar.  The plan if all goes well is to turn it into a ca. 1930s pulpwood car.  Next step is to hit the store for some strip wood.

Again waiting with bated breath (has sardines for lunch) to see the for and after pictures

You might want to unbate your breath.  Part of the process will involve stripping, repainting and decaling the car. 

Ah tiz the stress of time.  on the same token I have build new doors to the train room as the new cat "mischief" has depleted then population ofone of the neighborhoods.  finding little people all over the house

ET&WNC trucking company stationery (off eBay)

BN stationery and a UP regional profile book, showing all the routes in the Western Area, bought from a small hobby shop in Centralia, WA. I walked down there on Saturday while I had my WW2 Jeep at a car show a couple of blocks away.

Not much for excess train paraphernalia, but that is a treasure.  Saturday I also had my 67 Wildcat convertible at a show. and my wife grew up in Centralia

@Brooklyn Corey posted:

SIRTOA Train

Love the SIRTOA train!  Recently bought on the 'bay the MTH SIRTOA caboose and have the Lionel SIRTOA S-2 on pre order. When I grew up on Staten Island, the S-2s were still wearing B&O colors and lettered "Staten Island". Wish I could find a set of Staten Island decals to relabel my Lionel B&O S-2.

Well, now comes the biggie:

My purchases from Cabin Fever on 8/14 arrived 8/23 after one day in transit PA-NYC, and boy it's a big box. I posed one of my NKP Berkshires atop it for size comparison -- it's 24" by 16" by 12" and weighs in at 24 pounds. Careful carry to a spot big enough to sit it down

Within is 16 freight cars from the MTH auction, the most I've ever scored, and as of this writing, I have photographed all of them for this thread (and my collection inventory). Took two days to do it too. Some cars got more than one photo owing to one oddity or the other stemming from these being sell-offs from MTH's former warehouse. That being said, in order to avoid flooding the thread (and gobbling up all my spare time), I'll post these one lot at a time and give others a chance to post their stuff before adding additional entries.

Leading off is this two-piece case of 20-95234 Premier 60' TTX flatcars with ScaleTrax crossovers, released in June 2017

Above: TTX 93600, Below: TTX 93639

And the two of them together...

The coupler cut levers are user-installed accessories, since installing them significantly affects the minimum radius curve these cars can handle.

Ever wonder what these cars looked like from the backside? Well wonder no more. Also, the track section is held on with a twist tie.

Can you tell what is off about these boxes? I didn't notice this till I was packing the cars up after the photo session. If anyone else has cars like this, are your boxes the same? (I have some 60-footers carrying ScaleTrax switches, theirs don't exhibit this discrepancy).

14 more cars to go

[Previous: My Class A with aux tender and caboose] -- [Next: Part 2 - Bulkhead flats w/Scaletrax]

---PCJ

^{(Another one of those posts where half the pictures break every time I edit the post, forcing me to go back in, delete and re-add them)}

@Henryjint posted:

Love the SIRTOA train!  Recently bought on the 'bay the MTH SIRTOA caboose and have the Lionel SIRTOA S-2 on pre order. When I grew up on Staten Island, the S-2s were still wearing B&O colors and lettered "Staten Island". Wish I could find a set of Staten Island decals to relabel my Lionel B&O S-2.

Thanks and congrats on the caboose. Did you try island model works for the decals?

@VinceL posted:

I see the foreman was closely supervising you when opening the boxes.  I think he is mad at you for taking away his piece of styrofoam.

That is a nice set.  I grew up about 15 miles outside of NY in NJ but didn't even know there was a SIRTOA.

Yes he was definitely not happy about the styrofoam!