I was working in Nekoosa many years ago and some guy was so teed off at the local power company he paid for a radio ad with him singing a jingle that went, "They don't care about you, they don't care about me, Wisconsin Power is a monopoly."
FYI, I had some batteries about the right size so installed those and couldn't see the lights come on. I'm doing this under an LED magnifier. So thinking something is wrong I try one of my other cabooses but same result. I take the original caboose apart by removing the shell from the bottom which I had to carefully break the glue joints where the end rails connect to the roof. The lights are fiber routed inboard to two individual magnetic actuated boards on each end and I could see with it all removed the lights did indeed turn on and off. I put the shell back on but this time turn off the room lights and magnifier and the lights were working all along lol but just dim (LOL). Adequate for night operations but not the brightest. The lighting at each end are individually activated so that is nice. The instructions state to remove the cupola by grabbing the sides and pulling it from the caboose. The tabs that hold the cupola in place grab under the roof at the front/rear and I get uneasy about just pulling for fear of breaking a tab as this was an issue on their older panorama line of passenger cars. Instead I wedged a thin metal strip (small 120mm ruler) between the roof and cupola to push the cupola panel in to get enough clearance for the tabs then repeated on the other end. Just have to be careful when doing it that way to not scrape off paint.
My Latest purchase is this one ! Spoke to Kalmbach Rep. she said she Did Not see Volume 1 this one Bummer! Tom
Latest additions. A UP book and 5 gons. Cowcatcher Magazine was free and the score of the day was the free Buc-ee's bag to carry my purchases in
While working with my locomotives both new and old, I had to order some replacement parts for Kato locomotives. To be fair, this is not about a Kato problem, just a few parts I accidentally broke. And also replacing a motor in a SD70M where the guy who did the install seems to have torn the motor lead so much that the it is about 22 mm too short to reach the decoder pickups. Another is a truck on the SD70M that I used a tiny bit of excess force, and busted the rear truck. Last are those flimsy motor contact the clip into the lightboard/decoder, a pretty stupid move by Kato. Every Electrical Engineer trusts a soldered connection over just about everything else. These clip on motor leads are more like a Bachmann design. Not sure how they got so dumb at Kato. I still solder them on the boards for the more consistent reliability.
The Mrs and I had to drive to Melbourne, FL today so we stopped at my sort of local train store and brought these home with us. This will finish the track on my layout. I have a tentative location for the modern station once it’s built. The Model Power building is a gas station. I’m not yet sure where it will go.
Its been a while since I posted anything, a dry spell. Ended up buying some bill board reefers, tank car and box car. Also bought some bound volumes of Model Railroader (1949) and Railroad Model Craftsman(1951,1953, 1956). The volumes are very entertaining. Announcing the returned availability of brass rail due to lifted restrictions, and just looking at at all the suppliers that were present and have vanished. I got them primarily for articles of Frank Ellison of Delta Lines fame. The bill board reefers I just have an addiction for.
This little beast showed up yesterday, but didn't get to unbox it til today. A Kato C50, runs like it ought to.
