du-bousquetaire

Yes its the same here one of the largest and best hobby store here in Paris is likely to close at the end of the year, the owner is nearly 79 years old and she wants to enjoy life. I feel the same about the Accucraft reefers: Very nice but I am not taking them around to train shows any more too fragile.

Good luck with the move and your new layout Jerry and happy new year!

Yes Chuck, but those dealers deal only the very nice O scale stuff produced by MTH, I should know I worked for Trans Europe for four years manufacturing their N gauge stuff over 12 years ago. I asked them often and their repairman who is a good friend told me that even most O gaugers here have the whole DCS stuff torn out and redone either as analog (good for old farts like me) or DCC. (The reason they don't stock gauge one is that it takes a lot of room in their small shops just one boxcar shelve space could be filled with over fifty HO cars that would be sold out in a few weeks wheras the gauge one car would stay maybe years... Don't forget stores here pay taxes every year on their stock too! Its hopeless, been fighting this for over thirty years now. I even met Mike Wolf at the Rail expo in Chartres in November where we ran live steam and told him how I loved MTH stuff. But here its O gauge... Now I want to thank you for telling a European modeler of US practices like me, the fact that pug doors began to be introduced in 1947 by PFE. I have an old article in model railroader with drawings that tended to say that thet had been introduced in the late fifties. And even my Morning Sun refrigerator cars book didn't really contradict that. As I model the Pennsy untill 1957 (end of steam) I am now glad that I have three pug door reefers in my stud! (Ruskin, Wilson and PRR). It was very interesting info. Now as to why MTH did this I offer the following explaination: they wanted an openable door for kids, pug doors made that easy hinged doors would have been too fragile. Otherwise those MTH reefers are great with drilled or punched holes in the roof walkways, so it is a diferent type than the Accucraft ones. and they are rugged which is great too. By the way fellows I found a neat way to represent the dark dust that most often weathers yellow or orange reefers: when you are cleaning out your air brush, you run some thinner through it a few times, well keep what comes out and spray that over the surface from a distance so as to make a mist it captures that kind of grime very well and is easy as pie to do.

I maintain the factory geometry of the sliders as much as I can to save all those hasles too. It is very important to good operation. They have to be parallel to the railtop when looked from the side, in the correct plane transversly and also horizontal transversly. If you get that right you dont have any problems. I also watch out for the screws holding the spring they have to be screwed home otherwise it may short out on points and that can fry the spring (it just heats it red! After that the spring is useless.) This happened once when the engine was new and never after.

Just a word of caution about dry ice, as I worked in the theater I have some experience with it. Not only should you not manipulate it with your bare hands because it will cause frost bite, but when you make smoke with it by inserting it in boiling water for instance it creates a smoke heavier than air which therefore clings to the ground (Great in staircase numbers in music halls). But the smoke it creates is carbon monoxide and can asphixiate you if you are lying on the said ground. So be informed it is a dangerous product to use.

There are no dealers carying gauge one MTH products here Chuck. Thats the problem with the reefers : They are Ice age reefers since they were iced, but they have pug doors which don't relate to that age.= problem!

By the way those light sets which you can often buy at bargain prices are perfect for lighting passenger cars, you have say ten warm white leds on a chain, a battery box and a switch which usually can be removed to a more accessible position and rewired into the circuit. Great for us live steamers and no blinking or power droop for sparkie! And with leds not consuming much the batteries often last very long time, as you dont always need the lights..

That is fantastic, I really like the O scale layout concept with very good trackwork nice smooth curves, so the trains just seem to flow. It is much more realistic than layouts full of buildings that often look corny and you can't see the trains. Its too sad though, all those beautiful gauge one engines condemned to remain shelve queens. Building the shed to house all that is an amazing feat in itself. Thanks for letting us know Joe.

I personnally don't mind if MTH comes out with steam era car at all, although I understand that there are fans out there who do want modern stuff. If you look at what they have come out with there is a lot for modern image fans: Diesels and cars, the tank cars are strictly modern and the reefers although of a fairly old design feature pug doors a thing which appeared in the '60, the flat car design was developped in the mid '5Os, so I wouldn't say that they don't produce enough modern stuff. What I would like to see is an E unit and perhaps an Alco RSD7 or a Fairbank Morse trainmaster. Not only are there a lot of steam era fans out there but also many steam era cars stayed in use for a long time. And I don't think G scale is such a small market. It is also important to realise that nearly all the live steamers running on gauge one track need steam era freight cars (except for say UP fans who have the priviledge of mixing with contemporary) and they represent a good part of the market that needs to be reckoned with. My analysis of the plunge G scale took after 2008, was that that niche market kept its head above water while other more toylike ones floundered. The reason is that these guys really like trains enough to invest some dough in it and won't give up like other folks who just played around with trains in their garden. That may just be what saved G scale.

I turn down on the lathe anything over 2mm flange and usually keep them under 15mm. and have no derailments or problems. I have built a six wheeler SNCF car which has a very long wheelbase over 10" long and isn't sprung (although there is some vertical play) and have used some Aristoctraft wheelsets for it because they had the right diameter, I turned the flanges down to 1.3 mm and it sails around the layout without any problems., Of course I use 11' radius curves minimum and N° 8 points throughout. The Comstock wheels I have been using on my Piko cars are very fine and run very well.

Well actually untill I stopped using DCS last year, I repeatedly and regularly checked the jumper wires on all rail joints (the entire two track 160 ' ovals are jumped) and resoldered any that were loose because I had found out that this did cause frustrating problems that weren't linked to DCS not functioning. I alsso had to resolder the resistors that you supplied me often, So on that count it can't be the cause. There are some wiring issues which could be cause for concearn: Like the fact that I have used household electric outlet plugs (of the continental type) to have a patch system where I can change over from DCS to analog because all of my other electrics that I had before aquiring MTH locos were using analog power. Of course this is an either one or the other system I never tried to use both at the same time. So this could have caused some signal feebleness, who knows? However my pointwork is wired in the accepted system that has been dominant for all handlaid trackwork that I know of since the early 60s. So I think that a new system like DCS should be compatible with it and not the other way round (Railroads in the US have to let ships pass under their bridges, because ships were there first!). I have been running DCS with cab control type togles in the indoor yard ever since the accident which you did repair very well, a few years ago. So there is now a safety procedure there and no more problems. What actually tipped the bucket for me was that, when I opened up the railroad last spring, foolishly I didn't test by putting one engine on the inner track first to see which way it goes, and then putting it by hand on the outer track and check which way it goes. When my A-B-A lash up went over the crossovers it fried both boards. Especially since I repeatedly rearmed the circuit with a new fuse and tried again; Its entirely my mistake Raymond. I am not blaming you or DCS about that. What I don't think is correct though is that those darn boards 1) don't have any protection against this. And 2) that they cost too much. Either they are fully protected and cost that price or they should cost less than ten bucks! Another factor that made me abandon DCS (not absolutly sure that it is definitive though...) was that I could MU my Lionel GP7 with my F3s in analog and could not in DCS (no flywheels on the Lionel); And another reason is that one of my buddies who is a star O gauge modeler in France quit O gauge and running at the world famous Rambolitrain museum, when they started to use digital (DCC) there just because he is fed up with the frustration when something goes wrong, and it often does. So you see most of the reasons have nothing to do with DCS, and much less your valuable help and advice which I have followed as much as I could. Also for me, the fun isn't in electronic wizzardry at all. So its better for me to stick with something I know and can master. I also was tired of all the procedures I had to observe with it and the maintenance it demands (those railjoint bonds for instance). But of course I miss the fantastic possibilities in switching wich DCS offers. And believe me when I did signal quality checks I could get a 9 in one point on one lap and a 3 on the next lap, in the exact same point of the layout - most perplexing. This is fact, not imagination.

Very good Jerry this certainly does a great job of creating the atmosphere. I am glad you were able to find it. My buddy Denis is building a UP baggage with the spar pangled banner all over the side, its going to be quite something I will try to post a photo when he is done with it he milled out the skirting to make it as close to a car in contemporary state and service. His idea is that since the UP is already running the FEFs and the Chalengers and we hope it will the Big boy soon, he can model it in modern image with a dash 8 behind the tender! Thats going to be quite some sight.

I finally did find a photo with these loads I made; it's in the locomotive section on the article on the Lionel GP9 trucks. Its stupid to duplicate it here.

I would say that the reason why they dropped the second motor and put a O ring drive instead is because of the very high current draw on the motor. The engine with four motors draws anywhere between 3 and 4 amps which is huge. On my GP7 I replaced the wheels with ones obtained from NWSL and they improved the current pick up considerably, as well as the scale aspect of the trucks. However the amps these motors draw means that to run smoothly at slow speed for a certain amount of time I have to 1° clean the track with the LGB Bright boy , 2° clean the wheels that get oxidised through arcing, and 3° run only in very dry weather. But the loco has real nice slow speed and with these provisions will run reliably at slow speeds for about a week before it needs another wheel cleaning. Obviously pick up shoes could make a very big diference. However I find that affordable 1/32 early diesels not being too numerous on the market, it was definitly a great buy. Mine cost me $50 bucks! it is the period limit for me as I model PRR up to 1957 when they scrapped the last steam locos. So it is the most modern unit on my system. On this photo you can see part of my coal drag with the new coal loads which I described in the forum on Piko 2 bay hoppers.

I have seen photos of your layout and indeed the trackwork looks very good; which is what can permit you to run high end locos in my book just be carefull on those 10 curves but you should be OK Best, Simon

Well Raymond that is exactly what I did for three or four years, except that I dont have the RevL as you know, but I still have very strange signal ratings (different ratings at every different time a loco goes around the layout to the same place!!!) plus very unreliable horn or bell, no positive control on the headlight markers etc. to speak of. My track is about a 160' ovals.... And I experience countless hastles with the way my pointwork is wired which makes blowing 5 amp fuses, a daily experience and sometimes up to 4 fuses in one afternoon! But the worst is frying boards, there is absolutely no protection built in to them, so that when its fried it's about $125 + shipping to the US and back and on an A-B-A with two boards fried that could cost the price of the loco to get them changed... Absolutely unacceptable. MTH should replace them free of charge as it's their mistake if they don't fit the adequate protection on their boards. Here more and more people are reacting to this programmed obsolescence in electronic products and having no protection on the DCS boards is deffinitly something I would place in that kind of category. But I appreciate all that you do to make it viable, you do more than MTH does. So this is not a thing against you in any way. Its also a generation thing, we were used to products that worked for near a lifetime, and this new electronic society is useless. You constantly have to replace things because of fried boards. Take for instance my furnace brand new, the best make in France - one thunder storm and the board fried: Cost 500€, thank god the insurance took it in.... No insurance for my MTH... Happy new year though every body!

Hi Joe and Happy new year to Lewiston! (is that Lewiston pennsylvania? because I am a member of the PRRT&HS which has restored the station there) I run a good deal of high end models outdoors with a ground level line and ballasted track with no problems I once had a spectacular derailment of my scratchbuilt in brass 4-8-4 SNCF electric(2D2 9100) which fell off the railroad just where its 3 feet of the ground and that smashed the front badly. But as I had built it, I spent that summer vaccation repairing it... But otherwise it's ok with most live steam locos especially Asters which hitherto were sturdy and where everything can be accessed to with screws like meccano. I do have a good friend who has a Fine Arts streamlined Dreyfus Hudson, and who never takes it out of his glass case, because he says, every time he, does there is something which breaks off. But I do own, since a few years a Fulgurex electic model of a DE Caso Mikado (I am building a live steam model of it also) which is very fine and fragile and in good weather and with great care I run it . Your pike seems to have very good track so I would think that it should not be a problem, with proper care. One thing which could be a problem is curve radius as most of these are finescale you need to use at least 11' radius curves and preferably 14' radius curves as there may not be enough clearance between poney wheels and cylinders etc. Ditto with pointwork all my pointwork is at least N°8 pointwork. Especially on crossovers where there is a reverse curve. wheel standards could also be a problem as fine scale wheel need closer guard rails and frog rails around the frog. That is also why I am an advocate of good trackwork and wide curves. we run FEFs, big boys, K4 cab forwards French and English and German locos at my steam ups at track speed with safety and comfidence that there won't be derailments. I spend a good deal of time on trackwork to keep it in shape, as my pike is now 36 years old. There have been many photos of the track on this forum.

Yes Jerry I have a buddy here who is going wild over UP and he has a hard time getting UP cars I think they are mostly sold out. thats the way these firms work now, if you don't order up front then you take a big risk of not getting the thing you want. its true for MTH also. Good luck finding one. And by the way happy new year and lots of great runs.

I once worked for a Paris hobby shop that did a small N scale production and did some injection casting on small parts (trucks, couplers, diaphragms etc), the main body parts were cast in a factory specialised in injection molding. But the fellow who made the molds worked in the same workshop that I did, we were budies and beleive me molds do wear out with time. He showed me. I am sure that Piko has the possibility of changing those molds into more correct models. and it wouldn't be too expensive if they have to make them again because they are worn out.

Thanks Joe, thats something I have never tried. I didn't bond the track after it made the complete loop, but there is a rail joiner and I had tried conductive grease when I started experimenting with DCS. So this could be why I had so much trouble with DCS. I will try this as the weather permits later in the spring, by placing insulated railjoiners there instead. If it is this it would be great news as I enjoyed DCS tremendously but also was frustrated with all kinds of hastles, including frying boards. But that was entirely my fault. As I have kept my DCS set up its easy to plug it in make the modifications and test to see if its better this way.

My layout which uses code 215 brass rail and code 250 with portions that have been out there since 1978. It needed bonding the rails to work with DCS and I,still had signal issues..., but I did manage to make it all work. However never mind the command of lights, smoke, horns, bell and station announcements it was never viable. Have returned to Aristocraft Train engeneer instead. Works fine no hastles. and keeps my sanity and my wallet in good shape.

I made coal loads for mine using styrofoam covered with real coal smashed to bits with a hammer and glued down using the same technique as for ballast put it on dry and spray it with detergent and water and use a glue made of white glue half and half with water. You drop small drops at a time it makes convincing loads. Dont forget to paint the styrofoam black before gluing the coal. You could use the same technique for any other material: ballast etc.. its lightweight and removable. I didn't make any photos of this yet but I did my whole rake of 12 hoppers. I didn't bother with the cutting down to scale width it is too much work for too little difference, but it is the way to go if you want exact scale, nor the handrails as that means a repaint... It is well worth doing though. I did get some spare brake gear and wheels from Piko and installed them in the end under the incline plane. Congratulations on the job you did on yours Larry. and happy new year to all from France.

I have seen examples of zinc rot before, and your running board doesn't look at all like zinc rot. It seems more that it was hit by something that bent the running board frame and broke the stretcher zinc rot takes on a craked surface across the part that resembles an old chunk of cheese that would have been let to dry up (sort of like those in a mosusse trap) with many craks and the zinc just becomes brittle all over, not just at one point like on your big boy. Besides all the zinc rot I have seen has happened on models about at least, I would say 20 to 25 years of age, this would be too early for zinc rot.

Hi there Bob: now I will have to remember how to post a photo on this forum... It's so much easier than on another forum it is great! As you can see it is a very simple linkage easy to add on. While you are at it there is also the whistle detail on top of the boiler., so I made a photo of it too. It is right next to the safety valves on the cowling. It is recessed and that may be a problem. I hope this helps. As in bright sunlight, this flashed side shot really shows up how Accucraft got their Dark green loco enamel of the Pennsy pretty darn right: Compare the chassis and cylinders with the bronze colored boiler. On the fireman's side there is no pipework other than the hand rail. I hope this helps. I really like how you modeled the streamline top of the tender, I wish Accucraft had done it also. But I guess it would make the meth tank and water tank inaccessible. You can't have them all. Best, Simon

The answer to that Joe is make them yourself, you won't be disapointed. Take it from me, I do a lot of scratchbuilding (and did so before I retired) and my purchasses tend to fill in with what is available that fits my theme and saves me from scratchbuilding it. But one is often disapointed by purchasses. Even high end ones. I have just spent the last month making new trucks for coaches sold at over a £1000 each. I bought them top save time well there you go...