"Ah for the good old days of the Southern Steam program"

So true, along with N&W's excursion runs. I loved watching the 611 running Through Lynchburg way back when.

Atlas has their "conductalube", should be easy to find. I'm not sure if Labelle has anything similar.

The only way NS will ever put the 611, or any other steam engine, back online is if they believe they will make more money than it costs to refit and run one. From what I have seen of the higher ups, if it can't make a profit, or get a big tax write off, it ain't gonna happen

I live an hour or so east of Roanoke, Va. the home of the N&W. It's not uncommon to see N&W hoppers pass through in the middle of a NS train. As RAM stated, not everything gets painted in the new colors right away. The N&W and Southern merged in the 1982

TS, The slopeback tender gets power from both trucks, not sure about the others. The trucks are connected by a metal (copper?) strip on the tender floor, so you get power pickup from both rails by both trucks. Power is transfered by wipers from the front truck thru the drawbar. I assume that as long as the drawbar connection on the 2-6-2 is at or near the same height as their other engines you should have no trouble switching tenders.

 Mr B-man, can you give me the dimentions of the slope back tenders? I'm thinking of using one to improve the pickup on an Atlas mogul. I want to compare it with the original. Thanks Alan

 That rubber ring is called a traction tire, if one wheel has one on it then there should be one on the other wheel of that axle. If it is missing, that is probably the reason you are spinning your wheels.
Alan

 Actually Badger makes a airbrush sized sandblaster. Micro-Mark sells the kit p/n# 60287

Yep, tried that too, still got no response. Talked to a service tech today, on his recomendation, boxed it up and sent it back so they can clean out the gremlins

Hunt, I already ried that. my digitrax system shows an open circuit, and gets no response from the decoder when trying to read CVs

Bach-man it's the one installed by the factory

  I recieved my heavy mountain about a month ago. It ran great, and was very smooth. I parked it on an unpowered siding for about a week, while breaking in an other loco on DC. This siding has NO power connections at all and is separated from the rest of the layout by 1/8 inch gap. Tried running it tonight and it won't run on DCC at all, but does run on DC. What gives?