JWB

Here are some photos of the new Bachmann Hi-Rail truck. It has working head and tail lights and DCC on board. While it has weight, and the highway wheels are metal and flanged, along with the hi-rail wheels set up for power, it's still sensitive to dirty track. I found cleaning the wheels with a cotton swap dipped in lacquer thinner helped.

Frank Cicero had an article in the May 1995 RMC on detailing the comet commuter versions of these cars. I don't know what the current price is, and I loaded up on them when they were a drug on the market -- in the late 90s, I traveled enough on work assignments back east that I could find them at distress prices in hobby shops and now have more than a lifetime supply. IHP and Island Model Works have done the later versions of comet cars, too, and these might be a better bet if the prices on the Walthers cars have gone off the meter. Here are some Walthers cars I've done, in various stages of completion, based on the Frank Cicero article. I assume you can order this issue from Carstens; the underbody info is very worthwhile. The CDOT cab car needs to have its right front window blanked like the MNCR car. Adding horns and so forth based on photos is also a good first step, as is adding the decals from the kits.

Do you suppose (in my late 1960s scenario) the WM is a credible routing of DTI box cars from Ford (Detroit) going south to Florida, RDG anthracite hoppers going south to Florida? Phil Clark, Catarman, Philippines Anthracite coal was used primarily for domestic heating in the northeastern US. Its use fell off drastically after WWII due to competition from oil, natural gas, and electricity, especially in postwar housing construction. Very little coal of any sort, outside of power plant use, went to Florida, none of it anthracite. (Among other things, anthracite went to furnaces in basements, and there weren't basements in Florida.) Power plant and other limited industrial coal came from the southern Appalachian region. I think the closest auto plants to Florida would have been in Georgia, and the routing of auto parts would have been from Detroit through Cincinnati to Georgia via the Southern and L&N. Auto parts cars were typically in a pool, so you could see them on any road with auto parts service. Auto parts on the WM would have been running from Connelsville/Bowest via Hagerstown to Harrisburg via the Reading, wouldn't have been headed to Georgia.

It sounds to me as if you're moving to a good next step, which is getting something to run and trying things out. However, even a steam 2-8-2 might not be simple enough for a real trial-and-error start. If you do plan on trying DCC, I'd look at a starter arrangement like the NCE PowerCab, which is roughly comparably priced to an MRC Tech 6 and which I've found very satisfactory, some Kato Unitrack or equivalent, and maybe a Bachmann S-4 or S-2 with sound (or maybe even a Bachmann B&M 44-ton with DCC, which can be found very inexpensively). When you feel comfortable with how that stuff fits together, move up to the 2-8-2. But I wouldn't advise rewiring a steam loco or replacing a sound decoder at the trial-and-error level of the hobby.

As with a great many things, trial and error, and trying it for onesself, are key. There's been a lot of progress in the hobby -- I'll take a hybrid 21st century steam loco over a 1970s Korean brass loco any day! But the more you get into the hobby, the more you have to blaze your own path.

Jack, I was able to find one video of the rough track layout you were thinking of at http://s110.beta.photobucket.com/user/mikelhh/media/Videos/ToTheBakeryTrimmed_1_1.mp4.html#/user/mikelhh/media/Videos/ToTheBakeryTrimmed_1_1.mp4.html?&_suid=135983115396400033330914734113204 There are others, if you poke around on this thread http://www.thewhistlepost.com/forums/ho-scale/11046-winter-new-england-mark-ii-38.html

I think the main problem is that "decoder killer" is an imprecise expression! Certainly if a motor isn't isolated from the frame, with both wires to the brushes coming from the decoder, it will smoke the decoder! A smaller problem is that open-frame motors draw more amps than can motors, which mainly means you can't easily get away with mounting an N or even Z scale size decoder in a tight space if you're working with a high amp draw motor. I started switching to DCC a few months ago. It appears to me that the cost of a DCC starter package like the NCE PowerCab, is pretty much equivalent to a Tech 6, but you have more expandability if you choose to do more with DCC than just run a smallish number of factory equipped locos. For me, that was more cost effective, though the conversion will be a very long task.

OK, yeah, if it's a Tech IV and locos will still creep with the controller off, that's what you shouldn't be using with DCC or sound locos -- and in fact, if you rewire, you'll still have a problem with the loco creeping! I would look into the MRC Tech 6, which will control both DC and a small number of DCC locos.

I know that Blackstone warns to use its locos only on straight DC. Many MRC throttles have a pulse feature at low speeds, although the cheapest are in fact DC. I wonder if the erratic performance is coming from using pulse DC. What model MRC are you using?

It would have been a demonstrator at best, but just as likely something dreamed up for an ad. If it existed at all, it wouldn't have lasted very long in that scheme.

I noticed this thread and thought I'd point out Charles Freericks's Southern California Locals book http://www.amazon.com/Southern-California-Locals-Railroad-Enthusiasts/dp/1475166788/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1348669899&sr=8-1&keywords=freericks+southern+california+locals which he updates on a blog at http://socallocalfreight.blogspot.com/ The blog can give you some of the flavor of the book, which gives a much clearer picture of how trains other than main line intermodals actually operate.

Ha! I'm delighted to see a UK-based US layout that isn't an Epoche V Florida/California ISL! The more I look at late US steam, though, the more I'm convinced that it can be done without turntables, roundhouses, and huge coaling facilities. Why not a shelf-type small layout based on some of the 1960s logging shows, for instance, or some of the last steam shortlines? The Bachmann Russian or the new mogul would work very well there.

MB Klein is pretty good on price and selection. Walthers has sllloooowwwly been waking up to the fact that shoppers are going by price, and they do monthly specials, discount certain items, and now have a "valued customer program" that allows people who apparently have a good record of buying from them to get discounts on certain lines. Their service is consistently the best. Some of the better-known houses have less-good service. I had to demand that one very well-known place delete my account entirely when they charged my credit card for a purchase I hadn't made. I would say that in the age of the internet, you simply should not deal with any outlet that gives less than 95% satisfaction, but this is going to have to come from your own experience.

Agree with the above. "GPxxm" is a loosey-goosey term that was (I think) introduced by the former Extra 2200 South, which at one time was a leading-edge rail news sheet. When my former local hobby shop began carrying it, I stopped reading Trains, which would be 40 years ago or so. But it basically just means "modified", which of course can mean just about anything, especially considering how many railroads were changing things in their shops. To confuse things more, X2200S also had a "GPxxu" designation, meaning "upgraded". I think they got very theological about which locos were "u"s and which were "m"s, but this of course meant nothing. From a modeler's perspective, the issue, as the guys say above, is photos.

Regarding ornate walls and factories, there's an exception to every rule. "The crenulated concrete wall, which is approximately 80,000 square feet and 12-inches thick, is decorated with heraldic griffins and bas-reliefs of Babylonian princes carved into the stone between impressive pillars and towers. The design, dedicated to the civilizations of Sumeria, Akkadia and Babylonia, conveys strength and style." This is -- where else? -- in Los Angeles. Bob Smaus sometimes came close to this kind of thing in his model work. But the US can be quirky anywhere!

I still can't see the gator, but an N scale gator would be hard to spot. They look like floating logs even in 1:1, unless they've gotten onto the golf course, in which case animal control has to come out and get them.