I remember those days. Some retailers offered a buying service that bought 3 Ea of every car offered every month, so as to assure victory. The notion was that an owner could then run one, sell one and keep one in pristine condition.
Me too. Behind me sits a box of them that some day I'll get around to converting. A number of us made Rapido/M-T Compromise Cars with one of each coupler on a car. I still have a few of them around here, especially handy on unit trains and passenger trains.
Yep... the ole 'transition' cars... got bunch of those hanging around too. Sent from my SM-J737T using Tapatalk
I have two transition cars I've had for many years and. with my recent renewed interest in acquiring older N scale and wanting to run more than one train, find myself short one or two. Doug
There is a small typo, it was about 20 cars not 2........ That has mushroomed into to many digits, I guess that's what happens when you let them intermingle too much....
I've always liked trains probably since I was old enough to function cognitively, when I got my first job in mid 2011 I got my first set in 2012. Then changed the fleet a couple times and finally settled on the SP&S.
I decided in 2002 to get rid of all the Rapido couplers and switch to Micro-Trains, and I have not regretted it a bit!Now I might need a transition car for the True Scale coupler to regular MT coupler
Well... I think Microtrains only put one True Scale coupler on the cars the offered for a few months... so the could be transition cars themselves. Meanwhile... did Microtrains give up on the True Scale couplers? Sent from my SM-J737T using Tapatalk
I don't see too many model railroaders putting trains around a Christmas tree in N Scale... perhaps more prevalent in larger scales. Sent from my SM-J737T using Tapatalk
After I discovered Kato Unitrack almost a year ago, our Christmas tree now has an N Scale road. It's easy, being able to put the track on the carpet and not have to worry about carpet fiber "fuzzies" snagging in the gears. It's been a lot of fun running my old Arnold Rapido trains.
Being a apartment dweller with a small living room, N scale with Kato Unitrack is perfect for under our small Christmas tree. This is the Kato V5 starter set with the Operation North Pole Train set. I even have some of the Micro-Trains buildings as a start to my Christmas town.
Looks great Rich!!! Reminds me of my 1982 set up. Your tree appears to be larger... but the base looks about the same as mine was. Sent from my SM-J737T using Tapatalk
I did enter at just the right time, it seems! While steam lags behind, the allure of having so much in a small space is difficult to top, and I never knew "poor" running N scale engines. Even my worst running steamer still runs reliably and well enough that it sees time on the track!
I grew up in the 50s with two older brothers and my dad who were "all out" tin plate railroaders. We had Marx and a lot of it. More track than any of the other kids on the block with Lionel. They liked to come to our house because we basically took over from a week before Christmas until after New Years when it all had to be put away. My mom could only put up with it taking over the entire down stairs for so long. The "formal" living room had farms, the family room was a big yard. A mainline ran through the front hall, past the stairway, around through the kitchen and dining room and back to the living room with sidings every now and then. That is me, the little guy, in the photo below along with my oldest brother. My middle brother with a farm. However, my dad's job took him to the far east and my mom, two brothers and I moved from our big house in Wisconsin to a little house in Tucson, Arizona. We still set up a small loop around the Christmas tree but that was all. Then we put it all in storage for years while we joined my dad and lived on Okinawa, the Philippines and in Alaska. After we moved to New Hampshire, I was the only one interested anymore so I would set up the tracks on a back screen porch around Christmas, but it was too darn cold out there to spend much time running trains. My middle brother saw an ad in the Montgomery Ward's catalogue for Lone Star Treble-0-Lectric trains, and for Christmas one year, built me a small layout on a 3X4 sheet of plywood that I could easily deploy on my bedroom floor whenever I wanted to run trains. After returning from another stint of living overseas in 1967, I unpacked the Lone Star layout and started to add Arnold, Atlas and Con Cor locos and cars, European kit structures and played with new trackwork. Eventually I got tired of that and built a new 4X6 layout with Atlas track. I don't have any photos of it but did find this old sketch of the track plan.
Started in American Flyer as a little kid, then into Tyco HO about 1966; got first Model Railroader in March 1967. Fair-sized HO layout effectively destroyed by my fathers woodshop hobby fine sawdust fallout in the shared basement and sold it all and gave up model railroading. By 1971, picked up a used Aurora Minitrix B&O F7A/F7A N scale set from a friend for $20, and started planning - then took the epic trip west on Amtrak in July 72 via ATSF. Got to the Whistle Stop Hobby shop and picked up more cars, switches, and an Atlas Santa Fe GP40. Set up a door-sized 3x6 in my room where my father couldn't contaminate things with his sawdust and started the first ATSF layout. After years of rugged Tyco HO and those wonderful Trix units, the POS that the Atlas GP40 was a surprise. Instructions included lubricating with vegetable oil, which I did in attempts to make it run better. It got into the commutator, add the Yugo fire rings on the commutator, and the inside of the locomotive actually caught the vegetable oil accumulation on fire, pouring smoke out of those open radiator fan vents. Melted a hole through the plastic shell right at the commutator before I could get it out. Next locomotive I got was a Trix U28C and loved it. But in 1982? Wow, just got married and realized that the 3x6 layout which was very finished couldn't make it out the door on edge, everything literally fell apart. Moved to another state in '83 and scrapped the original N layout, but I'd started the drawings and planning for another layout that still survives today after being relocated three times. So in '82, nearly everything was in boxes and I was in benchwork construction mode, but the design I came up with then has proven to be a pretty good one and I have the finished and functional layout that I never thought I'd get back after that '82 scrapfest. My most memorable paradigm shift from that era was the introduction of the Kato GP38. I got an undec one and painted it up as Santa Fe. Flywheels! Although it was impossible to get apart to work on, it didn't hardly ever need any maintenance, unlike virtually every other unit I had. I still have that unit in regular service today.
Hi Randy, My first Model Railroader was December 1970. Also I picked this up when I was stationed at McClelland AFB in Sacramento, CA in the early 1980's. The Kato GP38-2 is what got me back into N scale in 1989. Is the layout you started in 1982 the one you had at the Altoona Show? That was a really nice looking layout. You also have some great looking N scale locomotives. Hope to talk with you again at the Altoona show in 2019.
