By design the Pennsylvania L1 had a great many parts in common with the K4 including the boiler.  Given that Bachmann already makes a drive for a 2-8-2 in their line it seems to me that the most bang for the least buck could be had by making a Pennsy L1 maybe in several different versions (detail parts variations) to reflect the change in these engines over time.  It seems to me like there would be less design and development time involved on an L1 than on any of the 2-8-0 Pennsy engines.

  One thing for sure, no one has made an L1 that I can find except in brass so there's a lot of Pennsy fans who would need a couple right off the bat.

  Regards

   I just thought I should thank Bachamann here on their board for making the CityScenes Building Kits available again.  I'll be getting three or four of them and given the reaction a few friends have had to the ones I've already gotten I think they'll be very pleased as well.

  Regards

   While I guess it would be nice to get another piece of track along with the switch, I don't see where the problem is in just cutting and fitting what you want.  After all, a single piece of track will provide several of the needed short sections to bring the switch back in line with the mainline.  Model Railroader mag had a series of videos called, "Dream It, Plan It, Build It", and I've seen someone in another group state that the way both MR and an awful lot of people approach the hobby these days it should have been, "Dream It, Plan It, Buy It".  I can't really imagine a layout where I wouldn't need to custom fit track and I'm quite happy with the Bachmann product line other than perhaps some still wider radius curves and gauntlet track for my bridges.   It saves me a lot of time and is very reliable.  I like the ballest base itself but I plan to spread loose ballest over it at some point to make it even more realistic.  In the mean time, though, any track I lay looks good from the start and can await further refinements.  The only thing I do is paint the sides of the rails and leave the tops clean then lay it down.

   Maybe painting the side of the rail is too much to ask of we "modelers" these days, though, so should we start a "paint the rails" campaign.

  Regards

  I'm gonna set up an Excel sheet to do some fancy graphs, write up about five hundred pages of gobbledygook, and get my Piled Higher and Deeper degree based on whether or not buying new equipment coincides with an alteration to the operations vs. play ratio for the average model RR enthusiast.  I'm looking forward to tenure at some major university when my degree is complete and thank all of you in advance for paying taxes to keep PhD folks well heeled.

  Regards

   Reading through this thread reminds me of something that happened years ago at a site where I was working as a pipe welder.  We were welding stainless that was specially made for the job and everything was X-rayed after every weld.  One week every weld was being knocked down and even when cut out and replaced it would be knocked down a second time.  The company running the job moved all of us to another section of the job and started checking out their pipe shipment.  The story they eventually told us was that at the end of the month somewhere up the production chain, the company that was acquiring the pipe and responsible for ensuring that only pipe meeting spec reached us had been short of what they needed to ship and keep up to contract on their supplying the job on time.  In order to avoid missing a contract specified shipment date, they had just wrapped up and shipped one batch that had failed to test OK thinking that they would be better off taking some pipe back than being fined for failing to deliver on time.  Unfortunately for them, they were wrong and another firm took over making sure the job had appropriate pipe.

  Maybe there's a batch of these engines that were picked up from the "failed QC" bench in order to make up the final box or two that it took to fill a pallet.  It wouldn't be the first time such things have happened.  Are there any series or serials that could be checked to tell when the failing engines were produced and if they would have all been shipped at the same time?


  Regards

   That was out of stock as well as discontinued, right?  I think Bachmann and a lot of others have had supply problems from China, so I expect a good many items on that list are going to be back in stock while only a minority will actually be discontinued.

  Regards

  I was born in Youngstown, Oh in 1951 and thought that when the sun set in the west, it left an orange/pink hue in the sky.  In reality, it was the steel mills running day and night back then.  The first train I remember seeing impressed me so much that I remember it to this day even though I was only four years old at the time.  My father was letting me ride along with him to go pick up something or other and we stopped at a rail crossing where a NYC L2b (so I was informed) rolled passed with a long train of mostly gondolas.  I clearly remember counting the drivers and watching the volcanic exhaust in the subzero cold.  With relatives in PA, MD, WV, and VA, one of which was a grandfather who worked for the Southern, I watched an awful lot of trains on the PRR, NYC, B&O, C&O, WM, Southern, and even Y6bs on the N&W.  Nothing has ever equaled that L2 slamming through the crossing with its exhaust enhanced by the cold and carload after carload of newly made steel.

   Now, of course, Youngstown is almost as dead as the L2 that past me that day.   People born too late to have seen this country when we made things missed out on a lot more than seeing an industrial America.  They missed out on seeing a real multicultural society, one where people from all over the world were in America because they wanted to be Americans, were proud of where they came from, but even more proud of their work and their community.

  Somehow, maybe because I've gotten older or maybe because I've lost enough of my marbles to have faulty mental connections these days, all of that relates to the first train I remember seeing back when we kids hung on every word of the big Hunkie or Wop who bragged about how much steel they rolled that day rather than listening to hyphenated American adults brag about their latest feat of thumb typing on their IPod.

  Regards

   The Athearn Big Boy and Challenger will either one work on 22" although they will both look horrible.  The boiler is so far out of line with the front engine that you'll probably think it's off track from time to time when it isn't.  The lead truck on the Challenger is prone to coming off track easily on 22" and I would suspect the Big Boy would be the same although I only have Challengers but have run other folks Big Boys a bit.   32" to 36" is the best with the 32" being about the minimum I'd personally recommend since it's the tightest radius the engines start to look reasonable on.

  As for the 4-8-4, I have BLI Niagaras and they run quite well all the way down to 22" even though they, too, look much better on 30" or larger.


  Regards

  I got the MRC wirless DCC system and love it.  The handheld is easy to use and I haven't had a single problem since I sent it in to be upgraded to V2 firmware (a free upgrade they made and I had the stuff back a week after I mailed it).  After you use their handheld for a bit everything else seems awkward.

  Regards

   The main things I've seen on my engines that causes this problem are the drawbar connection being broken either by the spring that is used to press against the tender peg coming unsoldered and therefore not making contact, or the brass brake shoes on older engines being in contact with the drivers.  Since about the mid-seventies most engines started to use plastic brake shoes rather than brass so that's easiest to check first.  The connection to the tender can look like it's OK but not be applying pressure to the peg on the tender, can be still covered with solder where it connects to the wire that goes to the motor but not actually still making contact sufficiently, and several other things that look fine but aren't functional so be sure it is tightly connected at the solder point and making good contact with the tender peg.  After that, you might even check that the tender peg is screwed in well and that it is still soldered to the wires from the tender wheels.  One way or another, the connection between the tender and the engine seem to have been the huge majority of the brass pickup problems I've had.  (tender trucks usually have a peg that won't let you rotate them 180 degrees, but if the engine is old enough you may have rotated them 180 and have them picking up from the same rail as the engine itself is)

  The only other thing that even sticks in my mind is the lead or trailing truck shorting against the frame somehow but that is usually a problem at switches or sometimes on very tight curves.

  Regards

   The majority of the Bachmann engines I have I've gotten from The Favorite Spot on EBay because they've had consistently great prices and great service.  I did get my Bachman Berks from Peach Creek Shops which is where I get my steel mill related buildings and hard to find steel industry equipment.  For everything else I use Model Train Stuff.  I've been buying from Model Train Stuff since the mid seventies when I used to visit their store on a regular basis.  They have a live inventory on their website, so if you see it in stock and put it in your cart, you'll get it without ever having to give backorders a thought.

   There are several other places that get high praise from friends of mine but the three I mention are the ones I've ordered from frequently enough to know for sure that they have excellent service and prices.  I don't think any one place has everything you'll need for a layout when you need it, though, but Model Train Stuff comes close and will order just about anything you can think of.

  Regards

   Thanks ABC, I'll find some place to look at one and check it out.

    Regards

  I think there is another thread like this or I just can't find one of my posts on this one.  For new engines to produce I think Bachmann is really missing a good thing if they don't take the boiler from there K4 Pacific and produce a PRR L1 Mikado.  The real ones used the same boilers as the K4 so it seems like a natural.  It's also one of the engines PRR fans most often lament not having available.

   Personally, though, a Spectrum NYC L2 series Mohawk or Spectrum NYC H10b Mike (which might have broader appeal than the Mohawks, sad to say) would be my ideal.  I think the NYC engines are among the best looking no matter what era or size you like.  Even the NYC 0-8-0 with a switching style tender would be welcome IMHO since I don't much care for the few 0-8-0 engines I have been able to find and look over.

  Regards

  My Heavy 4-8-2s are my favorites but my sons' Light 2-10-2s are a close second.  After that, the 2-8-0 and the 2-10-0 are great engines, but not favorites (I'd hate to be without them, though).


  Regards

   I saw a program about Lionel trains and the beginning of trains around the Christmas tree according to them was when someone made one for a store display that ran around the tree in a department store display window.  The display window always had a crowd around it, both children and adults, and the store had hundreds of requests to sell the display train.  After that, the creator of the display started building the first "train sets" as opposed to train toys that children could push along the floor.  I recall them saying that Gilbert of Gilbert Toys fame was the person who built the display, but for some reason that doesn't seem right to me.  Maybe I remember it incorrectly.

  I know that there were operating trains on tracks sold in Germany earlier than that, though, I just don't know if they were clockwork rather than electric or something like that which would make the first electric train around the tree the one in the display window.

 Another theory for the theory bin.


  MERRY CHRISTMAS