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    Atlas High Nose N&W U30B Review

    Interesting... I believe all U30Bs had the wheelslip system, but only N&W had this box. This phase of U30B only has the wheelslip cones on the short-end truck. The earlier 1900s had them on all for axles, all on the left side. Up until I got the parts out of the bag last night and started...
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    Atlas High Nose N&W U30B Review

    I've always maintained that the plane jane locomotives can be the most difficult to model, because you can't cheat - there's no pizazz, no silver trucks or glitzy schemes. Not even a mars light or gyra or strobe. You have to make it work with workmanship, accuracy, finishing - and weathering...
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    Atlas High Nose N&W U30B Review

    How many photos would you like to see? Did you even read what I wrote? N&W ran both ways. Their locomotives were dual control. They ran short hood forward on the NKP lines far more often than they ran long hood forward. In fact, in my collection I have only one photo of a U30B leading...
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    Atlas High Nose N&W U30B Review

    More pics showing the all weather cab and the DW wheelslip system: The later U30Bs have the wheelslip pickups only on the front truck, on the left side. They have a single speed recorder pickup on the left side forward axle. It's a weird shaped thing, not like any available...
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    Atlas High Nose N&W U30B Review

    Ok, here we go - these are not the most recent after I added the all-weather window but they will have to do for now. Right out of the box, minutes after I received it and opened up my UPS package on July 3: Chassis shows new style drive with the small rear FW, speaker housing, and...
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    Atlas High Nose N&W U30B Review

    The Atlas model comes with a generic 3-chime horn, but it's in the correct location. No holes to fill, it's easy to replace it with a Utah Pacific brass Leslie S5T. As far as paint and lettering goes, it's hard to screw up black, right? Wrong! Manufacturers are notoriously careless with...
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    Atlas High Nose N&W U30B Review

    Of all the predictions I could have made for the hobby 10 years ago, I never would have dreamed that today I'd be holding in my hand a factory painted, ready to run high nose U30B in N&W 13-dip black. With a total of 110 units, N&W had more U30Bs than anybody else. All were high nose, and...
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    Difference in switchers, SW7/9? and SW1200/1500?

    The SW9 and SW1200 are virtually identical - Proto 2000 used the same tooling for both. The name change at EMD seems to reflect the change from the single digit to a number representing the horsepower. The SW8 and SW900 are also identical. They are the single stack versions of the SW9 and...
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    Anyone read

    I love this one: "The only type of diesel locomotive you should ever invest in!" Really? Diesels as investments! The ones that go up in value must be a mystery, because every single one of mine has gone down. Even the Katos, and most of the brass, I can't get what I paid back out of it...
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    What became of the old Museum/Science/Industry Chicago layout

    Yikes... if I had to pick the lesser of three evils, I think I'd pick the tobacco company over either of the cell phone companies...... all of 'em may kill you, but at least the tobacco takes a while. Cell phones can put you in the looney bin in a matter of minutes. Yeah I have Sprint...
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    What became of the old Museum/Science/Industry Chicago layout

    What irks me is when they claim "The B&O model train display has been a tradition in the lobby of Duke Energy for more than 60 years". Uh, no. The B&O layout and the original rolling stock was built 60+ years ago by the B&O railroad itself, as a traveling exhibit. By the time I was a kid in...
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    Tangent Scale Models ?

    Ah, you keep your day job that's how. If Tangent were cranking out cars at the rate that other manufacturers do, I wouldn't be able to keep up with them. It's hard enough to keep up with releases now, even though I've narrowed my focus. Finally freight car manufacturers are beginning to...
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    Can you identify this HO boxcar?

    Athearn metal line, definitely. Could be original, or one of the re-runs from the mid-late 1970s sold under the name George F. Menzies Co. The Menzies kits were pretty much identical to the originals, seemed to have been stamped from the same tooling and printed using the same artwork. They...
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    What became of the old Museum/Science/Industry Chicago layout

    I would imagine various collectors got their hands on all the old stuff within minutes after the layout's last run. A few years back there was an ebay auction proclaiming to be stuff from the CMSI layout. It was actually a bunch of utterly ordinary spare parts and off-the-shelf models that had...
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    Is it just me, or does MTH ignore you?

    No they were HO locos. The K4 and the Mohawk. I have no interest in O whatsoever. Andy
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    Is it just me, or does MTH ignore you?

    The fact that so few people actually own an MTH loco should tell you a lot. I test ran several MTH locos at different times, long enough to back away quickly and put my wallet back in my pocket. When I attempted to run an MTH Mohawk with an NCE DCC system, it behaved much like a sound loco...
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    Rail car weight

    When I was a kid, I remember laughing hysterically when my dad huffed and puffed and blew an AHM Pullman completely off the track. I was complaining that it was derailing - while mixed in with some old Walthers wood & metal cars when he made the observation "Well no wonder - this Pullman is so...
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    How do you set up your Power on a train?

    I follow N&W Ft. Wayne Division practice circa 1973-76. Any time, any train, any power, any lead, any combination, any orientation. Exceptions: F units can't lead "long hood forward" :) Some non-mu equipped FM units cannot be used in consist. That's one reason why I am adamant about...
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    "POLL" What DCC System do you prefer?

    At the time I bought my first system - Wangrow Sys-1 in 1997 - not very many people around here were using DCC at all, and the ones I knew were all Digitrax. I later bought a Radio Chief in 2000. I switched back and forth between the two systems. The Sys-1 was preferable in every way except...
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    "POLL" What DCC System do you prefer?

    I don't know if this applies to other towns, but around here there's no knowledge base for Lenz. The only guy who was selling it 10 years ago when I got my system was someone I could never get a straight answer from in all the years he sold analog systems. When Debbie Ames asked me why I...




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