Adrian Wintle

I can confirm that the Acela is relatively happy (at its current length of 2+3) on the outside track of the new Kato banked Unitrack double track curves (187/8"/175/8"). It's slow-speed operation is horrible, though. This may be because it needs running in. Adrian

No, no, no. Aftermarket depowering service, £49.95. No need for the customers to even touch their prized items...

Also, Jason's comment in post#52 suggests that we might see some coaches out of Rapido in the future.

Did you manage to get a copy of 'Amtrak by the Numbers'? I saw a pristine copy at a show on the weekend ($CDN 75) and thought of you. Adrian

I only just got it so it hasn't had a full test. The set comes with 19" radius track, though. Mark (Spookshow) suggests that 19" is a bit on the tight side. http://www.spookshow.net/loco/bachmannacela.html Adrian

And now for a bit of modern(ish) Amtrak, since I just got hold of an Acela set. Bachmann HHP-8, Bachmann Acela, two Kato P42s. Except for the Acela coaches and the Amfleet I on the right (which are Bachmann), the coaches are Kato Amfleet IIs and Viewliners (Edit: I just realized that none of the Viewliners are in shot). A better look at the detail on the HHP-8 and Acela. The basic Acela train set comes with two locos (un-powered, but with function decoders for the lights), a First-Class car, a Business car, and a Café (which has the motor and decoder). I need to find two more Business cars and an End Business car to make up a prototypical consist. Adrian

According to the bible of N&W coal cars, the burger emblem dates from the 1963 livery changes. Adrian

It is. I had in mind that it was PA or perhaps E-unit length until I looked at the dimensions. I think the only longer loco was the centipede, also from Baldwin. Adrian

Having discovered that I didn't have any .010" brass wire, project trainphone couldn't continue until yesterday. I have now added trainphones to a pair of Kato PA-1s, stripped and added trainphones to the Erie-builts (the Lifelike yellow stubbornly resisted the stripper, but Brunswick green will cover it) and added etched stirrups to a LifeLike FA-2 I also found some old V-Line Baldwin RF-16 sharknose shells at a show ($2.50 each), so I decided to try and make a passenger shark, thinking I might be able to use an old Concor/Kato PA-1 chassis to power it. Then I looked up the dimensions and realized that they were much longer than I thought (80' over couplers) so a chassis might be problematic. Anyway, I did a cut-n-shut to give me something approximately the right size. It does need a lot of detail changes, especially on the roof (and the vents, panels, windshield profile...). Adrian

It is a good picture, but I take exception to calling that 'extreme blizzard conditions'. You couldn't take that picture in 'extreme blizzard conditions' because the train wouldn't be visible at that distance. That is just a quite windy day with normal drifting snow and light snowfall (you can see the hills in the background, so there really isn't a lot of snow coming down). Adrian

Most of the models (and prototype photos) show that it could look like anything between a dark green to black, depending on where and when it was painted and how faded it had gotten. The NATO Black is a very dark green and matches freshly-painted locos. It looks significantly greener than my NS locos which get Tamiya Semi-Gloss Black. Adrian

Decided to do a bit of work on the PRR fleet. Having found my collection of Gold Medal Models Trainphone antenna supports, I added Trainphones to the two Atlas GP9s that didn't already have them (equipped one in the background) and to my two Kato F7s I also started preparing an A-B-A set of Life-Like FM Erie-builts to get Trainphone antennas (A-units) and DGLE* paint to replace the garish KCS scheme *Dark Green Locomotive Enamel, a.k.a. Brunswick green. I find the Tamiya spray can of NATO Black works quite well for this, as it is a very dark green. Adrian

You could use the Rapido CN LW Coach in CP Maroon as a stand-in for the CP prototype, but the other one may need a bit of modelling... Adrian

PRR used K4s pacifics into the '50s http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=1587840 as well as Baldwin passenger sharks http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=1157751. The ATSF seems to have gotten rid of most of its steam by your timeframe, so I'd expect that it could be any of the passenger roster http://www.thedieselshop.us/ATSF.HTML They could also be used as rider cars on the end of a train of baggage and express cars (parcels train in UK terms). Adrian

Heavyweight coaches were used well into the '50s (and beyond) by some roads. Streamlined lightweight coaches were used for the more prestige services, but the heavyweights could be seen doing commuter or other secondary service. No heavyweights made it into Amtrak service, though. It is quite likely that they would be seen alongside your lightweight cars. To give an idea, when Pullman was forced to divest itself of its car fleet in 1945, there were 609 lightweight cars and 3994 heavyweight cars (primarily sleepers of some form), as well as 2200 tourist cars (whatever they were). http://utahrails.net/pass/pass-pullman.php Some railroads (e.g. the PRR) had such huge fleets of heavyweight cars that they continued using them (with modifications from minimal change up to rebuilding so that they looked like lightweights) until the end of their passenger operations. That first car is, I think, a unique ATSF car and that is its post-1937 guise. A few similar cars also existed but the style of car was unique to the ATSF. See http://www.trainweb.org/fredatsf/protopass1.htm and look at the Rivarossi section (this is for N, but RR made the same cars in HO). Adrian

A double slip would almost certainly not be used unless it was a high-traffic (and intensively maintained) area where there was an operational necessity. There are lots of them on the station approaches in Toronto, which sees a train movement every 2 minutes in rush hour, but that is an exception. An industrial spur would have manually-controlled plain switches. Edit: unless there was an operational need, like on the floatbridge of the Hoboken Shore Line/Manufacturers Railroad mentioned below. Adrian

Note: they are moving about 4 doors north-east in the same complex. Note also that George's Trains is just east north of that, on the north side of 14th Ave (you can watch trains while shopping). Adrian

Oh, good. That means I can save my money to buy expensive Broadway Limited N-scale locos instead. As they don't appear to be doing the only CN steamer I have ever seen running (6218, U-2g), I'm not even tempted by one as a display model. I expect that modellers of the transition period on CN or CP will be ecstatic, though. My main concern with the is announcement is that the N-scale program may now be limited to more GMD-1 variants... Adrian Note: while not good for me personally, this is a very good thing for Canadian modellers.

Presumably in HO?

Yes, Warbonnet in particular really suited the PAs, in both its ATSF and D&H versions. Adrian

I actually prefer the early E-units (E3-E6) with the swept-back noses. I always found the PA to be too blunt in the nose. Adrian

True, but the actual knowledge could be limited to a small group of people. A couple of software engineers to create an alternate 'special' build (which may incorporate normal operational parameters for some jurisdictions and which may be well tested tested, just not valid for a particular jurisdiction), someone in configuration management to ensure that the 'special' build is chosen rather than the fully tested and certified 'production' build when the ECU is flashed, probably someone in QA to sign off on it, and somebody to authorize the action. I'm assuming the programming of ECUs is a highly automated process. Adrian

Very few would know. A possible scenario would be that software with that 'feature' could be created for an innocent/valid reason (disable emissions controls for performance testing/tweaking but leave the emissions test mode so that we can check that the tweaks don't take us out of spec). It would then only take one or two unscrupulous individuals to ensure that software build, rather than the 'production' software build got installed in the car (change the build identifier on the work order). This sort of thing can happen by accident*. At one point the company I used to work for shipped controllers with commercial-spec EEPROMs rather than the required MIL-Spec ones due to a supply chain issue. Until that point we did development testing on the much cheaper (50x) commercial-spec devices. After that the supply chain was simplified to only contain MIL-Spec devices and we ate the cost of occasionally destroying the more expensive parts during development testing. The people programming the EEPROMs and assembling the controllers just used the parts that were provided in their bins - they didn't know the difference. The problem occured upstream and probably only took a mistake by one person. *not saying that it happened in the VW case Adrian

Bear in mind that the software testing may have been against the software requirements without considering if the requirements made sense. I've seen this a lot, particularly if the testing is outsourced (an increasingly common occurrence). Adrian

Depending on the actual problem, the cost of repair may handily exceed the potential sale value of the car, so yes, the scrap value is probably higher. Remember that 'scrapped' doesn't mean the whole car would be crushed. All the potentially re-usable parts would be salvaged to be used for repair of other cars. Adrian