I remember how fascinated I was when the April 1970 MRC featured the Frary & Hayden Elk River Line. I was still in my early teens and I was hooked, but never really built anything because I was broke. When the magazine featured the C&DR line (1977?) and showed how they converted the Minitrix FM I jumped right in. I made several engines, boxcars from scratch, converted N gauge ore hoppers, and cut down Roundhouse Old Time passenger cars to narrow gauge size. I built a small layout, but everything was quickly packed up and pretty much forgotten about them for ~40 years.
Several years ago I got back into the hobby and built an HO 12'x2' switching layout. It was extremely enjoyable building it, but I became bored with it. I just couldn't tear it down after all the effort.
I was going through some boxes a few months ago and found my HOn30 stuff. None of the engines ran anymore and all the cars needed to have new wheel sets. I started to do some research and found a fairly "basic" end cab unit on Ebay that fit on a Kato chassis. I went to work scavenging parts from the other engines, buying a few new, then put about a week of evenings to make my first "new" engine. It was fun and the Kato units are super smooth and quiet.
I retired several months ago and this is becoming my primary hobby to keep me out of trouble. I will be adding photos as rolling stock, layout, etc progress.
I added an engineer and window glazing in the last photo.
Several years ago I got back into the hobby and built an HO 12'x2' switching layout. It was extremely enjoyable building it, but I became bored with it. I just couldn't tear it down after all the effort.
I was going through some boxes a few months ago and found my HOn30 stuff. None of the engines ran anymore and all the cars needed to have new wheel sets. I started to do some research and found a fairly "basic" end cab unit on Ebay that fit on a Kato chassis. I went to work scavenging parts from the other engines, buying a few new, then put about a week of evenings to make my first "new" engine. It was fun and the Kato units are super smooth and quiet.
I retired several months ago and this is becoming my primary hobby to keep me out of trouble. I will be adding photos as rolling stock, layout, etc progress.
I added an engineer and window glazing in the last photo.
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