EMD Trainman, When you did your critique on USA locos I believe on pg.2 I'm going to quote the passage my question arrives from: "All USA locomotives use a power trac system with rubber tires except for the same locomtives listed above. The advantage is that you get more traction with less weight on the locomotive, again the disadvantage is seeing rubber tires on a locomotive in which ground level you never notice them. The switches are located underbody, this is good for and wiring issues but bad if you use track power and need to turn locomotives off, I have accustomed myself now and can turn off any loco without taking it off the track, it can be done" What actually are you turning off? A smoke generator,or power going from the pick-up shoes to the motors? My concern being that if I do an around the ceiling set up will I need bother with the switch and have to climb a ladder or can I just pull the power plug on the transformer? Thanks again RT.66
Route 66 Hi Route 66, since how I'm on a tight budget and I run multiple train units on the same track I use the switches on the bottom of each locomotive to turn them off. There are 4 switches under the USA locomotives, 1) Motor power, 2) Lights, 3) smoke and 4) sound if equipped. Only my yard area has actually manual toggle switches to turn track power off and on to certain track areas. I run 3 mainlines, so lets say I want to bring another set of locomotives to help out on track #2. I would turn off the locomotives on track #2 so I could run another set there and hook them up. If you plan on keeping the same train on the same track you don't need to do anything with them except make sure the switches are all on before you put them up on the track and let the transformer do all of the work, however the smoke unit switch needs to be off unless you plan on climbing up to the locomotives to fill them up when needed. Radio control for me would enhance my operation greatly espicially if I was outside, but the expense is way to high to convert all 16 of my locomotives.
Expense keeps people away from G scale I think G scale is so neat although the bigger size needs more room especially if you want to run alot of trains. The down fall to G scale is you better have a big bank account if you want to have a huge railroad. Some people start out small with just one or two locomotives pulling about four or five rolling stock each usually going around a nice small town in a nice small 20 x 30 area. This makes for a nice small all around budget, you spent a little on track, a little on scenery and a little on trains, you balance the money to all areas needed. I myself spent most of my money on trains and track and now have to save up for scenery, if I had used the balanced budget I could have probably installed sound and radio control in my locomotives. It seems like whenever I had the money for sound and DCC I kept buying more trains and told my self next time I'll buy it. 16 locomotives & later I will have to save a very long time to cxonvert them all over to sound and DCC, especially at the expense of a good company like RCS. I own 300ft of brass track and 13 x-wide switches at the cost of $3,359, I own 4 transformers at the cost of $1,829 and the pricey cost of my Locomotives and rolling stock is $9,380 and I still need to get started on scenery in which I only have 3 buildings so far at the cost of $215. At the cost I have so far, I could have bought a 15 x 30 conastoga builing and filled it up with HO scale trains. Since how I run indoors my maintenance cost is really low. If the trains were outdoors that would change severely, you have to change your metal wheels on rolling stock and locomotives in a certain time frame depending on how often you run them due to constantly running thru dirt. I even seen some people sell there old grooved out metal wheels on ebay and people actually buy them. I don't regret getting into G scale and my money was spent over a 9 year period which is still high about $1642.50 per year spent on trains on a average if you figure it all out from the totals. Seeing those big trains run makes it worth every penny to me.
Running Train schedules and keeping inventory Running a train schedule to make deliveries with can be fun and entertaining for the kids. For instance if you have a string of box cars, you can drop certain ones off at different warehouse on your layout to pick up items and then later pick them back up and deliver them to the to outlet warehouse with loading docks that has trucks to deliver the goods. Also keeping track of your inventory can be challenging, to know what you have can be better for you to schedule trains. I tried a inventory program called All Aboard data express and it's for all scales. It was ok, it allows you to put pictures to go with each description you put in for each rolling stock. My Dell Windows XP crashed and Dell replaced it for free with Windows XP professional, unfortunately my All Aboard program would not work with this, I contacted the makers of All Aboard and they said they had trouble with the Dell version of windows XP professional. They had another program they gave me for free called Fort Knox, this was also a good program but you have to call for a new license code every time your computer crashes. So I came up with a better and cheaper idea for myself, I put all of my inventory on a Word Office excel spread sheet and at the same time organized it into train schedules. You will see examples in photo attachments. I tried keeping certain era rolling stock with the right era locomotives. For example I own 40ft box cars, single dome tank cars and 40ft reefer cars, since how most of those were made in the late 50s and early 60s I put them with my F3 units, My 50ft box cars and 50ft reefer cars go with my SD40-2 units since how they were all made in around the same time era, The SD70-Macs pull my 55ft center flow and 55ft tank cars which keeps all of my most modern stuff together. There are 3 trains I did not follow the time era rule on, I run my GP-9 locomotives with my coal cars since how Rio Grande used the same locomotives forever to do the same thing with their coal cars. Plus my shortline railroad here still uses old GP-9 locomotives, they have 6 of them. Then running with a idea from a train magazine I decided to run a "Flat" service train which has piggy back cars. center beam cars and other flat cars. There was a article in a magazine about running dedicated "Flat" service trains and it is as fun as they said it would be, I'm glad I tried it. Then of course running a MOW train is also fun and I don't pay much attention to time era on this one either. Hopefully this may give those interested some good ideas.
Thanks, EMD Trainman for the info on what the swiches do on the loco. I have logged on to St.Aulbins and have saved my shopping cart Right now with a USA GP-7/9,Caboose and track I'm looking at $625.00 given a few more additions or deductions. I figure all told with the hardware,wood,brackets and miscellaneous I will spend around $1,000.00 The good news being I have the rolling stock I'm going to run w/my consist which was bought and stored around 1987-1990 LGB 40' American beer beverage reefers. I'm going to try and finalize my order tonight,since I have 2 train shows to go to in the month of July that I can pick up any single pieces of track to complete the configuration of the layout run if I miscalculated on the order to St. Aulbins. I have been in N scale since around 1980 and I couldn't tell you how much I have spent on the hobby,It really dosen't matter everything is relative, I know people who hang out in bars, or take extravagant vacations. They think I'm whacked for spending all my hard earned monies on Model trains but at the end of the day I have something tanglible and just not a headache or a foggy memory of where the money went.
Route 66 That is a great attitude, I spend mu money on model trains also, I haven't been on a real vacation since 1998, but I can go down in my basement and see where I spent my hard earned money. You will be very happy with the USA GP-9, it's a real work horse and mine has been a very good unit. just to let you know the early production USA GP-9s did not have constant voltage lighting in which my Rio Grande #5953 was an early run. USA trains camoe out with constant voltage lighting to compete with Aristocraft since how Aristocraft was the first in G scale to have constant voltage lighting. The USA GP-9 units have been constant voltage lighting since 2004 in which my Rio Grande GP-9 #5954 is constant voltage. Both units have run equally dependable, the only difference I see is the lights on the constant voltage unit are brighter and come on sooner with less voltage. Unless you plan on buying locomotives from ebay you should get the constant voltage unit. The nice part about when USA trains make changes to there locomotives they change the road numbers unlike Aristocraft who keeps the same part numbers or same locomotive numbers when they make upgrades so you never know if you are getting an upgraded unit when buying Aristocraft locomotives. For example the Rio Grande GP-9 locomotives were road numbers 5953 and 5952, the new road numbers for the constant voltage lighting locomotives are 5954 and 5955.
Getting inspired I must have to admit most of my G scale 1:29 trains are USA trains. I only have a couple of LGB pieces that are now going for rediculously high price on e-bay and a few Aristocraft pieces. Most of the time when I decide to go with another manufacturer other than USA is because that particular train is not available from USA trains. Like a gondolla car in 1:29 scale is made by Aristocraft only, covered hopper cars also only made by Aristocraft and honestly I like the aristocraft falt car better than USA trains version. Sometimes we are inspired by what model equipment to run by what we see in real life. To me it was no different 2 weeks ago I was road testing a truck I just repaired and got stuck at a railroad crossing waiting for a train. It was a CSX train running a couple of Dash 9 locomotives. Then there was the usual string of centerbeam flat cars, tank cars and some old Norfolk & Southern box cars. Then in the middle of the string there were about 10 box cars that caught my eyes, it was a string of 10 double door hi cube box cars in the railbox name. This was the first time I ever saw double door boxcars in the rail box road name, all of the ones I ever saw were normal single door box cars. They were so interesting to me that I went home and place a order for the Aristocraft 53ft evans double door box car in the Railbox name even though they got a bad review because the doors on these units don't open. All in all I'm pretty happy to how close it looked to the real thing, the only diffenece is since how the real thing has a painted white roof because it was high cube and the model has a silver painted roof, but as a modler you could change that with a quick spray paint.
weather or not There are alot of people who like model trains to look as real as possible. Therefore many modelers will weather their trains in a heavy or light rust, or paint graffitti on them or even paint heavy smoke on the locomotives. Some will even dinge them heavily to make it look like years of dirt build up. There are many methods of doing this, some use paints of various types and some just use the chaulk method. Weathring or having a weathered rolling stock isn't for everyone however. weathering a car takes a lot of practice to make it look real. None of my rolling stcok or my locomotives are weathered and I'll tell you why later. You must consider what you are buying, do you really want to waether that $75 or more rolling stock. some people will buy a cheaper Bachman or Hartland train to make a project out of or to weather. Here is why I don't weather my trains, lets say I change my mind on what rolling stock I want to run or roadnames which does sometimes happens to me. I can recover more money from that item on e-bay in it's original condition than if it was weathered or alterted. Most of the time I was able to recover as much as 90% of the original purchase price even though it was a used item. If I was selling a weathered train that would be way less, especially if it was a exspensive train to begin with. weathered trains do not seem to sell well on ebay, most probably buy them just to repaint in their own paint scheme over again anyway. So before going off and weathering all of your railroad equipment, make sure it's something you are going to keep forever or later make another project out of it if you lose interest in it. Just because you liked the way you weathered it doesn't necessarily mean that someone on ebay will like the way you did it. Before anyone says trains don't have bright finish coats of paint, my shortline railroad here just finished painting 10 old 2 bay covered hopper cars in a bright yelow. Although they are old, now they look like new. For those who don't like that bright finish there is a product called dullcoat and it's a clear paint spray which should help out without reducing any value to your trains.
Re:weather or not All my LGB rolling stock which I bought 20 years ago still has the original brown cardboard over wrap protecting the display boxes,original tube of glue,hand rails still in their plastic bags on the sprue. I left them that way until as of a time I could run them,if not they would be sold. They will stay in that condition until the overhead layout track is ready. I have an LGB starter set which is used around the tree at xmas w/4' dia.oval. and extra pieces of track to run on the patio when I get the urge. N scale is my chosen model passion,but I have always liked the garden rail equipment. Who knows maybe I will do the outside garden deal one day but what stops me is I already have enough up-keep already to contend without having to tend a garden and removing large debris from the track,alot of extra work just to watch the trains go. One thing the manufacturers of Large scale need to offer are some undecorated rolling stock,like some of the locos they produce.
I will be updating this thread on weekends due to my busy work schedule, thanx to those whoread this thread and support me and the hobby. If you have any questions, concerns or comments on this thread positive or negeative, I would luv to hear them. Together we can make this a great hobby and learning experience.
Route 66 Route 66 I know USA Trains used to offer undecorated GP-9, GP38-2, SD40-2, NW-2 and F3 locomotives undecorated, but I believe they may have stopped offering them due to they were not that popular sellers. I know Charlse RO supply had some of these undecorated locomotives at the East Coast Large scale train show. You can contact Charlse Ro supply at www.charlsero.com or at 1-781-321-0090. I would suggest if you are interested to hurry because he did not have many left over. Aristocraft also use to offer undercorated rolling stock but I'm not sure if they produce it any more. Most scratch builders basiclly build their own box car, flat car, ect. which is why I think undecorated trains never really took off. Not to worry if you can't find undecorated locomotives, there are technics in Garden Railroad magazine about how to take the body off of a decorated locomotive, put the body in a solution they tell you how to make which helps remove all decals and then they tell you how to prep the body for new paint.
How To: Couple Aristo to USA Here is my first "How To" article. We are going to discuss how to convert Aristocraft trains rolling stock to accept USA knuckle couplers. Now I could just make it easy on myself and just run hook and loop couplers like Route 66 did in his thread and the hook and loop coupler set up is the ONLY standardized coupler in the G scale world. But if you like knuckle couplers, the hook and loop just won't do. If you are a big kadee coupler person and like body mounted couplers, I have bad news for you. First you need to buy a kadee coupler gauge and a whole bunch of plastic shim stock because of the way all G scale manufacturers don't make the bottom of their rolling stock the same. So each rolling stock has to be gauged to you track and then shimmed with plastic shims, you then have to glue the shims to the bottom of your rail car and then screw in the body mounted coupler to you shim pack you made. This is a very time consuming process. The newer 55ft USA centerflow cars and the USA 55ft tank cars are the only USA trains rolling stock that is already set up to mount kadee couplers and comes with the body mount kit, but you supply the kadee coupler. The way I did it as I previously said is the majority always wins just like in voting. So the majority of my equipment is USA trains, but I do buy LGB or Aristocraft once in a while when I see something I like so I convert my rolling stock to USA train couplers. The next downfall to kadee body mount couplers is that you will not be able to run on a curve smaller than a 10ft diameter which by the way may be a perfect curve for outside, but for a inside modeler such as myself, 10ft curves are out of the question. Today I recieved my Aristocraft 53ft Evans double door boxcar in the Railbox name after being inspired by seeing a real CSX train pulling a string of 10 Railbox Hi cube box cars in the mix of its freight. But now we have to make some modifications to make it capatible with the rest of my train which is mainly USA. Now I have seen and heard people convert aristocraft trains over to USA trucks, this I found as I did one as a experiment is very timely due to the amount of modifications you have to make to both the USA truck and Aristocraft car, so I found the easy way out. Picture #1 shows you the incompatibilty between the aristocraft knuckle coupler and the USA knuckle coupler. Picture #2 (Sorry for the blurred picture, I was fighting dead batteries in the camera) You must remove the coupler and mount as a assembly. Now just for a notation, you could just mount the USA coupler in place on the truck, but the coupler is about 1/4" shorter and this would make it too tight when hooked to other cars on a 8ft diameter curve. Picture#3 Now that you removed the Aristocarft coupler you have to disassemble it as seen in this picture. The USA coupler is at the bottom of the picture. You have to break off the long tab on the back of the USA coupler. The next step is to drill the USA coupler mounting hole out with a #15 drill so it will accept the aristocraft srew insert. Next you will notice the USA coupler is not as fat as the aristocraft one and will have alot of slop if installed this way. I used 2 blue electrical eyelet end terminals for spacers and cut off the part where the wire would go so all I had was the round eyelet part. This made for perfect shims to take up the space. Next Install the USA coupler into the Aristocraft mount which is the part in the left top of the picture. Then you will need to install you shims at the top of the coupler inside the mount. Now you have to line up the shims and coupler so you can reinstall the srew insert and then screw everything together. Picture #4 is the finished coupler, about 10 minutes worth of work, go ahead and reistall coupler mount back onto the car. Picture #5 I'm test fitting the height of the couplers to make sure the modified coupler is the same height as the regular couplers on the rest of my USA trains equipment. Here I use my caboose and you will see it is at the perfect height. You will also see if you look real close the shims I used which were electrical end eyelets which stick out a little. I'm sure maybe a #6 washer might do, but I didn't have any laying around to try. Besides, now that I know it works I can always trim it up and paint it black. Also on another note, doing this will make the train car look unprototypical when hooked to another, but not too obvious. I rather have the car further away from another than to have too close to another when coupled. I figured I would mention this in case the rivet counters did not like the out come of my project.
My Railbox Here is my new Aristocraft Railbox in a string or freight cars after the finished product. I did pay less than a USA Ultimate series train box car but I have to spend around $15 to put metal wheels on the Aristocraft which brings it to about the same price as a USA Trains box car.
Re:Is G scale getting closer to standard scale ratios? I guess it all depends on who is leading the charge, LGB took the reins early on and set the standards, even before the take over you had other manufacturers bringing on the scale measurements they thought worked best. If USAT becomes a more dominate manufacture and is selling well they will set the standards I would suppose. I notice alot of times in your editorials you mention rivet counters or purists,I think G scalers are differerent in the fact of doing it more for the fun of running trains indoors or outdoors, Gardens or just around the floor,sure they want good quality, strong pulling power and a verity of equipment like all scales but they tend to be more laid back and more forgiven. If I were building a bridge in N scale I would want to know the 1:1 dimensions and than convert them to 1:160 or use my N scale ruler. The bridge I'm doing for G scale will accomidate most1:22.5,1:29,1:32,1:24 Locos or rolling stock granted not all pieces, just like I can only run 4 wheeled trucks on my 5' dia.radi and would need at least 8' radi for 6 wheeled truck locos. I just don't find G scalers are that hard on the manufacturers as other scales as long as the equipment performs well. G scalers actually bring back those days of the true enjoyment of just running model trains for FUN....
Route 66 hi, you are correct, the majority of G scalers are not concerned too much with exact detail. There is how ever a few that actually are and you should read Garden Railways Magazine sometime. I get tired of the editor putting down products because the wheel flanges are too deep and not realistic, how many time must we read the same complaint. Then you get some poeple write in about a review how a box ca is lacking enough rivets, or there is a incorrect amount of roof ribs, or the grab handles are too thick. This is the main reason why I started my own reviews, I tell you how much detail there is and how well it runs, I just don't care if it doesn't have the correct amount of rivets, even if I were scratch building my own rolling stock, I would just be concerned about scale measurements such as you. Thanx for your input
Pondering Thoughts of Why certain G is popular As I was reading Route 66 thread, he is correct in stating that LGB G scale in 1:22.5 scale ratio has been around for a very long time, but what happened to it's popularity and why did the company fail after such a long successful run? Here is my thoughts and opinion, LGB focused primarily on European style trains. This was ok for a while until competitors like USA trains, Aristocraft and Hartland started to come along and offered a complete line of all American style trains. LGB tried catching up by making American railroad names on their locomotives, but still the locomotives were of a European style, not to mention the expense. Eventaully they opened a LGB America division but may have did this too late. They finally came out with a true American style F7 locomotive, the most realistic American series box car I ever saw, a American Center flow hopper car and a American tank car. By this time however USA Trains and Aristocraft were in full force of mass producing locomotives and rolling stock at a cheaper and better price. USA Trains and Aristocraft also stepped up the notch by offering multiple numberes in certain railroad names. USA trains use to have 6 railroad numbers for the same railroad name but cut it back to 4. So if you wanted to run 4 hopper cars in the Rio Grande name you just called USA Trains and got 4 different road numbers for Rio grande hoppers. The cost of LGB locomotives are way beyond of what you can buy a USA or Aristocraft for. The locomotives are just as dependable as LGB but for a fraction of the cost. Hartland is also very reasonable, but I think they need to keep developing new products in order to survive todays market, it seems like they had some of the same products for some time and not too many new ones coming out. USA and Aristocraft are constantly coming out with new railroad names, new rolling stock and new locomotives to keep the market fresh which is important. USA for example has literally produced at least 100 different railroad names just for their American series Reefer car if not more. Right now LGB America is being restructured and alot of items are being dropped. How comptitive they are and if they survive this one more go around if they actually get it back off the ground again depends on thier investment into a new line of products and the expense of locomotives they produce. Final thoughts: Popularity on a product depends on the cost of a product and how dependable it is. USA Trains and Aristocraft have done this very well. Sort of like why the original Volkswagen Bug was so popular here in the USA. The bug was cheap to buy, easy to maintain and very reliable. In this gas price problem we have in the USA I would buy one right now. I would not buy the new VW Beetle, I think VW totally failed the whole reason why the Beetle was made in the first place when they redesigned it, but that story is for another board and thread.
I just wantd to remind everyone who reads my thread to stay tuned for weekend updates, thanx for viewing my thread.
Re: new "F" scale I believe "F" was done to appease the Narrow gauge crowd,Narrow Gauge railroaders be it HO,N are always a tad off center they like to have their own niche "not that theirs anything wrong with it" Lets face it alot of Garden guys or gals are narrow gauge people,There is plenty of room for growth,The narrow gauge stuff will cost alot more since they will sell less of it and it will be an oddity like the brass market you might have to reserve a run of a certain steamer or rolling stock More power to 'em if they have the blessing of the nmra.
I seem to be seeing their name mentioned with more frequency. Hopefully that's a good sign. Boxcab E50
I wouldn't get too far into that F/G debate. The F's have their own "one true God" and nothings going to stop them now. At the same time I've had over 500 visitors through my basement over the past two years and not one person has noticed that my track is to narrow by the width of a single rail head. I use 1/24th scale items: people, cars, etc, here and there right along with my 1/29th scale trains and they don't see that difference either. It's all a matter of 'staging' the scenes correctly. There's room in this world for scale fussbudgets I guess. Some of them find useful work in particle accelerators. Dave at Winter Valley Regional Railroad - Welcome!
