Question: I'm building a mechanism for an HOn3 2-8-2. I notice many imported brass steamers have sprung drivers. My mostly MDC kits are simply axles riding in slots of a die-cast frame with no bearings or springs. They run fine, but I wonder if sprung drivers would improve electrical pickup and traction. Is it worth it to make the drivers of my new mechanism sprung? Or is it just added complexity for very little gain?

Grabbed a couple shots of WPMA-40

Bruce

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In the greater scheme of things it doesn’t really matter if I don’t get an answer but while building my freelanced Detroit River Car Ferry, based on the Wabashs' Manitowoc and Windsor, I’ve got curious about how the ferries ran between Detroit and Windsor.
Now I imagine the crossing from the Wabash apron just upstream from the Ambassador Bridge on the Detroit side, was a straightforward reverse to clear the apron then forward the 1.6 miles to nose into the shared CNR apron adjacent Goyeau Street on the Windsor side.
With the ferries having twin screws and a rudder fore and aft, on the return journey did the ferry reverse from the CNR apron and then continue running in reverse until just downstream from the Wabash apron , then go forward to nose in to unload, or did the ferry actually turn to run bow first and then turn again?
As an aside, I note that port to port passing was the normal practice with oncoming vessels.
Cheers, the curious Bear. :geek:

Hi there,
I think I´ve never posted some pics of my first steps in weathering some rolling stock. I have doe a lot of weathering on larger scale models like cars,Trucks and some 1:35 tanks but the H0 things are new to me. I use pastels,oilpaints,pigments and other things, airbrush and paint brushes ans some other tools.
So I started with and Roundhouse 50ft boxcar kit. Here are some before and after pictures. Airbrushed with some diluted white paint for fading the green and the added some rustspots with a fine brush. used some pigments and a soft brush after that.






I don´t have filled the holes in the roof and haven´t done any details . It´s sitting on the started build shelf since that time. Will do some more work on that someday.

My next try was an Athearn 50ft double door boxcar. The material and tools are the same on that model.


Faded the paint a little bit with a light grey wash

Painted some areas of the roof with burnt sienna oil paint and added some MIG rust pigments in different tones.

added some scratches and rust spots with a fine brush and then sprayed a light dust on the lower part of the shell with diluted Valejo light grey

the other side looks better in my opinion


I´ll post some pictures of my 40ft PGE boxcar later.
Any comments are very appreciated.

Thanks for looking,
Regards,Chris

I am so sorry but the urgent calls for green force me to start the transition into a contemporary layout. A very old industrial area is today a perfect weed plantation.....
I am afraid I will have to stretch freelance somewhat into fantasy creating dense still rail served old fashioned brick industry. Let's see how far I can go until you start yelling on me

9/9/2015 is day zero of my contemporary switching layout.

This and next weekend we have the 90th jubilee of our park train engines, 15" gauge engines all of Pacific type and built as 1 to 3.3 scale replications of Deutsche Reichsbahn unity-engines class 03.
First three engines were built in 1925 by Kraus & Cie. (later Krauss-Maffei) in Munich, Germany. (Kraus-Maffei also known as the builder of 3000 hp diesel-hydraulic engines for SP.)
All in all 15 engines of this type were built until 1950 and now they run or are exhibited in Dresden, Leipzig, Stuttgart (all Germany), Austria, Espania, Great Britain and India.
Maybe it would be of interest: In times of WWII the two engines from Dresden and the one from Leipzig (after 1945 East Germany and Russian occupying territory) were secretly stored in querry and the Russian army did not found them. In other case these three engines would have been confiscated and transported to Russia - and we would never again have seen them.

And now our park railway celebrates the 90th jubilee of so called "Lilliputian engines" here in Dresden where the engine from Leipzig were transported to Dresden for a steam event with three engines (including the two battery-powered electric engines owned by Dresden's park railway). Enjoy the pictures!

Here as first the guest engine from Leipzig, painted in typical German railway colors black and red, engine no. 2 of that type.





Engine no. 3 "Moritz" from Dresden park railway in its red livery.







The builder plate of engine "Moritz".



Engine no. 1 "Lisa" - the first and oldest engine in green livery together with the black front end helper from Leipzig on the way in our large city park "Great Garden". Two impressing pictures for me!
However the eight car trains would not be a problem for each of these engines alone.





And a view in the cab.



Some more pictures will follow.

Two weeks in a row that I am starting the WPF thread. What's going on here?

NKP 765 runs to the Delaware Water Gap on today's excursion from Steamtown.

   

   

I'm pretty low tech with electrical projects but I've been wanting to have some sort of illuminated signals for a long time. I finally decided to go with bi polar red/green LEDs to create indicators of track polarity. That's useful at this location where hidden track is sometimes used for staging. Its good to have a way of knowing for sure which way trains on hidden track are going to move!

Any way, I soldered LEDs, resistors and lead wires, and threaded them through a Bachmann signal bridge. Here are the resutls: