Rapido's newest n scale release, the GP20 tank car 4 car set, finally made it to my porch. Very nice cars. Lot's of applied parts including see through deck ends.
"Pony" is (was?) a brand of American-made clamps that included lots of kinds of clamps. Pony was sold to a Chinese corporation, and production was moved there. The clamps shown are often called miter clamps. You can make your own miter clamp with a small, right-triangle of plywood, etc. with notches in the hypotenuse, or sufficient diameter holes near the short sides, for a c-clamp to catch and hold the workpieces together and to the triangle's short sides. These have the advantage of not having to be used at the edges of the workpieces (while still near enough to the edges to work within your clamps' reaches.)
But, the $3.50 each went to St. Vincent DePaul Thrift Store. So some will get to China, etc.. Pony's do have many styles. I have several long ones.
Thrift stores, garage sales, etc. are a great place to score no-longer-made (in USA) items! And in the case of the former, the purchase price goes to a worthy cause. FYI, Dubuque Clamp Works (in the Iowa city of the same name) still makes a variety of excellent woodworking clamps, some of which are applicable to model railroading (esp. benchwork.) Their clamps are sold at better woodworking stores (brick & mortar or online.)
Freddy, did you have any issues with any of your cars? Broke parts, bent end rails, low couplers? Did any of them not roll as expected? Just curious?
I just bought 2 of these excavators. https://www.ebay.com/itm/403744067017 Shoulda bought 3... 2 for a flat car load and one to work my junk yard. I'm stupid! Hmm... for once Kiz and I agree on something...
I just finished inspecting all 4 and had 1 where the the brake linkage had come out of it's holes and was rotating in it's brackets but still attached to the car. I set it back in it's holes with some CA gel to keep it there. All roll fine and the couplers all line up at the right height. All of the issues I see besides that floppy part are applied parts not lined up as perfectly as they could be. 3 of the brake wheel stands were canted backwards, hazmat plates on the ends are cocked and most of the hand rails at the top are not aligned well which you can see in their product pictures/video here so I was expecting that to be a possible issue. I've gone through a couple of the cars and corrected all of those by carefully breaking the glue joints with a sharp #11 hobby blade and re gluing with CA gel. The hazmat placards are painted etched metal and broke free of the glue joint when I attempted to realign them with a toothpick so easy enough just to glue them back in at the proper position. With all those applied parts it's not unusual though for these issues and I realize I am probably more picky than most about these small details. I've dealt with it on all the brands like scaletrains, intermoutain and athearn. I wish these came in a semi-kit form so I could put them together the way I like but if I had to do it over again I still would. They are the nicest tanks I've seen to date and looking forward to running them on my layout.
That's good to hear. I bought four of them, 2 for me and 2 for a buddy. The 2 for him were in perfect condition, nothing broke or bent and rolled like a champ. The 2 for me had several issues (nothing major), both had one end cap pushed in at the top which applied pressure on the truck and created drag. The handrails had also popped out of place. One had the walkway bent down a bit which made the coupler pocket a little low. Everything was an easy fix, about 10 min per car and they were running like one would expect. Yup, they are some nice cars. I've heard some real horror stories about them. From perfect to parts laying in the bottom of the nest.
freddy_fo what era are these tank cars? I was thinking about picking up a couple but not sure they will fit in to my layout.
These were produced IRL starting from 1969 till 84. The BCOL car set I have shows built markings all in the 80's.
Wanna save some money and get some more construction equipment. I bought all of them, but don't recommend the RED Tractor, too big, and the John Deere GREEN color mower is a bit large. Aren't exactly 1:160, a bit larger, but they work for me for the price https://actionfarmtoys.com/collections/key-chains Just a suggestion! I really like them and kind of hide the bigger ones under trees, etc... The 3 YELLOW items are fine though!
I assume these tank cars have the Rapido couplers. Are the couplers compatible with micro trains couplers or do you need to change them out?
With all of the market changes, I had to buy my latest T-Trak module from a different source. I am very pleased with it. https://train-orders.com/MRR/DD/1.JPG https://train-orders.com/MRR/DD/2.JPG https://train-orders.com/MRR/DD/3.JPG
I forgot I ordered these to make conversion cars to run my euro with north american stuff. These are knuckle couplers that fit the NEM355 coupler pocket which is standard anymore on minitrix/fleischmann/brawa etc n scale trains.