Interesting that you mention electrics. I have some interest in
heavy electrics like the GN and MILW ran in the Northwest. There's even
a bit of madness that has considered putting up catenary on the main
line to run some of that stuff, if I could afford to buy it in brass.
I'm not familiar with the years in which GN and MILW ran their various
heavy electrics, or when the wires finally came down.
I do have a couple of brass trolleys and plan to have something
running around the eventual city portion of my layout. Another bit of
extreme madness within me even considers trying to build a grand union
in the center of the city, with overhead.
My favorite electric engines are the boxy pre-GG1 types of the Pennsy.
Hegge's article in the November '57 MR on bashing diesel B units into
free-lance electrics. I find that old MDC boxcab diesel shells and
certain cabooses (sans cupolas) are better starting points. The more
rivets there are, the better, through I'm obviously not counting. The
drive can be diesel trucks or even small steam switch engines complete
with side rods. Among my future projects is a modified O1 type for
which I plan to build a more realistic chassis. You may be familiar
with it, but, if not, may I recommend the old Kalmbach book "When the
Steam Railroads Electrified" as an excellent source of prototype
material. Thank you.
Jerry
tj:
There's a lot here so I'm going to put it inline.
snipped-for-privacy@hotmail.com wrote:
tj:
Wow. I just love terminal operations, especially with passengers.
There's so much more to passenger trains than just shuttling around
and interfering with the way freights.
So the switcher uses the TT to disassemble the train, then moves
the cars from an inbound track to an outbound (I am assuming that
your OB tracks don't access the TT). That's an ingenious and
no doubt space-saving solution you've come up with there. The
best part is how handily it seems to solve the tail-car turning
issue...
once you get to it, it's the only thing left on the IB track, so you
just
run around the switcher and bump it onto the table. Heck, your
model tail car doesn't even need a functional rear coupler!
Is it prototypical? I don't know. There were a lot of ingenious
turntable tricks in the early days and on foreign roads. It solves a
problem for the model railroad, so it's at least functionally
prototypical if not historically so. I don't suppose you have any
photos of this terminal available? I'd like to see it.
I do like old heavyweight MUs, but they are only really lovely in
a battleship sense. How about something classy like a Silverliner?
Your turning problem might well be moot, too, if you use MUs...
just make sure you've got a cab on both ends. No escaping
necessary!
Fantastic. That sounds like a monster of a traffic generator (or
sink).
This sounds like a really great railroad you've got here.
and also wrote:
Bob H. is indeed one of the greats. I just picked up a pile of back-
issue
mags at the train show, and two had Hegge articles...one on his
Crooked Mountain Lines, the other on building one of his earlier heavy
electrics...his B-B-B-B boxcab. Hegge seemed like he got into bigger
and
bigger locos as time went on...didn't he build a W1-like unit out of a
pair
of F7 shells, eventually? It was a quite prototypical sort of
slippery slope,
when you think of it.
How'd you make your O1-type? Was it from the weird and quite basic
kit that I saw once in MR (I forget who offered it).
Cordially yours:
Gerard P.
President, a box of track and some plans.
First an apology to Mark Mathu for continuing an OT subject. My only
justification is that it is hobby related.
On Mar 9, 12:26 pm, snipped-for-privacy@gannon.edu wrote:
Actually you do. The observation car must be detached from the train
and rotated first if you want it be the last car on the out-bound
track. Also, by working from the rear the switcher need not take up
space on the TT bidge. Your assumption that the OB tracks aren't
accessed to the TT is correct. Of course any IB track can, in a pinch,
also function as OB.
Like you, I've no clue as to whether it is prototypical. When I first
came up with it I trying to eliminate the cross-overs usually found in
model stub terminals. I felt they took up too much valuable track
space. The ability to rotate cars was a serendipitous extra. Years
later I was reading an old Model Craftsman (before it became RMC).
There in a Louis Hertz column was a cut from an old Marklin catalog
showing a passenger station with TT. Ideas, good or bad, are always
being rediscovered.
A very good idea! I've no knowledge about the Silverliner. Would it
fit my era?
Thank you. In truth the railroad sounds better than it looks and looks
better than it runs. I now believe any model railroad should be judged
not in terms of design, appearrance, operation, etc., but, rather in
terms of the pleasure it affords its builder. Whew, there's a bit of
gratuitous personal philosophy.
Yes he did. Yes he was!!
I'm sorry if I was unclear. The O1 is a future project. Presently it's
number four on my list.
The O1 was offered in HO and O (both two and three rail) by
International. IIRC it was imported between 1949 and the mid '50s.
Originally all were RTR. The "kit", only a few parts needed to be
attached, apparently came about when it was discovered that duties on
"models" were lower than those on "toys".
tj:
Yup, this thread got somewhat derailed. Isn't thread derailment
almost on-topic for a train group?
See, I understood your track arrangement and then got it mixed up
when I was mentally operating it...right, if you're making up the
train
on a stub track you of course need the obs first. Now, if your OB
tracks also accessed the table, I'd have been right. :)
Yup, I'm sure lots of cave men were rolling logs around before Grog
decided to publish his idea in the /Journal of Cave Inventions/.
The Silverliner was a modern, lightweight MU car used by the PRR
and later SEPTA around Philadelphia. I'm not sure if any other cities
saw them.
Picture:
http://www.bcoolidge.com/ANG%20Pix/ANG-PRR-Silverliner-MUs-a_11_28_64Edited.jpg
More:
http://members.aol.com/ballboy31/septa.html
Google is your friend for even more.
Of course.
Cordially yours:
Gerard P.
President, a box of track and some plans.
My thought was to model the B&M Hoosac tunnel area in the 1940's.
The tunnel was electrified, because it was so long that smoke and flue
gases made it dangerous-to-impossible for the crews and passengers
behind a steamer. The electrification lasted until dieselization in the
'50s. Hoosac is out in the Bershire Mts of western MA, a rural area
with smallish towns, lots of classic red brick Victorian buildings,
still in use today. I'd have to make another photo trip out there to
find the trackage and facilities where steam was switched for electric,
and vice versa. This project may be beyond my space and time
limitations, but I keep thinking about it.
David Starr
RJ:
I'm not really up on 1930s railroad regulations, but I *think* the 50-
year
rule was in effect at the time, so an 1895 car in 1935 wouldn't be
unheard of, though it would probably be a rare sight for railfans to
chase
down when they weren't taking 3/4 rods-down views of steam
locomotives.
What happened to CV kits? It seems a lot of the Silver Streak line
went to Ye Olde Huff n Puff:
http://www.yeoldehuffnpuff.com/sstreakkits.htm
Red Ball used to be a big one, too. They have a web site, but I went
over it backwards and forwards and I'm still not sure what they are
up to. That has to be some sort of triumph of webfuscation.
(Kidding, sort of. What they seem to be doing is reissuing the old
wood-and-metal kits as styrene-and-brass kits, at prices that seem
to me to be extraordinarily high:
http://www.mrrwarehouse.com/MRW-Made/Red_Ball_1.htm
Like I said, not the prettiest web page on Earth)
Cordially yours:
Gerard P.
President, a box of track and some plans.
Central Valley was sold to a new owner. The kits got discontinued at
some point after that (don't know the whole story).
The new owner made some changes to the wonderful line of CV trucks
that made them nearly unusable. By the time those faults were corrected
nobody wanted to touch the CV trucks any more and that line got dropped
too. He went on to do the bridge kits and other things, up to the
current line of turnout kits.
About 6 years ago I actually tracked down their facility in Oceano,
CA and asked if he'd be willing to sell the molds for the truck lines
and the kits. No way, of course. He said if he did sell the truck molds
that Kadee had first dibs on them. I got the impression the jigs, silk
screens, molds and such for the rolling stock kits were history (not
sure about that).
Somebody is doing something similar with some of the old Ulrich models.
http://www.ulrichmodels.com /
I know I've contributed to an OT extension of this thread. I've
apologized elsewhere. However, I am also very interestes in the
outcome of this poll. We may always discuss whether the offered
choices could be extended or improved upon, but, the raw data itself
(if there is enough of it) could help us (me?) understand one
direction in which the hobby is heading. Please, therfore, take this
as an urging to vote (once).
Having gone this far, permit me to confess that I'm already surprised
by two apparent trends:
1. The relatively small percentge modeling 1918-41 (my own era).
2. The correspondingly high percentage of those "mixing them all".
(I think "all" may be the operative word.)
Thank you.
Jerry
MR has done era surveys from time to time. The general result has been
that the most popular era is roughly the childhood and teen years of the
40-50 year old modellers. Which would be the 60s and 70s now. I don't
know if that's in fact the case. Pre-1950s rolling stock production
would support that guess, though. Rolling stock for that era is produced
mostly in limited run resin and craft kits, not in detailed plastic. The
lack of demand for that era may be part of the reason Athearn was
cutting back on its kits even before it was sold to Horizon Hobbies.
Me, I prefer the 50s. But i also have a soft spot for 2nd generation
diesel power. And I like SD-70s C044s, and such like monster power, too.
So I mix eras quite a bit, just as trainjer has noticed.
It wil run through the end of April. But keep in mind that's it's just a
poll, not a true survey -- there's no attempt to correct the responses
recieved to reflect the opinions of all model railroaders. It just gives
the results of those who vote in the poll.
The current poll results are here:
http://htmlgear.tripod.com/poll/control.poll?u=gb_route&i (&a=vote
(50 responses)
The final results are here:
http://htmlgear.tripod.com/poll/control.poll?u=gb_route&i (&a=vote
Q: What era do you model?
Early Steam (-1918) - 10 votes (5%)
Standard Steam (1918 - 1941) - 12 votes (6%)
Steam / Diesel (1941- 1955) - 32 votes (16%)
Early Diesel (1955 - 1975) - 22 votes (11%)
Modern Diesel (1975 - present) - 93 votes (49%)
I mix them all! - 18 votes (9%)
I don't model - 2 votes (1%)
189 Total votes
I thought of the Lionel Phantom train when I saw the poll. The train looks
like something designed to shuttle people around a moon colony.
Come to think of it, it's probably the very model the SciFi channel
production team would use for a movie. Though a Lionel train is a little
pricey for a SciFi Productions prop budget...
With the way the eras are broken down into all sorts of widely
differing time spans, the results have to be considered virtually
meaningless! You might want to try the whole thing over.
CNJ999
Polytechforum.com is a website by engineers for engineers. It is not affiliated with any of manufacturers or vendors discussed here.
All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.
