Models of less popular roads

[trainman203]

On the other hand, brass cabooses are a wonderful way to make a train a lot more prototypical. They all need new trucks a new couplers to run well, but that's a lot easier than remotoring, and regearing a brass steam locomotive. Plus having to do various electrical isolations to allow installation of DCC.

I have two brass cabooses from each of the following roads – Missouri Pacific, Frisco, and Cotton Belt. They are beautiful and really top off my locals. I'm about to retire at least a dozen plastic cabooses that have been sidelined by these brass beauties. The MP and Frisco ones came factory painted and lettered.  The Cotton Belt cars are both fairly crudely painted aftermarket, but done tolerably enough to leave alone for now.

[Quentin]

The E5s are gonna be shelf units unless they run nicely. I'm repainting them to match the SAL's citrus scheme, even though those were really E4s (i don't care, ha).

Found an AHM 4-6-2 pacific in UP lettering. 60 bucks. Next purchase.

Found a Spectrum "Pennsy Pacific" with box. 74 bucks. Thats next.

Taking a break after all this.


Repaint the SSW. Crude painting is an insult to that line.

Cotton Belt, T&L, the Denver Rio Grande, with all the others proud and strong, coupled hand in hand...

[trainman203]

"Crude" wasn't the right description of the paint job on the brass SSW long caboose.  It's very cleanly done. It's just a little, well, bright. A little too Crimson to match the SSW color. Nothing that a little weathering powder wouldn't tone down.

I have a second one that is more correctly painted. When I saw it in the glass display case at the LHS, it was correctly lettered.  When I got home, I saw that the previous owner had only lettered one side of the car. Why, who knows. I just keep that side of the car facing to the outside of the layout. Maybe one day I'll fix the other side.

Quentin, excellent reading.

https://www.amazon.com/Cotton-Belt-Engineer-Standefer-1898-1981/dp/1449069207

[Geeper]

Hi Trainman; You hit the nail on the head and why I went with early era Diesel. More Mfr availability in medium and small road names. Also older era Diesels were shorter LOA and a large selection of diesel switchers on the market. Size (length) matters on many layouts. I try to stay at NTE 40-50' rolling stock length and my longest loco is SD9 U25B size. GPs fit all my curves. Anything too long is just trouble on my curves and turnouts.
Hi Terry, loved that NW5... one reason I model Great Northern is small diesels which are somewhat unique.

[trainman203]

Geeper, I started limiting the use of longer-than-40' cars on my relatively small layout quite a while back, even though I have a good population of really nice 50-foot cars.  My layout is a branchline about 50 feet long with an interchange point on either end. There's the interchange track, a run around track a two track yard that holds about five cars each, and a couple of ag branch type customers like co-op warehouses, and oil dealers. Nothing to excite mainline enthusiasts, but running between those two terminals, if you can call them that, and set-outs/pick-ups at rural settlements out on the line can take hours. But, the rub is that there's room for only about 35 40-foot cars on the layout to operate well. After that it's too crowded. And even less if the rural open space that I strive for begins to be compromised. A couple of 50 foot cars can really eat into limited space.

One car I really miss running is a string of 50-foot wood express reefers like we used to see in strawberry country in southeast Louisiana, spotted at almost every team track along the Illinois central between Baton Rouge and Hammond.  I have a bunch of those cars, but they really eat up my track if I have more than a couple of them on there at once.

And I can't even think of my complete head-end heavyweight passenger train I ran with my MP 4–8–2 on the now long-gone club.  Maybe one day....

[Quentin]

Trainman,
I got the book on Kindle. Started reading it today, already a good read.

Must. Finish. Second. Caboose.

Geeper, I need more geeps to use. I run a lot of steam locos, and all my steam locos are 2-8-4s or larger. Except for one 0-6-0 that I use as a switcher. My only diesels are 2 FA units (SF Warbonnet), 2 SD-40 units (BNSF and SF Bluebonnet), and one SD70ACe in Erie Lackawanna paint.

[trainman203]

You need smaller steam engines for workaday purposes. 

When I first started my present layout, about 15 years ago, I knew it was going to be a branchline from the beginning. I told myself, I will never get an engine larger than a 2–8 – O. Then, I joined the club with an extremely large layout, having a mainline run of over 700 feet with several steep grades and curves. I bought a 4–8–2 to run on that layout, then four mikados. Then a couple of pacifics. Naturally right after I bought the Pacifics, the last ones of the bunch, the club closed and was torn down.  The only place left to run them was at home. And I rarely do it, because of the cabs hangover too far when going around certain curves and through sharp switches. I do use them as switchers in the yards on either end because supposedly that is mainline trackage where my branch intersects to go out Into the backwoods. But their days of hauling 40 and 50 car freights are over.

I have a variety of consolidations, 10 wheelers, and decapods to work the actual railroad. But, really, the only ones to get a consistent workout are the decapods ...... penultimate short line locomotives if there ever was one. And they've always been a favorite of mine since I saw a photo of one of them working on the MP back in the 40s near Baton Rouge Louisiana.

[Geeper]

Hi Trainman and Quentin; I run 64' of track on 4'x 8' with double oval "X" design and 4 sidings. [Figure if I go into TT scale, I can do 100+ feet of track.] I have mostly 32'-40' rolling stock and a few 50' which I remove unless needed. Have a nice set of Seaboard 50' ice refers. I run 30 locos with 10 Geeps, 10 switchers and 10 misc including a nice little ML8 Plymouth. About half are DC and half DCC.  Grandson is getting really good at controlling 2 locos running, while building and spitting trains using EZ-Command. [His first train was a Great Northern DC 0-6-0 w/ log car, pax car, box car, bobber caboose.]
We are all blessed to have such a great hobby... Keep smiling... 
 

[RAM]

wires on steam models.  the prototype steam locomotives had air hoses, water hoses, and steam lines, and if an oil burner a oil line, all going from tender to locomotive.

[trainman203]

1. DC steam locomotives back in 1960 all had one wire to the tender. The engine would pick up on one rail, the tender would pick up on the other.  The first HO steam locomotive I ever saw back then was a Varney Casey Jones. It had that one wire to the tender and I thought it was the neatest looking thing I ever saw, just like the hoses on the steam engines that I had seen only a couple of years earlier on the T&NO back home. The several wires on today's DCC steam locomotives can push the tender wrongly to one side or another or pick it up slightly off the rail, causing a derailment. Some are easier to cure than others. I've had a couple of tough customers. When you get them right, they can approximate the numbers of hoses that connected steam locomotives to their tenders.

2.  Geeper, I would think very long and hard before investing much in TT scale trains. Unless things have changed, there just is not the availability of just about anything that HO has.  I'm thinking more of supplies and ancillary items like trackside details, signaling, structure kits, decals, and so on. You've probably looked at it harder than I have, but I have a feeling that going into a marginally popular scale like that, one will be constantly looking on eBay for old HP products items.  And wishing that you could get stuff that can easily be had in more popular scales. Plus, if you're getting up in age like me it's just really hard to see those smaller trains. I restarted Model Railroading 15 years ago after being out for 40. The few HO items I had saved from way back in high school days had burned up in a house fire, so I could've started in N scale from ground zero, and I thought real hard about it.  HO won out for all the reasons listed above, and I've never regretted it. Plus, a friend of mine with considerable experience in the small scales says that operation can be very tenuous with low tolerance for only slightly unclean track and such. Plus the little cars are so light that realistic switching is almost impossible, smooth coupling up just cannot be had. Switching was going to be a major part of the branchline I had always wanted to build, so that pretty much sealed the deal to go to HO. I have never regretted it.  Even though I could've had twice the railroad in my space, it would've never operated to my satisfaction.

[trainman203]

There was a Bachmann spectrum 2-10–2 lettered for the Texas and Pacific on eBay a couple of days ago. Despite missing the pilot and looking like it took a nosedive off the layout, it went very fast.

I don't remember ever seeing this as a road name offered by Bachmann. Does anyone know if this actually was a stock road name way, way back in the Spectrum Jurassic?  If another one appears on eBay, I would know if it was a home repaint or not. I stay away from home repaints and decal jobs on eBay. You can't tell enough from the photos how bad the work probably is, but hardly anyone knows how to do decals right and you can always see the film edges.

Nevertheless, I am very interested in any Texas and Pacific steam locomotive that might appear on eBay, if it's not brass.

[Geeper]

Hi Trainman; Thanks for that light-car coupling issue. Never thought TT might present rail yard switching problems with lighter weight railcars. My set-up is ALL rail yard running switchers and small Geeps. I'll stick with HO for now... unless I can get hands-on TT proof positive on yard switching. Thanks for your advice... I learn something new every day. 
Different issue, looking at Sinclair Antennas to go on some locos and way-cars. I see Cal Scale, Details West and Custom Finishing offer some possible Sinclairs. Does anyone have positive (green light) or negative (red light) on "quality" of these mfr products? I bought air horns once (forget from whom) and they were garbage quality, totally unfinished even molding was inferior and would've taken too many hours to re-build and re-finish, before I could paint and attach them to the loco. Anyone's thought...
Quality finish: Cal Scale red or green??? Details West red or green??? Custom Finishing red or green???

[Quentin]

I bought a 4–8–2 to run on that layout, then four mikados. Then a couple of pacifics. Naturally right after I bought the Pacifics, the last ones of the bunch, the club closed and was torn down.  The only place left to run them was at home. And I rarely do it, because of the cabs hangover too far when going around certain curves and through sharp switches. I do use them as switchers in the yards on either end because supposedly that is mainline trackage where my branch intersects to go out Into the backwoods. But their days of hauling 40 and 50 car freights are over.

Wanna sell any of those mikados or pacifics? Ha.


Those stupid brass locos are beautifullllll!!!!! Gonna start the painting soon. Need to sketch lines out for the design. My dream is slowly coming true... probably shouldn't say that cuz something'll happen if I get too cocky, ha

[jward]

Hi Trainman; Thanks for that light-car coupling issue. Never thought TT might present rail yard switching problems with lighter weight railcars. My set-up is ALL rail yard running switchers and small Geeps. I'll stick with HO for now... unless I can get hands-on TT proof positive on yard switching. Thanks for your advice... I learn something new every day. 

My experience with N scale is that most cars having truck mounted couplers was way more of a problem than car weight. I spent alot of time and effort body mounting where I could but certain cars like Tank cars and hoppers do not have a place to mount a coupler box. You can always find ways to add weight to the cars. This experience is similar to HO, where trying to do any backing with truck mounted couplers is going to be frustrating. I would imagine the same would hold true for TT as well.

[trainman203]

You can add Pacifics to your short line steam locomotive list.

U S Sugar at one time ran four ex-FEC Pacifics, 3 of them survive today.

https://www.ussugar.com/u-s-sugar-steam-locomotive-no-148-hauls-sugarcane-train-to-mill-ending-harvest-season-new-sugar-express-launched/

And, this article is out of date, they're in the process of restoring the engine to operation.

https://www.trains.com/trn/news-reviews/news-wire/u-s-sugar-interested-in-acquiring-second-steam-locomotive/

After learning about all of this, I immediately put my USRA Pacific at work on the locals.

The New York Central ran Pacifics on some local and branchline freights quite a bit too.