I had one of those 'coffee grinder' GP30's in the 1970's 'billboard lettering' scheme for Rio Grande. The wheels seemed enormous and were the epitome of 'pizza cutters'. It was one of the few Rio Grande items I sold off... mainly because I had the better looking Atlas GP30... Lol Sent from my SM-J737T using Tapatalk
Yes, the early Rapido stuff wasn't the ultimate in accuracy but then, none of the early stuff was. I still like it all, though. I earlier posted a picture of a CGW GP7 and thought it was a custom paint job. It turns out it is not. It is factory. I have seen others like it on eBay. I have recently obtained the Rapido 1977 - 78 and 1979 - 80 catalogs and have discovered some the the changes in items happened much earlier than I had thought. The switches, for example. And, the rail joiners changed to a more "rolled" type like other manufacturers' joiners. Doug
I have always liked the SP stripe schemes, including the one you and Wolfie have adopted. It looks real railroady. Doug
My final SW1 from my custom painter. Great job as always, thanks Shawn! And before anyone asks, Yes, it's supposed to have silver trucks.
While looking for something else today, I came across my old Minitrix an Revell powerpacks. Note that the Revell pack doesn't carry any Arnold or Rapido identifiers and is clearly a Revell-only product. I'm pretty sure I got the Revell pack with one of my Revell Rapido sets. As a kid I mounted it on a piece of wood with felt beneath. Neat that both of these packs were Made In U.S.A. and that both are virtually identical. Perhaps neither Minitrix or Arnold had a power pack that was compatible with North American household current and/or maybe the cost of freight to carry these heavy little buggers across the Atlantic was high.
Some of my most recent acquisitions and one of my oldest. I got the NYC box car in about 1968 and the cow/calf about 30 years later.
I wonder who manufactured those power packs, MRC? Here is my first N scale train set from AHM / Lima and the power pack identical to your two power packs.
Yeah, those little ubiquitous packs, identical except for distributor's name. American Tortoise was the distributor of Minitrix, at the time. I don't know who actually made them. Revell had one where you flipped out some legs and stood it on its side with the speed control and direction switch on top. There was an extension to attach to the speed control lever so it was longer. Just a variation of the one Dan pictured. The Atlas version was metallic blue and they switched to a lighter blue plastic model (the plastic case was blue plastic) shortly after, which was also shared by several distributors. Rapido's packs were made by Siemens and they did have export models which operated on 110 volts. I have a couple of those. They are kind of just a block with the controls on top. Not like typical packs in America with the generally shallower profile. Doug
Perhaps neither Minitrix or Arnold had a power pack that was compatible with North American household current household current in most of Europe is 220. It may be that they didn't have available any readily available transformers with 110 primaries.
Back when Arnold was transitioning from the 200 series trains to Rapido, they had a little train set called, "The Beaver" and the loco was a little steeple cab I liked the looks of and wanted. And now, 50+years later, I finally got one (catalog number 2402, formerly 0240). This is a red one (there's also a green one and a blue one without the pantograph). It runs very smoothly and quietly: Here is my first BR41 (catalog number 2511, formerly 0251) I got very inexpensively as it had missing parts - no motor, no worm assembly, etc. I already had a motor for it and made a worm assembly from a GG-1 spare just by shortening the shaft. So, it runs fine now but still needs other parts, most notably a smoke generator. I ordered some of the other parts (screws, headlight lens) from an outlet in Munchen (Munich), Deutschland. They were extremely helpful: I have another one that's complete and in excellent condition, on the way. I got impatient, wanting to see one smoke. Here's the redesigned V200 (BR221, actually, catalog number 2022), more accurate and much quieter running. It also has the Simplex couplers which work: Doug
Hi Doug, That is a problem I ran into with my old AHM / Lima locomotives. I was trying to purchase some new brushes and brush springs from a site in Germany. The brushes and springs were only $10 for more brushes and springs than I'd ever use in a lifetime, but shipping from Germany was $50. I just couldn't bring myself to pay $50 for shipping on a box the size of a deck of cards. What I ended up doing is purchasing on ebay a few locomotives, just to use as parts engines.