Recent content by MRLdave

Here's a Milwaukee Road unit that might be what you're looking for. The unit itself is a doodlebug in that it's powered by a small engine and front truck. The engine bay is now an express/freight compartment. It usually pulled a coach for passengers...

If you are doing a lot of elevation changes with your track, then using plywood and a cookie-cutter technique is easier. Cutting a lot of ramps into foam is tedious and messy.

For N scale, you don't want a lot of light ........so big incandescents or superbright LEDs (actual LEDs, not the business) are too much. A big factor with incandescents is heat. A large bulb in a small building could easily become a lighted blob of plastic, especially if left on for several hours.

I'd agree with the choice of Peco turnouts. But on the flex track, I'd go with whatever you can get easily..........I've never had any issues with either brand. For reliability I'd go with code 80.......it isn't quite as "pretty" but it's more forgiving.

If I read right, you haven't built anything yet? If that's the case, you haven't "staked your claim", and you don't need to tear down anything or start over, so I'd say you aren't being too nice. And it sounds like the new area actually has a couple of advantages. Take the new area and make it...

You didn't mention scale or the brand of your loco..........but if it's just the flat panel under the window, you should be able to cut the warped panel out and replace it with a new styrene panel. Looks like it's just white with the road #? If it isn't a perfect match, I'm sure the RR shops...

Bare metal rusts........the railroads will normally touch up the plows in late spring, so if you are running a "summer" layout, the plow would be painted, but during the winter, the plow would likely be silver (bare metal), rust, or some combination. So when I said "color" I was referring to the...

Although the plow would be the same as the pilot, if it had run in snow for any length of time, the paint would be rubbed off where the snow moved across it, and you would have "bare metal"..........after a while like that, the bare metal would turn rusty, but more snow would scour the rust off...

The plow will generally be the same color as the pilot of the loco..........in your case blue.

What you want is a loco to start creeping along at it's start voltage and then accelerate smoothly.........what the start voltage is is unimportant. What you don't want is a loco that sits there and then "jackrabbit starts" .....0 to 100 in .5 seconds when it hits it's start voltage.

I really like metal wheels, they are more prototypical and definitely roll better, but I haven't really noticed a major difference in dirtying the track. Having said that, most of my cars have high flange plastic wheels. This is due to the fact my cars spend more time on the club NTRAK layout...

Milwaukee Road was the same....I've heard the financial issues were largely because money was getting routed into real estate instead of track maintenance, new cars/locos/ect. I think they still own half of downtown Minneapolis under a different name.

I'd look closer at the loco.........I've had similar issues with big Kato locos and the problem usually comes down to the truck(s) binding on something. Your trucks may be fine turning one way and snagging when turning the other way. A club member had an E5 with similar problems. The front truck...

I had to over-ride my Mcaffee to get into THIS post. And it's tagging virtually EVERY post on this site....... I've been on the other laptop (out of town) , same virus scan, no problems. I'll have to try the desktop. The ad at the top of the page I'm on is for AVG......hmmmmmmm.

There are a few options.......one is to use "European" locos . There are quite a few that look like the loco in your picture http://www.fleischmann.de/en/productsearch/0-0-0-0-0-0-0-002001/products.html. There were also some small 0-4-0 and 0-6-0 Tank locos from Bachmann, Atlas and...