End of an Era: Half a Century Of Blue Box Kits

Athearn announced this Morning that they decided to discontinue the manufacture of their iconic “blue box” kits….this is truly a sad day for HO modelers everywhere. Some may shun them for their detail, but we all know they all reinforced our love of the hobby to some degree. I can honestly point to them specifically for holding my interest in the hobby from toy trains to scale modeling during my teen years. Getting my first blue box locomotive a Union Pacific SW7 (which I still have) is a memory I shant forget. Read the announcement for yourself.

Affordability and Selection were their strong points without a doubt, an average middle class kid could build a roster of freight cars and locomotives in a fun and regular manner $5 and $25 at a time instead of saving up for a $30 pre-built car or $150 RTR locomotive. For those who love seeing a sea of freight cars in their yard, perhaps this will be somewhat harder now and undoubtedly more expensive.

For those learning, impatient or unskilled it was satisfying to build a kit with nothing but a small flathead screwdriver and seldomly some model glue and have it look nice and complete. It’s always been a good entry-level modeling project for beginners, and actually how some of the older modelers among us started; not with a train set, but with an individual model freight car kit. On the kitchen table, working those stamped steel sides, ends and wooden floor onto some sprung metal trucks was an accomplishment! For the younger modelers, the injection molded plastic with sharp lettering provided a satisfying 10 minute assembly and hours of fun running it around your small layout behind your trainset equipment. There was practically something for everyone too, between the MDC roundhouse and the blue box kits, from 1860’s to 1990’s equipment, you could practically model any era.

The Diesels, even with their quirks (like the widebody hood units) were still reliable, powerful locomotives that could outpull practically anything and do so with that classic gear growl that sounded very diesel like…who needs sound? Their flickering cab light and the bevy of blue sparks coming from their cast steel wheels as they yanked a colorful consist of “shake the (blue) box” kits bobbed behind them is still an iconic scene of the hobby.

So, I bid Adeiu to the staple of our HO scale hobby and perhaps the most influencial million pieces of plastic to turn thousands of hobbyists into model railroaders.

A New Look!

Interacting with Miniature Railroading has a new look. So, what do you think of it? Let me know!

 

 

What Scale do you most enjoy reading articles about?

 

What types of Articles do you enjoy reading ?

Modeling Gaffe 9- The Peninsula Metropolis

The “Modeling Gaffe” Series Returns!

 

All too often we resort to placing buildings AFTER the track has been laid, which isn’t quite how you should approach it. Planning before you build is everything, and while nobody sticks to their plan 100%, it can prevent such a visually unappealing disaster like the peninsula metropolis.

Many model railroad cities posses density problems, density being defined in this article for ease of understanding as this: A single family home is low density, a rowhouse is medium density, and an apartment hi-rise is high density. All too often, in as little as two city blocks a model railroad city can go from rural farmhouses to massive skyscrapers. Obviously this is not a realistic way to approach such planning and could easily be remedied with a creative use of backdrops if you must have a city and country scene close together in a layout room.

Sure, cities like San Francisco are built on peninsulas, but those are surrounded by water. (usually the first place where a city develops is near a body of water) Lakes, Rivers, Streams, Seas and Oceans are all interesting things to model and many cities posses such features near their downtowns.

Cities that are rail-served have their railroad lines either on cheap land or flat land, and where was that land usually? Near a body of water. (unless it’s a wealthy area) Railroads usually follow the paths of least resistance and frequently follow riverbanks, canals (like the Erie Canal or the St. Lawerence Seaway) or even lakeshores. These naturally smooth and flat areas of land also lend themselves to large railroad facilities such as yards and engine servicing facilities, but beware of flood hazards and perhaps model some sort of levee or seawall to keep nature at bay.

Returning to the gaffe at hand, the Peninsula Metropolis is rarely, if ever, going to be an easy to maintain or build endeavor. Because you typically have to lay the track before you detail or build any of the major scenery (you know, like actually ENJOY running your trains a bit before doing scenery?) you have a really excellent chance of damaging your trackwork while you lean over your mainline to plop in that aparement block or downtown scene. Maintenence would probably also be a headache, dusting and repairing structures is difficult if you really have to reach to access what you want to fix. This can be avoided by creating a smaller peninsula, but then you run the risk of losing realestate for your metropolis.

Theoretically, you could bury the mainline along the peninsula under the city itself, not unlike the approach into NYC’s Grand Central Station, but what’s the fun in that? (and if built without competent access hatches and bullet-proof trackwork, why bother?) Similarly you could elevate the mainline, but it would look silly with all but the most gentle curvature unless you’re modeling an actual elevated railway, Japan, or Britian.

Most model railroaders aren’t urban planners, however it doesn’t take one to create a believable city. Think of the types of buildings you would typically see next to the right-of-way in most North American Cities….mostly older buildings thanks to the railroad spurring development of major cities and allowing them to grow to their current levels by efficiently moving goods and people, especially in from 1865-1965 and again today. Prime trackside buildings would include spacious brick warehouses, perhaps large department stores or Manufacturing Industry. If you have to model a commercial district you can mix up the buildings a bit, but the more modern buildings probably wouldn’t be built near the tracks without some regard to noise abatement.

If you’re modeling after 1920, most cities were mindful towards grade-separating the major roads from the railroads for safety reasons. You have no doubt seen overpasses on a model railroad, and that’s an interesting and common feature to add to a city scene.

Most of all, the most important thing you can do is spend time with a map of a city you’d like to model on your railroad. Note the characteristics of trackside structures and how they’re laid out both in how the roads are planned to how the railroad snakes through the district. For a HUGE map of Chicago’s Rail system, check out this map at mappery.com. http://mappery.com/maps/Chicago-Train-Map.jpg Try to avoid the peninsula metropolis at all costs, please?

5 Modular Layout Concepts

Using stiff paper cutouts, you can play with modular layout concepts without filling an entire sketchbook full of shapes. I took one sheet of paper and made inch-to-a-foot scale (1:12) representations of my current collection of layout modules, and then went to work developing a new way to re-arrange them.

All of these are designed to fit in a 10X12 foot space.

The Highgrove Division:

The Downtown Warehouse District

The Tidewater Coast Line

The Urban Junction Trunk Line

The Foothil Branchline

With 25 days left in the layout contest, keep sending your layout plans along for a chance to see your plan come to life as a layout right here on this website and win a prize while you’re at it!

My Official New Layout Contest!

First of All the Rules and Prizes:

The Layout will have to utilize the unobstructed 10X12 foot space allocated for the layout, but keep in mind that you don’t have to use all that space. If you can come up with an interesting, fun to operate, and smaller plan you may be a winner just as easily as someone who takes up that much space. Also keep in mind that you must use the module shapes provided in the photo at the bottom of this post. One of these Modules is known as the “Midland Industrial District” and is a small 1.5′X7′ switching layout whose plan can be found by clicking here.

The layout must be fun to operate and incorporate a smoothly laid mainline and plenty of interesting industrial trackage. I also require some nice scenic open areas and would prefer to avoid a spaghetti bowl. For inspiration, check out the list of layout concepts below.

Okay, to sweeten the deal for my new Layout concept the winner of my trackplanning contest will recieve a certificate for one weathered car or locomotive ($60.00 in value) or a Walther’s Trainline GP-15-1 in Chicago & Northwestern Colors or painted Missouri Pacific blue, but Unlettered. It’s a DC locomotive with a smooth drive and probably not hard to install DCC in.

The Contest will run for 30 days from August 10th through September 10th. The winner must provide a reliable e-mail address so I can contact them to let them know they’ve won.

The Basic Concepts: (Choose ONE theme and run with it)

1. Is a tidewater layout, lots of sloughs, saltponds, one huge salt plant and a handful of other industries. lots of water, but no real port scene, perhaps an abandoned cannery or something. (Examples in real life would be Monterey, Calif. Alviso, Calif. Crockett/Hercules/Antioch, Calif. and into the Delta)

2. Is a portion of Southern Pacific’s coast line near San Miguel Calif. I’d scratchbuild that beautiful mission and most of the unique downtown structures that can be found around it. It is the most prototypically ambitious project of the bunch and would require some research

3. Is a depiction of the Alameda Belt line right here in Alameda. Trains in the street, that huge life bridge and a really huge cannery structure. The problem is not a single thing in alameda is easy to scratchbuild and would take a long time to get running because of the lift bridge and specialized trackage.

4. A user-suggested layout idea, left via comments at the bottom of this post.

GENERAL INFORMATION:
1. What Industries would you like to center your layout around?
Depends on the Concept you choose to build your plan around (of the four chosen above)

If it’s the San Miguel Layout:
-Camp Robertson in the Cold War, lots of Military Vehicle and troop train traffic.
-Grain (pre covered hopper)
-Packing Houses for fruits and vegetables.
-Lumber Warehouse
-Oil Company Dealers
-Box Factory

If it’s the Tidewater Layout:
-Docks and a Warehouse
-Oil Company
-Cannery
-Cement Plant (Could have a narrow Gauge connection)
-Salt Plant (Could have a narrow gauge connection)
-Boat Building Plant
-A carfloat slip or ferry connection
-Steel Fabrication Plant

If it’s the Alameda Belt Line layout, I’ll provide a list of actual industries.

HERE IS THE LIST OF AVAILABLE MODULES TO USE WHEN TRACKPLANNING:

2. What problems/issues (if any) did you encounter while building your Model
Railroad?

Tracklaying is my greatest enemy and I aim to overcome this issue with this particular layout.

3. For the current project, what scale are you planning to use?
HO 1:87

4. Do you wish to incorporate narrow gauge? Yes No If yes, which gauge? Maybe, if you want, some small point to point HOn3 for industrial purposes (Salt Plant? Dockside Warehouse? Quarry Spur? Large Cement Plant?)

5. What particular prototype? (For example, New York Central or Santa Fe)
Southern Pacific, AT&SF, maybe WP

6. If no particular prototype, please describe what type of theme you have in mind
for your layout.
My Freelanced Mission Valley and Pacific will play a central role to the layout’s train operations… A quick snapshot would be Small steam, (all smaller than USRA 2-8-2) and early diesels (Baldwins, EMD FT’s, etc.) with 40′ freight cars and 60′ Harriman Coaches.

7. What era? (For example, 1940’s through the end of steam.)
1954 exactly. Perhaps the occasional jaunt to 1939.

OPERATIONS:
1. What type of operations?
Point-to-Point or Continuous Loop? Either is Fine, or elements of both.
Multi-train YES, but not necessary.
Hump or Classification Yard NO Switching/Peddler Freight YES
Passenger YES Interchange YES
Lake or River Ferry YES Port/Barge Terminal YES

2. How many potential operators? 2-3 Number of trains in continuous operation? 2-3

3. Operators will be: adults 2, perhaps a third guy as a brakeman.

4. Do the operators have a basic knowledge of how real railroads operate?

5. Will you require central train control systems and signaling? No, although that would be cool, that’s something to consider for sidings.

AVAILABLE SPACE:
1. Where is the space? Second Floor Room, 12X10 space in a much larger room.
2. Does the room have climate control and dust control? Not Really.

5. Minimum aisle space. 24″, but 18″ if it’s necessary.

6. Bench height? 48″ with NO GRADES please.

7. Is “duck-under” or lift out construction acceptable for access to certain parts
of the layout? Yes, Duckunders are fine, although I’d prefer some sort of lift bridge like my old layout, which was a 2X2 square of mainline that lifted out.

8. Maximum acceptable reach to track 30 inches.

9. Is it acceptable to put track anywhere on your layout? Y N If no, what
areas are restricted? (Describe)
Track is fine anywhere as long as it looks realistic.

10. What ratio of track to scenery? (e.g. 50%-50%)
Make the Industrial Districts vast mazes, but as soon as you hit the country, a single track (or double track) mainline at most through rolling scenery.

=Are there any special under layout requirements?
Since the modules are 48″ off the floor, it will obviously be used for the storage of boxes, shelves etc.

= Minimum Radius Requirements: 24″ Mainline Radius, as tight as necessary on industrial trackage, and will allow for 15″ on spurs. I’d prefer #6 switches for sidings and #4 switches for industrial leads.

-What season of the year do you wish to represent?
Spring or Early Summer (Feb-May)

IF YOU HAVE ANY MORE QUESTIONS, feel free to post inquiries below in the comments section or visit the offical contest thread either at Railroad-Line Forums or at Trainboard.com.

Today, The Highgrove Branch Filed for Abandonment.

Today, the Highgrove branchline of the fabled Mission Valley & Pacific Railway was approved for abandonment, and after a final train pulled the last cars out of the yard, a layout that has lasted 4 years and traveled 40 miles has been seperated into 10 modules and dismantled.

Like a jolt of some strike-slip fault not unlike the mighty San Andreas, the modules cracked apart revealing the foamcore “earth” . Thus severing the railroad’s mainline, uprooting trees and leaving destruction in it’s path.

Building a layout is a rewarding exercise in the classic sense, and of course every modeling magazine will tell you that. However despite this they don’t seem to tell you so many of the more bittersweet moments of model building. You will rarely if ever finish a layout, and I’d say that barely very few of those reach a state of noticeable completion. As is the case with the Highgrove division.

It’s not so much the actual visual completion either. My original concept was to accurately model the AT&SF’s San Jacinto branch layout, but this wasn’t realistically possible using the fun, but inaccurate trackplan in the 1980 model railroader article featuring the real branch line, which is located near Riverside, Calif, in the southern California “Inland Empire”.

With more research and plenty of trackside photos graciously e-mailed to me in the last few years I eventually gave up on that strict prototype view since my trackplan would require expensive revision to even get a remote resemblance to the rather mundane track layout found on the San Jacinto branch.

The buildings on the real San Jacinto Branch were appealing, the trackside industries modelgenic, the old former California Southern Ry. Victorian depots fanciful and ornate, but I didn’t have the time or will to scratchbuild them. Thus further deviation into the realm of kits.

The scenery along the actual line was…boring. No actual rivers, flat land, and farm fields and tract homes. Although Lance Manheim would probably have tackled it with remarkable finesse, I learned that I enjoy a little bit more flavor to my layouts. Not to the point of characture, but not so minimalist as to fall asleep while operating the layout.

In this time I was also hopelessly influenced by my local East Bay Area railroad scene, many excursions out to Alameda Island to take photos of the remnants of the ABL fired my desire for water features and street running. I also have always had an active interest in the Southern Pacific’s Coast Line around San Luis Obispo, and my river module represents the Salinas river to an extent further unfocused me from my original layout goals.

As for construction techniques, the Modular system is unbeatable, but for my next layout I need to follow some standards to ensure reliable operation. All of my layouts have had less than operable trackwork for some reason, which leads to frustration 9 out of 10 times. I’m seriously considering building a FREEMO-style layout using their standards, that way I can take a portion of my layout to shows and such.

Using decomposed granite as a earth surface not only worked really well for my layout, it also looked great. I’m seriously considering using it again for my next layout. It also made an excellent, realistic layer of dirt to then add a layer of foilage atop. I so think I’ll experiment more with this static grass stuff though in the future.

From an operational standpoint, it’s a remarkably nice layout to switch and operate. If my track were bulletproof it would have easily been a very impressive layout. Atlas switches pretty much killed any operating fun I had, unfortunately. Their crude frogs seemed to be my worst enemy when it came to operating rolling stock.

It was a fun ride, but not as satisfying a layout as I’d hoped. It’s room-filling 9X12 size was impressive, but since it didn’t operate without a derailment every 5 minutes I’m glad I can move on to a more interesting, new layout concept.

So sit back and watch as another layout develops before your eyes in the next year or two. If you want to check out the layout some more, click on the “HO Layout” catagory found in this post, and see it from start to it’s bitter end.

Thinning the Herd: When You Have Too Many Trains.

When collecting anything, from bottlecaps to chris-craft yachts, eventually you reach critical mass; that point when either there’s too much stuff. Sometimes this can grow to so many items that it begins to intefere with daily life or a job. I know many model railroaders who have thousands of freight cars, hundreds of locomotives and perhaps a layout to run 1/100th of their fleet at a time. There are brass collectors with entire floor-to-ceiling walls of glass cases of $200-7500 locomotives and rare cars. Lionel collectors are in a league of their own. It’s not uncommon to see a guy who has turned his basement into the New York department store christmas demonstration layout, with yellow and cream boxes covering all four walls. Impressive? Yes. However what use is a collection this complete if it cannot be appreciated by anybody else, the relavance of having one of each type of postwar lionel cattle loader becomes irrelavant if you pass on and your massive collection is fragmented into the 10,000 pieces you took an entire life to build it into in the first place.

LEARN FROM EXPERIENCE
Since I was six years old I’ve gradually purchased HO scale trains. I’d get money from my grandparents and aunts and go spend it at the local GATS show. I had an adept sense for frugality which sometimes worked quite well for me and sometimes backfired spectacularly. I can honestly say that I’ve only paid retail for less than 6 of my 50+ locomotives in my collection, and ironically the ones I bought new usually fell apart faster than the junkers I bought and repaired. Until about a year ago I used to do this with freight cars, buying anything I liked and running it on my layout, until I discovered the detail of Accurail, Kadee and Intermountain cars, but that’s another story.

Of course buying junkers has an incredible benefit; if researched, some of the older cars (especially AHM, Ambriod, and Roundhouse) offering were based on some very eyecatchingand unusual prototypes. These were (and still are) a pleasure to find, rebuild and redetail. The only problem with junkers is occasionally you put the rosy colored glasses of “oh! this old MDC shay doesn’t run now, but if I spend some extra time working on it, despite some missing parts, perhaps I can get it running and looking nice. and for $5, I suppose I can’t afford NOT to buy it..” Yeah. er… no.

With new cars, especially the meticulously decorated cars now offered RTR from Atlas, Athearn, Intermountain and others are so intoxicating when seeing them on the shelf of the hobby shop. Seeing that Atlas billboard reefer and thinking about a whole string of fancifully decorated reefers carrying pickles, choclate, baby food, meat, sausage casings, fruit, vegetables and other perishables…until you realize that they outlawed billboard reefers in 1936….and your modeling the mid 1950’s.

Restraint is the Key

Setting yourself a particular modeling year isn’t just for Jack Burgess. I HIGHLY reccomend that you choose an era, or a specific year and stick to it. Choosing, say, 1954 would keep you from buying 100 billboard reefers, Second generation diesels, ultra colorful 40′ boxcars, and still be able to run steam on your layout. Choosing 1974 would pretty much give you a nice range of “modern” equipment in shiny new appearance with a small handful of 1950’s era equipment. An earlier era, like 1904 would be a challenge, probably requiring a lot of scratchbuilding, which would save you money by not purchasing 100’s of kits. I’ve been tempted to break my era entirely and model Tunnel motors and GP40X’s, but then I see where my real interest lies, small mainline steam, and keep focused. Focusing my modeled year has undoubtedly saved my thousands of dollars and unnecessary desires for random (and expensive) pieces of equipment.

Minimize your “Project shelf”

This is ever harder than restraint, once you have chosen and era, you typically would buy a huge pile of stuff for the trains you want to model, and I’ll bet not all of it is ready to run. Furthermore I’ll bet that some of the stuff you want for your layout will be unique and would sometimes require extensive redetailing or kitbashing to make your model look like it’s real-life counterpart. As I began seriously modeling, these projects seemed to appear and multiply. I have two doodlebugs made from harriman coaches and halfed GP40 frames floating around in my workshop along with 2 dozen steam locomotive projects and a slew of “bad-order” freight cars. Oh, and did I mention the project list doubled when I went DCC two years ago…yup, decoders for all! *sigh*

The other half of this equation is the stack, shelf, pile or cabinets filled with unbuilt kits of all types any modeler worth their salt has. Building a shake the box kit is worth it just as a diversion from larger projects sometimes and it’s always nice to have a few lying around, but you go to a couple of train shows and then your modeling space is covered in kits for buildings, freight cars in plastic wood and resin, locomotives in metal and plastic and then suddenly a few evening projects turns into what seems like a years worth of work, and what do you do in the meantime while staring at the pile of kits? Why purchase more of course!

Get your screwdriver, glue and NMRAgauge, because you should finish some of those car kits. Now. You’re already spending time reading this blog, you could have put together an Athearn Boxcar or converted an older N scale car with Micro-Trains couplers or started kitbashing an On3(0) flatcar, or begun thinking about your next layout.

Don’t buy the chicken before it hatches.

I cannot tell you how many buildings I have purchased over the years for my layout, only to optimistically think while planning a new layout “oh, It’ll fit” and once having laid the track and constructed the building to find out that it doesn’t. It’s always nice to have a stash of buiding kitbashing parts handy, but one box leads to a chest of drawers leads to a dresser leads to a dresser, toolbox, small parts box and two moving boxes filled with building kit parts…and the built buildings scooped up at trainshows for nothing cover shelves. They all need to go.

The roster of your locomotive collection exceeds any sensible ratio!

I was, and still am an engine fan. A couple of years ago I had more operable engines than operable, reliable freight and pasenger cars. That has since reversed with an influx of cash, but again the fleet has grown full of “fat”, either poorly detailed or freight cars with sub-par operating characteristics. The other thing to watch out for is too many unique cars in what should be a sea of Black and Boxcar red. You might want to take a closer look at some of your freight cars sometime and see how crude the details might be on some of your older offerings. You might as well do the best option, upgrade or sell. Be realistic witht the amount of time you can dedicate to projects (see above) and decide how many cars you REALLY want to upgrade and how many you can comfortably live without.
A highly detailed, nicely weathered and perfectly operating small fleet of cars is more impressive to any visitor than a vast sea of dusty, crappy looking, shiny plastic-with-badly-pad-printed-lettering rolling stock.

With locomotives it’s another story. That story is for another time though. Stay Tuned.

Interacting with Miniature Railroading Turns 1!

Well, it’s been 365 days from the first post on “Interacting with Miniature Railroading.” Last year was an astounding success!

Where it came from:

Originally I developed Interacting with Miniature Railroading as a way to document the railroading action at Tilden Park’s Redwood Valley 15″ gauge 5″ scale live steam operation, mostly in photographs. However when I thought about expanding to other railroad topics I knew I needed a dedicated website for this, and on April 21, 2008 the website was launched. Since then the site has stirred up discussion on a wide variety of topics, everything from modern railfanning to early steam modeling. The top 3 most talked about posts last year were about:
1. Are Bachmann Spectrum Locomotives and Good? Which was written mainly so I wouldn’t have to encounter the endless quandary new modelers have about their products, there used to be a forum thread opened every week about this question, and I hoped dispel the rumors and stigma that used to surround Bachmann.

2. My Water modeling series has proved very popular, I hope to see the results of my article in future model railroad layouts, and hopefully a shift from blue to a muted green as the ideal river and shallow water color (as it should be) and have people pay more attention to what their riverbeds look like.

3. It seems my “Modeling Gaffe” series has stirred up a lot of interesting forum discussion, with more than one forum running discussions close to 10 pages in length, and more on other forums.

Ever wonder what kind of traffic this site gets? Here it is!

Nearly 120,000 visits by interested modelers, I’m VERY pleasantly surprised. Traffic started to take off in July and has remained pretty steady since, of which I’m glad.

197 posts isn’t too bad for an average blogger, which comes to about one post every two days and most of those were tutorials or historical information as opposed to just normal commentary that you’d find on other blogs.

Look at those averages! I never thought it would become this popular, but it has and it continues to grow today, I wonder what next year’s numbers will tell us?

Cheers to a year well done, I’ll see you down the mainline for our next year! Just wait to see what articles I have in store for you!

Should You Buy a Brass Locomotive?

There’s always that one part of any well stocked hobby shop, it’s probably a glass case behind the cashier’s register, or perhaps it’s a commercial fishtank sized glass case with row upon row of gleaming brass locomotives. Some are unpainted with their meserizing golden-brass hue, some with their meticulously researched and accurately applied paintjobs. What they match in their high detail and impeccable craftsmanship is a price tag that will scare off any sane penny-pinching modeler, but should you be scared off by a high pricetag?

In the Defense of Brass Locomotion

Brass models can provide many things that plastic models have yet to achieve in the 60 years they have inhabited the same part of the hobbyshop. Only recently have plastic models begun to provide affordable, well detailed and accurate competition to brass models, but there are just some things the major manufacturer’s won’t ever make in plastic, and that’s where brass has always held an edge.

For instance, the extremely obscure railroad of the Colorado Springs & Cripple Creek District Railway owned a locomotive identical to the one pictured above, it was apparently built in their shops in 1901, or so the builder’s plate reads. It’s a small and light 2-6-2, and I’d bet the pony and trailing trucks aren’t to distribute firebox weight, but to deal with poor trackwork. The sloped tender suggests a local or switcher locomotive, it ran on coal and sports Carbon-Arc or Kerosene lamps fore and aft. The attractive boiler tube pilot is similar to a road locomotive, but it’s modest footboards at the rear suggest otherwise. This tiny locomotive of an equally tiny and obscure road that barely made ends meet in the quarter century of it’s existance certianly was overshadowed by such fabled neighboring roads as the quixotic Colorado Midland and the much revered DRGW. The only reason this model was produced was probably due to the plans for this little loco being run in a 1974 issue of Model Railroader. The CS&CCD Ry’s story having been enshrined in HO scale brass is one of the reasons why brass is an interesting way to build model locomotives, there’s no chance that would ever be made in plastic by any manufacturer with any degree of sanity.

Because brass locomotives don’t have to worry about the high return on investment that plastic models always have to strive for (think of why in the last 50 years there has been over a dozen models of the Union Pacific 4-8-8-4 big boy, yet there remains only a handful of well-detailed plastic 2-6-0’s 2-6-2’s 2-8-0’s 4-4-0’s and other small steam.) more unique models have been produced to fill in niche markets.

Logging prototypes in both narrow gauge and standard gauge have always been popular brass models. Westside shays and heislers, Uintah 2-6-6-2’s, Baldwin logging 2-8-2T’s, 2-8-2, 2-6-2’s and the wide variety of oddities like the Vulcan duplex, Willamette geared steamer, gypsy winch 0-4-0’s, and the Climax A, B & C models are often found on some of the more involved model railroader’s layouts.

Famous prototypes have also been popular. Southern Pacific Cab Forwards, NYC hudsons, and almost every streamlined locomotive has been produced in brass at one time or another. Smaller locomotives of the larger roads have been popular too, like CB&Q pacifics and Wabash moguls.

Brass is the only way to get some diesels that are too obscure to ever be produced in plastic, like the beautiful Fairbanks-Morse H-20-44’s or the Early EMD TA’s, Baldwin “babyface” cab units, or even small industrial diesels like whitcomb and porter models. SP SD-40T-2’s were popular models in brass for many years until the recent Athearn RTR offering eclipsed the detail of many previous brass offerings. I’m imagining that SD70ACe models are selling quite well as nobody has released one in HO yet.

The quality of the running gear found on the “average” brass locomotive varies wildly so this is where it gets tricky. Some companies were all about the looks and only put a “token” drive inside thinking that the collectors of brass would never run such a highly detailed locomotive as it may hurt the value. These clumsy arrangements often had underpowered open-frame motors flimsily attached with shrink tubing to a poorly built worm-gear assembly like the AT&SF 1950 class locomotive pictured above. This was the most mass-produced brass locomotive ever made, and although the detail is acceptable, it ran terrible. Early Ken Kidder mallets had only the rear set of drivers powered, making them gutless locomotives barely capable of hauling their own weight. Some of the gearing was so poor that it would only be able to attain ridiculously high speeds thanks to a lack of reduction gears. Although not a total loss, they would be worth sending off to an experienced rebuilder of brass like master machinist at DTA Models . (no commercial affilation, but I’m quite impressed with his work.) It seems a great deal of early Japanese brass is like this.

On the other side of the spectrum is the newer Korean brass, like my CS&CCD 2-6-2. It’s built by Ajin precision of Korea and has a fantastic drive train. Featuring a sagami can motor, it has solid driveshafts linked to sturdy machined metal gears with the gear tower solidly attached to the frame. It runs silky smooth. NWSL (NorthWestShortLine) brass has been revered for decades for it’s rock-solid dependable drives and adequate detail. Don’t forget that brass locomotives are heavier and if the drive is solid, they pull much better than a plastic locomotive, especially if the locomotive is small to begin with.

So, should you buy a brass locomotive?

-Yes you should, IF: You’re modeling a really specific prototype or if you absolutely must have an accurate and highly detailed model of a steam or diesel locomotive that would be too difficult to kitbash or scrathbuild. Always comparison shop though, as most brass is expensive, usually more than $300.00 now, with most brass well exceeding this price.

-No you shouldn’t IF: there’s a nice offering in plastic of the same model. It would be a waste of your money. A good example would be a Brass GP7 or SW1500 model, nice detail but unless it was severly modified by the home road (e.g. a unique chopnose like on the WM GP9’s) the Atlas, Proto 2000 or Athearn offering are quite adequate.

Battle of the Brands: HO models

When any beginning modeler walks into a hobb shop, he’s assaulted by the selection of HO products. Literally hundreds of thousands of items to choose from (just look at a walther’s catalogue to see what I mean, and that’s not ALL of the HO products available either.)

This isn’t a smarmy “well I think this brand is better because I like it more” this series aims to be based through somewhat scientific, artistic and historic research. No model is perfect, but some are “more perfect” than others in numerous ways:

-Model Injection Molding Detail
-Prototype Fidelity
-Build Quality and Parts designed to fit well together
-Paint and lettering quality and sharpness
-Whether the Prototype Model created is actually useful to an average modeler, and what percentage of oddball models the manufacturer creates.
-If they produce kits, are they easy to build? How about repair?
-For locomotives how well is the drive train designed?
-Are the materials used to build the model durable and of good quality?
-Is the model manufacturer listening to the modeling community?
-How expansive is their model collection?
-Do they do short runs of products or produce things for years?
-How available is their product on a well-stocked hobby shop?

-Finally, is the products the company manufacturers fun? Does it capture your imagination?