Recent content by PaulB

What glue depends on what material you are working with. OK, superglue (CA, cyanoacreylate) is a good all rounder. However it will 'frost'. That is, leave white vapour residues on surfaces. This is a nuciance particularly on clear surfaces like windows, but can ruin a nice paint job too...

I think they are refering to frieght trains. I don't think there were too many passenger 'mail' trains with stock cars in them. Mixed trains on branchlines, however, most certainly had stock cars and passenger cars in the same train. We need to be careful as to which trains we are talking...

Well you might. What say if you wanted a tail light (End of train device), eh? Could be a gondola or tanker car, you know. But caboose is what you want to know about. How about a battery powered light? LED's don't use much power so a small batter should last a long time. There are 3V batteries...

Oh, that is the Flying Scotsman, right? Nice, clean looking loco.

I like to watch the coal trains when I am waiting for a train at Corparoo station. I find the way the hoppers jump after going across the level crossing to be distrubing.

The Lima Indian Pacific cars are still available (Hornby bought Lima and has done a run in the last few years) but you don't want them. They are basic even by 1970's standards (the decade they were originally released) and Hornby didn't put any money into improving the models. They have...

No problem. It is an unavoidable fact of life that we can't do toy trains 24/7.:D I don't have any reconmendations about suppliers. Maybe one of the guys down Florida way can help you there?

Ah, found it. OK, the first number (26) is the road number for the J&S. 542 refers the the Atlantic Coast Line number. So that resloved the two I wasn't sure about. By 'small and weak' I mean compared with other steam engines. So a UP 'bigboy' would be large and strong. The locos are still...

Where did you get this loco data from? 26 ?not sure? Baldwin builder 8242 ?possibly builder's number? 1886 year built 4-4-0 wheel arrangement 17x24 cylinder diameter (inches) by stroke (inches) 63 most likely driving wheel diameter (inches) 542 ?not sure-possibly area of heating surface...

The Australians seem to be taking over.:rolleyes: I wonder if Australia might have more modelers of US prototypes per capita than other train modeling nations except the US itself?

Hmm, that is a very nice layout.

Oh Ok. I am using too much jargon. My appologies. The code "4-4-0" described the locomotive's wheel arrangment. The first '4' refers to four wheels on the leading truck (pony truck). The second four refers to the number of driving wheels. The '0' refers to the number of trailing wheels (in...

The next popular scale up from HO is O scale (USA = 1:48, 6.5mm to the foot). As it happens Bachmann makes old steamers for O scale narrow gage. Some of these are very close to your prototype other than running on a tighter gage. I wonder if you could use a bit of 'modellers licence' (a...

HO is 1:87, 3.5mm to the foot (roughly 1/8 inch to the foot).

Seems you will have no problem getting the buildings spot on. In model form we most often need some 'seclective compression' to fit in the salient features of a railroad into our model layout. Few prototypes can be covered 'foot for foot' in model form. The idea is to catch the character and...