Layout Tours: Reno 2009

Reno Layout Tours 2009:

 

Happening Friday through Sunday this week around Reno/Sparks/Carson City in Nevada, the 2009 layout tours sponsored by High Sierra Hobbies, could not have had a better fall weekend.  Crisp weather in the 60’s, sun, and lots of model railroad fans out to see the layouts and have fun.

 

Living more than 100 miles from Reno, going to all 3 days was not in the cards.  However, a friend and I did drive up to Reno on Saturday to see layouts, and we managed to fit visits to 6 layouts in.  While I’ll cover each one in separate posts as I go through my photos, I thought I’d share with you one thing from each layout that I liked and intend to incorporate into my own layout.  You’ll remember, I’m just in the early stages of construction, so doing this kind of idea-borrowing is important now.

 

First was a visit to a massive layout under construction by Jim Price.  This massive layout will eventually depict the Southern Pacific from Oakland, CA to Reno, NV.  At the moment, the Oakland area is nearing completion.  Jim and his wife actually live ABOVE the layout.  (I tried, but my wife wouldn’t go for the same idea).  While Jim’s layout is massive, and early in construction, there was still something to learn here.  The picture is of a portable programming track, on top of a case.  There are plugs on one end to attach to a computer running decoder pro.  This setup allows Jim and his crew the ability to program any locomotive, anywhere, anytime, and not have to include a dedicated programming track.  On a small layout, or even on a layout like mine where locomotives will be all over, this idea is something I can see myself borrowing and using.

 

Next, we visited the outdoor layout of Fred Twigge.  This G scale layout is complete and running.  It is a beautiful example of G scale garden railroading, and it is built to do what I feel G scale layouts do best… run.  A three times around design with only two turnouts on the whole layout, makes the need for turnout maintenance minimal.  What could an HO scaler learn from a G scaler?  I learned an important lesson in display of a layout.  You need to have your most reliable locomotive on the track, tested, running, and ready to roll before you open for tours.  While we visited, Fred had to troubleshoot a new locomotive that was going to break in that day.  While he got it running, it showed me again the need for reliable motive power.

 

Now later in the day, more layouts were opening.  Our next stop was Kevin Caldwell’s N scale layout depicting Southern Pacific (and adjacent railroads) in 1984.  This bedroom sized N scale layout is quite well done.  In the middle stages of scenery construction, the code 55 track is beautifully installed.  I was impressed with long run that Kevin managed to get for his trains in a 10×10 bedroom.  The thing I’ll take away from this layout to use myself is the high standards set for the rolling stock.  Kevin has made incredible progress on his layout, and it is noticeable that no freight equipment hits the layout without being properly weathered to his standards.

 

Before lunch, we stopped at Jim Petro’s for a visit to the D&RGW Joint Line.  I’ll have a detailed report on this beautiful layout another day, but Jim has done something that I found amazing with his turnout controls.  As you walk along the layout, the controls are all recessed into the facia of the layout.  This method of installation makes it possible for controls in tight spots to avoid being snagged on clothing of operators.  That is something I will be using on my own layout.

 

After lunch, we visited Charley Lix and his atic-located harbor terminal.  Showing that you can build a railroad in just about any space you have, Charley’s layout demonstrated to me that my plan to have the bottom deck of my 3 deck layout sit at about 30″ from the floor will work as operators sit in chairs.

 

The last visit of the day was to the layout built by three persons in the Kuczynski family.  This nicely sceniced 13×15 layout located in the garage was a great way to cap the day.  The scenery on this layout, done with plaster cloth over packing peanuts, is simply amazing.  It captures the look of the area around Tehachapi that they had hoped to capture.  My learning experience here was the recipe for the rolling hills.  Needing some of that myself, we’ll look at the technique later in a trial I’m planning to do for my own layout.

 

Most of these layouts, and many of the ones I didn’t get to see, will be open for the NMRA Pacific Coast Region convention in Sparks for 2010.  I hope to make return visits and see the progress everyone has made!

 

-Jeremy

Full Side Freight Car Graffiti in HO

If you’re interested in having one of these cars painted for you, please visit www.weatheringman.com  

This is definately a trademark of my weathering business, and one I’m very proud to work on. Real cars like this are surprisingly prevalent in the modern scene, and each is a real astounding study in color and detail. So, let’s take a look at some graffiti.

Each of these takes more than a dozen hours of really careful detail painting and variety of specialized materials and techniques to capture the graffiti in HO scale. Some people try to do these cars using decals, but I believe it’s more engaging to paint them yourself. As far as I know, I’m one of the very few who take this route in HO or N scale.

It all started a few years ago with this test car, the Atom(ic) Age boxcar (the “IC” obscured by a replaced door) and caught the interest of a couple of clients of mine, who over the next couple of years would comission me to build the rest of the cars you’ll see here.

After a few smaller graffiti pieces, I was comissioned to do the quartet of cars you see above, each stylistically different from each other. Each one was painted using really tiny brushes following prototype photographs, each an exact copy.

Some, like the three you see here, are based off caligraphy.

The one below was one of my favorite projects, it was my first comissioned full car graffiti, and its challenge is something I still relish today when I’m working on my latest car, perhaps to be featured soon.

Even if you don’t like the graffiti, the attention to detail is still fascinating, at least to me.

What do you think of these cars?

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.

Let’s Build the Ashford Tower!

It’s about time for another structure article. Therefore, I’ll be building the Buffalo, Rochester & Pittsburgh’s “Ashford Tower” that’s offered by the great, but not well known manufacture known as Railway Design Associates. Their excellent structures are very similar in construction and molding quality to the popular DPM kits, and their kits have plenty of realistic character without looking like a characture. I bought my tower kit off of eBay directly from their online store for $20.00 and free shipping.

The kit itself is really quite nice and comes with plenty of extra details, obviously from other kits they offer. For any model railroader, this is a huge benefit to get so many neat detail parts in with your kit in addition to your building kit. It definately is an accurate kit with sharp details and some really beautiful windows, including the unique oval windows on the top of the first floor. They even captured the unusually thick 22″ concrete walls of the prototype!

Construction is pretty straight forward, like a DPM kit you must first file down the walls so that they’re square where necessary, then paint and glue it together. For paint I used Floquil “rattle-cans” in Tuscan Red for the base color for the roof (*we’ll weather and fade it out later.) and for the concrete I used rustoleum textured concrete paint for it’s excellent realistic color and somewhat rough finish.

For this kit, I wanted to really detail it since all the windows would probably be open and clean. I went about scratchbuilding a varnished wood floor and scratchbuilt the electro-mechanical interlocking machine found in many towers from the 1920’s.

The long wooden cabinet houses the electo-mechanical interlocking device, but that balsa-wood floor simply won’t do. I took thin basswood sheet and cut it into scale planks with kitchen scissors. I then varnished it with a mix of craft paint and acrylic gloss medium. I typically don’t gloss anything I model, but I felt the interior of this building would benefit from it once it’s illuminated with bulbs.

There’s the floor test fit into the building, I still need to paint the window detail on the inside of the kit.

The interior was then detailed after the varnish dried with a variety of detail parts I had on hand. The guy in green is a Micro Machines figure, perfect HO scale by the way.

The Interior was then test fit..

Stay tuned for part 2 which includes the final details and weathering.

Let’s Superdetail a Trio of Cab Units (F3’s)

It’s a lot easier than you think, and it’s definatley one of those “modeling thresholds” that many modelers are unreasonably scared to begin. In most cases, you won’t ruin your model one bit when superdetailing.

Although it is easy to perform the operation itself, 70% of the effort of superdetailing is being able to identify what you need to purchase. If you’re a new model railroader, you could be daunted by the thousands of detail parts in the Walther’s catalog. Most of the parts are pretty easy to spot, and some are even packaged together to make purchasing the necessary parts easier.

Grab Irons are typically the easiest thing to add to any model  to improve its looks. It’s a pretty simple operation. If there’s any molded on detail, take a #11 Chisel blade and carefully scrape the molding line that respresents the grab irons. If there’s just a little mounting dimple where a grab iron needs to go, get out your pin vise and a #80 or #72 drill bit and slowly drill into the dimple until you’re all the way through. These dimples are most often found on Walthers, Stewart and Later Athearn blue box offerings. (Their SW1500 being an example)

Anyways, let’s tackle this A-B-A set of F3’s.

Here’s what the paint scheme will look like for the fictional “Baltimore & Potomac” railroad, presumably an eastern road:
The Paint scheme is definately a simplified paintscheme common in the late 1950’s or early 1960’s.

The light moss green was actually a color I discovered on accident and quite like it. It’s a spray-can color from Rustoleum in their “American Accents” collection. The pigment is quite fine, comperable to the Floquil rattle cans that are one quarter the size. I’m using custom decals from Rail Graphics, they lay on nicely, are opaque and form-fitting.

I’m modeling a somewhat generic looking F3, but even then it needs a lot of detail. Fortunatley the excellent locomotives available from Stewart allow a blank slate for superdetailing.

Here’s a list of what you’ll need to detail a basic F3. The part numbers are identical for F2s, F3s, F5’s, F7s and F9’s.

Parts List:
American Limited Operating Diaphragms (set of 3) #9903

Detail Associates:
229-1102 F-unit Nose lift rings
229-702 F3/7/9 Detail kit
229-1202 Underframe Mounted Bell
229-1508 MU hoses
229-2711** “chicken Wire” etched stainless steel grilles.
Custom Finishing
247-215** Single Chime Air Horn (EMD)
247-196** Speed Recoder
Details West
235-157 “Firecracker” Antennas
235-316 Coupler Cut Levers for F units
235-118** Steam Generator Parts

**= Optional Parts that you might need, but I didn’t use on these models.

Part 3: Atlas Wooden Turntable Goes Steel

To follow this project from the beginning, check out part one and look at part 2 with interest and make sure you’re all up to speed, because here’s where it gets complicated.

Okay, since the design of this turntable is essentially a pin-connected steel truss bridge lying in a concrete pit. So now it’s time to break out a package or two of Central Valley’s bridge parts. To make the bridge, you need to assemble 4 identical truss bridge pieces. A smart idea would be to make a wooden jig and assemble the pieces accordingly. I need to draw up some scale plans for the truss spans, I’ll post them in a while. It isn’t too difficult to take the photographs found in the first article and modify or compress them to fit on our atlas turntable.

the photos above shows how the Central Valley bridge pieces connect to the I beams attached to the main frame in the last article.

Basically, each truss piece should attach to the I beams, then you connect each truss span together with bar-and-pin fittings from the top of each truss span. The first truss span seen in the photo below was a prototype. Each girder was cut with a razor saw, and fitted together with Walther’s goo. The rivet plates were made from 0.003″ brass, the rivets made from gently tapping the point of a screw into the brass in the correct rivet pattern, pretty tedious work that doesn’t make that great of an effect. I might go with styrene in the next version with archer rivet decals handling the rivet details.

Next, we’ll tackle how to distribute weight on the turntable, work on the pit rails and give it a rotation test.

SP Common Standard Turntable from an Atlas Model PART 2

Now that the concept proved successful, it was time to dive into actual construction. Luckily, I had a turntable lying around from a display I took to shows last year, and although it was nicely weathered and a nice model in it’s own right, it was cheaper than buying a new one.

I began construction by salvaging an Atlas turntable motor from another damaged model I was given. The motor and gears worked fine, and recycling is paramount to any model railroader. So I installed the motor onto the turntable and then soldered wires to each rail in the center, so I could run the electricity up onto the future bridge.

I also purchased a 12″ by 12″ plexiglass sheet to use for the new (non-rotating) turntable pit. I traced the circumfrence of the atlas model with a pencil onto the plexiglass and lightly scored the plexiglass. I then used the “scribe n’ snap” method for making a remarkably perfect circle. If you look closely in the above photo, you can just make out the plexiglass disc.

Next, I had to build the open steel underframe for the bridge that would span the turntable pit. Most turntable scratchbuild tutorials go for the classic plate-girder look, but I decided to go for something more interesting, as you know. I built it almost entirely out of styrene “I” beam structural shapes I had laying aound. The main I beam is a scale 4 feet tall, laying on its side making the strong center beam.

This really took alot of patience and a couple failed attempts, which I suppose will make good shop clutter or scrap loads. I had to not only cut all these I beams identical widths, they had to be notched to interlock with the large “I” beam.
If someone knows a really great, smooth and clean way to cut structural shapes like these to identical lengths please post a comment, I’d love to hear it. Eventually I got the necessary amount ot structural shapes cut and began putting it together.

Now that the underframe is complete, it’s time to build the pit rail and outrigger wheels to support the ends of the turntable. In our next two installments, we’ll build some truss structures and the outrigger wheels.

Atlas Turntable Kitbash- From Wooden Wonder to SP Common Standard.

The Atlas turntable has been a staple of model railroading for more than 40 years, and still sells well today. However despite it being one of the most mechanically well-designed turntables in existance, it is a model of a very unusual prototype. Wooden plank turntables did and still do exist today. The wooden plank turntabe was used in the late 1800’s for street railways, cable car operations and small industrial railroads to not only provide a means to rotate motive power but also to serve as an accessible pedestrian or vehicular thoroughfare when not in use. It also would have been installed in areas where a turntable pit would have been dangerous or not feasibly built. Despite these advantages, they were expensive to maintain and all but a very select few survive today. Most, if not all of them were “armstrong” turntables in which an operator had to push on the piece of equipment to get it to rotate. Other examples of armstrong turntables include “gallows” style turntables and very early cast-iron turntables, all dating from the beginning of railroading forward.

Due to the fact that the wooden plank turntable is an extremely rare type of turntable, it shouldn’t be on as many layouts as you see them on. The benefit of the Atlas model is that you don’t have to modify your benchwork in any way to use the turntable, which is a major plus compared to nearly any other model on the market.

In this next series of articles I aim to get a solid, non-rotating turntable while achieving the detail of a Southern Pacific Common Standard 100′ turntable, albeit selectively compressed. It won’t be an easy project, but it’ll reward you with an excellent looking and operating piece of equipment that’ll always work well.

The Concept

The Idea is to cover the rotating top of the turntable, to legnthen it to the outer edges of the device and create a highly detailed steel turntable structure to be visually appealing and eyecatching.

From a mechanical standpoint, It’ll have wires soldered to the rails on the deck that’ll be fed up through a tube to the rails at track level. The whole turntable will swivel from this central tube which is glued to the former top of the turntable.

A new concrete pit will be scratchbuild out of acrylic sheet and painted. Pit rails will be installed to guide the outrigger wheels on either end of the bridge.

The extended edges will allow a Bachmann Spectrum 2-8-0 (with Vandy Tender) to turn itself around, which was impossible before the modification. This opens up the turntable to medium sized motive power and it can also turn an SD-45T-2 with ease as well.

The first step was proving my concept before jumping head first into a complex project, so I cut a large doughnut shape from grocery bag paper electrical tape. Testing out the false bottom concept was a success, it turns fine as long as there’s clearance over the former wooden top of the turntable.

Follow along as we venture into the complex world of constructing a turntable from wood, brass, styrene and acrylic sheet.

Here’s a sneak peek…

Visit a Prototype Modeler’s Meet.

There’s one facet of the hobby that’s surprisingly fun and definately informative and impressive. It’s your local prototype modeler’s meet. Here you’ll find beautifully detailed models in a casual, friendly atomsphere where you can really appreciate and enjoy them. You’ll often find the true “master modelers” at these conventions, often people you might be familar with through the Model Railroad press.

To check one of these out for Interacting with Miniature Railroading, I brought some of my weathered and kitbashed models to the event to see what reaction I’d get and also to see how easy or difficult it is to fit into these events.

I visited the Bay Area Prototype Modeler’s Meet in Richmond, Calif. (BAPM for short) last saturday and was extremely impressed. Tucked away in the cafeteria of a Catholic School in Richmond Heights, the well lit room lent itself to really being able to see the models in natural light.

FOR A FULL GALLERY OF PHOTOGRAPHS COVERING EVERY MODEL IN THE EVENT, CLICK ON THIS PBASE GALLERY BY HARRY WONG.

When I arrived at 11:45 a DCC clinic featuring the new SPROG II computer-to-track programmer (which runs on JMRI) was just wrapping up. I paid $10 to get in the door, which wasn’t any problem for me, considering what and who I’d find inside. I also bought 2 Raffle tickets.

The room was mostly filled up, three rows of tables down a 75X30 foot cafeteria, with more than 100 models on display. About 90% of the models were HO, the rest were various narrow gauge scales, including my On30 2-6-0. It is no wonder why HO was represented so heavily as the sheer amount of aftermarket detail parts available is staggering. I asked where to set up, and a friendly member just told me to set up on any empty table, which I found quite refreshing in comparison to handling the insanity of getting a table at a train show.

I was met with pleasant remarks after setting up, and it felt good to finally have a group of modelers that are supportive instead of arrogant, close minded, overly eccentric individuals I often see at train shows. The prototype modeler group is not only nice, but extremely intelligent and informed on their particular area of intrest.

It was time to explore the rest of the tables during the lunch hour. I wasn’t disappointed.

The really neat thing about these prototype modeler’s meets is not only do you see the ‘finished’ models but you also get to enjoy the models in progress as well. Elizabeth Allen’s impressive model of a Southern Pacific SDP45 has been impressing people for the couple of years she’s been constructing it, and just look at the attention to detail!

All the gray parts on the locomotive are from the well-known modeling detail parts supplier Cannon & Company. The current owner was out to display his equally spectacular freight car models and talk with the prototype modelers to get ideas for his next products.

Next to the “in-progress” models all the tables were of course the fleet of beautifully painted and detailed complete models. This Southern Pacific “torpedo boat” GP9 is an excellent example. (The nickname torpedo boat comes from the airtanks on the roof, which are usually behind the fuel tank under the frame, but the fuel tank was enlarged to extend the locomotive’s range, and they had to go somewhere.)

Not only were there plenty of Western US power, there was an excellent display of Brazilian meter and standard gauge equipment by Edson Yamazaki. All of these models were heavily kitbashed and superdetailed.

The most impressive model I saw was a Brazilian DDM45 which is an SD45 built to run on Meter (3′6″ gauge) rails and has 8 axles featuring the classic DD40AX sideframes.

In addition to the Freight Cars& Diesels, there was a good turnout of steam era equipment and passenger cars, all nicely detailed.

You should find and attend the next prototype modeler’s meet in your area, there should be at least one annual event in your NMRA region (although it’s not affiliated with the NMRA in any way) check with other local modelers to find out about these exquisite events! For those willing to travel the Western Prototype Modeler’s meet is in San Bernardino’s beautiful mission-revival style AT&SF depot in Septemer.

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.