Newbie checking in!

[DieselGuy]

Thank you all i feel very welcomed here!

 

[Secondhandmodeler]

Welcome to the forum and the hobby! Listening to your enthusiasm strikes a cord with many of us. All of us were just getting started at some point with out eyes wide open and our wallets even wider! It's amazing how the hobby can just grab you!

 

[DieselGuy]

Double post

 

[DieselGuy]

Well the box of goodies came in today but it turns out they werent goodies at all lol. Only a few pieces were ho scale while everything else was one scale bigger. Oh well at least i got a whole lot of track with the deal. Here are some pics of the ho scale pieces.

The santa fe engine is going for sale, it works fine i tried it on my ez track setup.

 

[psychobeagle12]

What r u gonna do w/ the bigger scale stuff? Is that red Santa Fe the one you plan on selling or were you talking about the little tank engine? How much did you pay for this box of goodies and was the whole thing advertised as HO? You should write to the seller and tell them to get their eyes checked . Looks like you got some half-decent stuff there, nothing like great but you can always invest your time and MAKE it great. Isn't that what model railroading is all about???

 

[DieselGuy]

I have almost 40 cars and 4 locomotives in s scale that were included. I dont care for the s scale so im going to be posting them for sale on here.


When i got them both the santa fe red locomotive and this little black steam engine were not working. I spent almost 5 hours on both cleanin them up piece by piece and once put back together the engines worked. The red santa fe is one tough old horse it movesss. Now the little black santa fe is loud as can be however it can only pull one or two cars before it slows down a little bit but its the coolest little thing. The red santa fe was build in hong kong around 1977 but the black santa fe looks way way older. All my S scale pieces say made in the US of America, which is pretty cool.

These are the couplers the rolling stock and red santa fe came with. That however does not match up to my bachmann mckinley explorer set so i want to buy couplers to have all the same setup.

 

[DieselGuy]

Here is the diff in coupler mounting hole size.

 

[psychobeagle12]

You will probably have to get coupler conversion boxes. You should look into getting Kadee couplers for that rolling stock. They are pretty much the best in HO scale couplers and they make whisker couplers for your McKinley explorer set too. The couplers that came on the McKinley are ez-mate, bachmann's version of the kadee. They are junk compared to kadees. For the rolling stock I would suggest getting something like kadee #5's and mounting them on the body of the car. Do a google search for them. The couplers that came on the rolling stock are horn hook couplers and they are terrible too. If you don't want to change the couplers on your McKinley set the kadees WILL work w/ the ez-mates, just not as well. You may also be able to find ez-mate couplers that will work w/ the truck mounted system but this will not work nearly as well. Backing a train w/ truck mounted couplers always seems to end badly for me but I have no problems backing up since I installed my kadees. Anyone else have an input now that my fingers are sore?