Category Archives: My Thoughts

2011 Chicago O Scale Show

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Well for the first time in my life I got to go to the Chicago O Scale Show. I’ve wanted to go for a long time, something always got in the way of my attending the show. This year mother nature tried with 10 inches of snow predicted in Cleveland the night before I was to drive through.

Now this is not just your average show, I was amazed how big it was. It was bigger than most of the Nationals I’ve been to and they do this every year. It did make me wonder why are we stuck with so many small shows here on the East Coast? Why are none of our shows even a third the size of this show?

The selection of models for sale was amazing. I’ll focus on some of the new models I saw at the show.

Ted Schnepf from Rail Unlimited had some new resin kits at the show, of interest to me was the USRA Mill Gondola (Reading GMk and GMl.) One of these kits came home with me so I’ll show you photos of that soon as I start to build it. He also had a new Santa Fe Reefer that looked nice.

Norm Buckhart of Protocraft was there with some new models. It was nice to finally meet Norm and talk to him about his products. He had a brass sample model of the ACF Reefer he is about to import. He also showed us a Roller Bearing truck that will make the modern guys very happy. Too modern for me, so I didn’t get too excited about it.

Jon Cagle of Southern Car and Foundry had his Harriman cars on display along with his new CP Mini Box. The Mini box is starting to ship I ordered mine at the show. The masters for the car were done by Gene Deimling and the car is great. The major part of the kit is a one piece body plus a roof.  I’m looking forward to building the Mini Box and I can’t wait for more freight cars from this new company.

Keith Wiseman also had two new resin cars on his table. One was a Southern prototype and the other was a Southern Pacific car. I was also glad to see he had available the C&O Builders Plates again. I need to order some of their Baldwin Builders plates for my upcoming Baldwin projects.

There were a number of other dealers I got the chance to talk to about parts for projects. Stevenson Preservation Lines  was there and I got to pick up a version of the Hodges Trailing Truck that is needed for the K1 Project. We’ll talk about this in depth in a future post here.

Stevenson also had a built up Fox Truck from his castings on display at his table. I know there has been a lot of talk about the importance and need for this truck. Now it seems that three different manufactures have a version for the five modelers across the country that have been lobbing so hard for this truck to be made. With so many other things that are missing in O Scale why?

Middle Division had a resin XL camp car for the PRR on display at Al Small’s table. I’m not sure how these will be sold either through Al as built up cars or as kits. Al Small had one of these in the model contest and took second place in MOW equipment (I think.) I had a chance to see the masters for these cars last Summer at their casters. I was in there to get an idea of the services he offered. HO modelers will note these are cast by the same company that is doing the Baldwin Babyface freighters for ARHS.

Rick Yoder had some new models on display at the table, trouble was they were too popular, as there was always a crowd around the table and I didn’t get a chance to talk much to Rich. I know he was taking orders for his new USRA 70 ton triple and a ACL Watermelon car.  I’ll need some of the USRA Triples for my NYC interchange traffic coming from Newberry Junction. Also Rich was taking orders for his PRR 2d-F8 and PRR 2D-F12 trucks.

Glad he was busy though as other Brass importers were signing a gloomy song. It appears that Keystone talking about not doing any more freight car models. They STILL did not have their PRR 2D-F8 truck available. I first saw samples of that truck in 2000, in the basement at Cherry Valley as we were rebuilding the railroad. It doesn’t appear any closer to reality today than it did ten years ago.

Next up I’ll talk about the layout tours.

Questions about the Color of the M-53’s

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Ok after last night’s post on the Weaver cars there was some whining about the color of the cars and the color in the photographs. But then again some folks need to whine about something, otherwise they might have to do some modeling.

Today, was a beautiful day so I decided to break out the big studio strobe in the sky. Trouble was, even though it was 50 degrees today, all of the tables in the local parks either still had snow on them or all around them. I guess nobody uses picnic tables in the snow…… So these are shot in the back of my Jeep.

Let the whining begin!

Weaver – B&O M-53 Wagon-top Boxcar

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Imported By: Weaver Models
MSRP February 2011: $75.45

Back at the 2009 National in Towsand, Md. Weaver Models announced they were going to produce the B&O M-53 wagon-top boxcar. That Fall I did something I don’t normally do, I pre-ordered the cars. They have finally arrived and they were worth the wait.

I stopped by my dealer to pick up my cars and he had one he had ordered out on the counter. At first glance, I was blown away, Weaver hit a home-run with this one.

Prototype History
For a complete prototype history of all the B&O Wagon-top boxcars, I highly recommend reading Pat Wider’s article in RP CYC 9. The article talks about the early experimental cars, the rebuilds of the M-15 class of double sheathed boxcars and the built new M53 class of boxcars.

In Ted Culotta’s “Essential Freight cars: 23″ he talks about both the rebuilt and built new wagon-top cars. He points out many detail differences in all the cars.

Prototype Population
380000-381999  2000 M-53 cars built 1937-1938
385000-385999  1000 M-53a cars built 1941
380000-381999  1942 M-53 cars in the January 1952 ORER
385000-385999    986 M-53a cars in the January 1952 ORER

The Models
The overall appearance of the cars is very nice. Paint was smooth and the lettering clean and crisp.

The car weighted in at 15 oz. (the NMRA recommended weight) with the metal side framed trucks from Weaver installed. Yes the Weaver Metal trucks did weigh 3 oz. They will be changed out for a proto48 set of trucks.

The car measures up to the Kadee coupler height gauge at the correct height. I will change out the Weaver couplers. The ladder rungs measure out to be 0.018 inches round, very close to scale 3/4 of an inch.

Some have complained about the door not opening, I think that it is great! They should not be open while a car is moving anyway.

There are some things I plan to upgrade, such as the door tracks and a couple of missing gussets around the striker plate. When I do those upgrades I’ll post about them.

I’ve owned a couple of brass versions of this car in the past. It has been imported by different manufacturers over the years, International, Hallmark, PSC and Overland all have done a form of this car. I’m glad I sold off my brass cars a few years ago. This car is as good or better than most of them.

Weaver has set the bench mark much higher with this car than anything Atlas has brought out in O scale. I think every O scale railroad needs at least one of these cars on the layout. When you look at yard photos of the early and mid fifties, its hard to find a photograph without one of these cars somewhere in the shot.

References

Train Order

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You never know what you might find on the web. Today I found a train order for Extra 271 East, for August 27, 1952, to run on the Westward Main from Spruce Street to The Tamaqua Scale at 4:26 am.

Here is a piece of paper handed up to a crew of a Reading F7 58 years ago and it put a smile on my face today thinking about movement.

Wheel Standards

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I’ve been having a conversation with Matt Forsyth for the last month or so about wheel standards. We both were involved with Proto48 when we first started in O scale, so the NMRA standard of 1.172 for wheel width is not something either of us like.

One of my early lesson on using my lathe was to turn down the width of some Gem PRR B6sa drivers. The drivers started out at 0.175 close to the NMRA specification, we turned them down to 0.145 which greatly improved their appearance.

Matt has chosen to set his standards at a wheel width of 0.135″ which really makes for a fine looking wheel. He keeps sending photos like this one of an Intermountain truck with the .135 wheels under them. I had to give it a try.

Matt was working with the Intermountain Replacement wheelset that is quickly becoming the standard wheelset for a lot of modelers. First off that wheelset is way too wide at 0.162″ so it’s a natural to be thinned. Matt has been taking off the material from the backside of the wheelset. So I set up the lathe and started. The wheelsets turn very easily and were thinned to their new widths. I experimented with 0.145″, 0.140 and 0.135 taking all the material off the back of the wheel just as Matt had instructed.

They looked great! I set them up in a spare Intermountain truck and had a good look at them. Again, I say they look great! A big improvement over the stock Intermountain wheelset.

So I began to test the trucks with the new wheelsets on some of the turnouts I’ve built on the Fasttracks jigs. They rolled right through with no trouble. But as I looked closer I noticed that there was a lot of room between the guardrails and the running rails on the wheels. On the 0.135′ wheels if the one wheel was against the guardrail then the opposite wheel could hit the opposite side of the frog point. I should point out this didn’t happen on my test but it could have if the car was forcing the truck in that direction.

The first thought was simple enough tighten up the flange-way standards at the same time as the wheel standards. But My brother is also an O scaler and my layout will most likely be the only option from him to ever operate any of his O scale models. So do I really want to change the flange-way standards?

Emails were flying back and forth between Matt and myself about the flangeway issue and the back-to-back dimension. Matt went though on one email and pointed out a half dozen manufacturers who all had different wheel widths and back-to-back dimensions.

So I decided to check back with the NMRA and see exactly where the standard is set at. To my surprise the standard had been revised last February. See below

I thought Wheel Note 5 was very important, it states: “The adjusting of the back-to-back spacing is highly recommended to meet the target wheel check gauge (K) specification.” Here is the NMRA pointing out that there needs to be flexibility in the back-to-back dimension to meet the more important dimension of the inside of the flange to the back side of the opposite wheel dimension.

With this I’ve started a new page to record the different dimensions of different manufactures wheels. I was surprised how far off some of them where.

Turns out the new NMRA standard is where I wanted to move my standard to. I think the 0.145 wheel is a nice compromise in width and there are already commercial replacement wheelset for the width from North West Short Line. I had already started to go there with the purchase of some North West Short Line replacement wheels for the Weaver drives.

My next experiments with thinning the Intermountain wheels are starting from setting the back-to-back dimension first and than machining the front of the Intermountain wheel to get to the desired width. This will be a lot more work than taking the material off the back, but I think it will make a better operating wheelset in the long run.

Shamokin Engine House, May 1972

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As I explore Shamokin as a possible modeling location, one of the key structures to build will be the engine house at the East end of the Yard.

Back in May of 72 my brother Bobb was chasing an excursion in Shomokin. He sent me some scans of the engine house that he shot that day.

Here we see the North Side of the engine house with one track still going to the building.

Here in the view of the south side of the engine house with no tracks going in the building.

South Side Shamokking Engine House. Closer view of the engine house doors.

Shamokin Yard with Excursion train coming into town.

Modeling the Reading Open Hopper Car Fleet in 1952

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The Summer of 1952, my modeling period, was a time of change for the Reading open hopper car fleet. The oldest cars of the fleet, class HTf, dated back to 1910 were being retired and the newest HTv’s were being built in 1952.

There were six open hopper car types split into twelve car classes. The majority of the fleet was comprised of 50 ton twin hoppers except for the two classes of 70 ton quad hoppers class HTl and HTn.

In March of 2012, I gave a presentation on “Modeling Reading Company Open Hopper Cars 1948-1956” I’ve posted the handout from the clinic. Dowload the handout

Milestones In Open hopper car painting:

  • 1923-1940 Underlined “Reading” Car Number Centered On Car
  • 1940 Roman lettering without red herald New with Class HTO
  • 1942-1954 Roman lettering with red herald
    2-17-42 revision on an HTj paint diagram “Added Stencil “America’s Largest Anthracite Carrier”
  • 1955-1958 “Speed” lettering with red herald

Reading HTf 87994

Reading HTf

Car Numbers Builder Built Qty Built 1/52 ORER Service Life Inside Length
86000-86999 American Car & Foundry 1913 1000 334 1910-1953 32′ 10″
87000-87999 Cambria Steel Co. 1913 1000
88000-88999 Standard Steel Car Co. 1911 1000
89000-89999 American Car & Foundry 1910 1000

Reading HTh 76770

Reading HTh

Car Numbers Builder Built Qty Built 1/52 ORER Service Life Inside Length
74500-75499 Cambria Steel Co. 1917 1000 4214 1916-1960 32′ 10″
75500-75999 Standard Steel Car Co. 1917 500
76000-76499 Pressed Steel Car Co. 1917 500
76500-76999 Pressed Steel Car Co. 1916 500
77000-77499 Standard Steel Car Co. 1917 500
77500-77999 Standard Steel Car Co. 1916 500
78000-78999 Pressed Steel Car Co. 1916 1000

Reading HTj 72687 (USRA Twin Hopper)

Reading HTj

Car Numbers Builder Built Qty Built 1/52 ORER Service Life Inside Length
72500-73499 Standard Steel Car Co. 1919 500 1831 1919-1964 30′ 6″
73500-74499 Ralston Steel Car 1919 500

Reading HTl 70843

Reading HTl

Car Numbers Builder Built Qty Built 1/52 ORER Service Life Inside Length
70500-70999 Pressed Steel Car Co. 1922 500 3504* 1922-1964 39′
71000-71499 Standard Steel Car Co. 1922 500
71500-71999 Midvale Steel & Ordinance 1922 500
72000-72499 American Car & Foundry 1922 500

Reading HTn

Car Numbers Builder Built Qty Built 1/52 ORER Service Life Inside Length
68500-69499 Bethlehem Steel Corp. 1925 1000 3504* 1924-1964 39′
69500-69899 Pressed Steel Car Co. 1924 400
69900-70099 Standard Steel Car Co. 1924 200
70100-70299 Bethlehem Steel Corp. 1924 200
70300-70499 American Car & Foundry 1924 200

*ORER record is for combined totals of both classes HTl and HTn.

Reading HTr 65950

Reading HTo

Car Numbers Builder Built Qty Built 1/52 ORER Service Life Inside Length
80000-80999 Reading Shops 1941 1000 995 1941-1976 31′-0″

Reading HTp

Car Numbers Builder Built Qty Built 1/52 ORER Service Life Inside Length
67000-67299 Reading Shops 1942 300 339 1941-1976 31′-0″
67300-67338 Reading Shops 1943 39

Reading HTr

Car Numbers Builder Built Qty Built 1/52 ORER Service Life Inside Length
65000-65999 Reading Shops 1944 1000 996 1944-1976 31′-0″

Reading HTs

Car Numbers Builder Built Qty Built 1/52 ORER Service Life Inside Length
66000-66999 Reading Shops 1943 1000 995 1943-1976 31′-0″
67339-67999 Reading Shops 1944 661 659 1944-1976

Reading HTss

Car Numbers Builder Built Qty Built 1/52 ORER Service Life Inside Length
66000-67999 Reading Shops 1951 2 1951-1976 31′-0″

Reading HTt 81089

Reading HTt

Car Numbers Builder Built Qty Built 1/52 ORER Service Life Inside Length
81000-81999 Bethlehem Steel Corp. 1948 1000 1000 1948-1967 33′-0″

Reading HTu

Car Numbers Builder Built Qty Built 1/52 ORER Service Life Inside Length
82000-82749 Bethlehem Steel Corp. 1949 750 749 1949-1967 33′-0″

Reading HTv

Car Numbers Builder Built Qty Built 1/52 ORER Service Life Inside Length
83000-83999 Bethlehem Steel Corp. 1950 1000 3000 1950-1967 33′-0″
84000-84999 Bethlehem Steel Corp. 1951 1000
85000-85999 Bethlehem Steel Corp. 1952 1000

Note more HTv’s were built AFTER my modeling period of 1952.

 

 

Layout Visit: Southern New England Model Railroad Club, 2010 Show

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Well I decided to take a little ride today, to visit the Southern New England Model Railroad Club layout and attend their O scale Show located in Gardner Massachusetts. From my home in South Jersey Google Maps said it was a 5.5 hour drive so I wanted to get an early start. The wife and I got into the car around 4:30 am. We arrived at the show a little before 10:00 am.

The show was not as big as some of the other O scale shows I’ve attended, but it also wasn’t as small as some of the shows in the past. There was a different selection of dealers at the show which was a refreshing change of pace.

After walking around the show, I headed down to the basement of the auditorium to see the club layout. I didn’t see a track plan posted anywhere so I could not tell exactly how far along they are. But what they had built was working nicely.

One of the highlights for me at the show was getting to see Bob Jones’ display. He had a Car Works Baldwin Vo-1000 inching back and forth on his test track. It had a High Sierra reduction gear tower installed along with a low current draw motor and an HO DCC sound system. The DCC did slow down some of the running speed but most of the work was being done by the High Sierra reduction gear-tower.

Unfortunately it is another example of by the time you see a product installed and working, they are no longer produced. I know after seeing it work, if they were still in production, they would be install in all my switchers with the Weaver drives.

After a pleasant hour or so in the show and the club, it was time to head back and enjoy the rest of the day with the wife.