This came in the mail today (Thursday) . To me it was a steal of the century!! I see a few of them on eBay going for $95-$110 for the set. This one is brand new and I saw it on eBay for $50 with an best offer. I took a chance and offered $45 well I was shocked that he took it!! Plus I attended the 100th anniversary of the Mississippi Export railroad gala. Just like any shortline it was a small event that most of the workers and a few others like myself showed up. Yes, it was open to the public. Although they were great to talk with, especially Rusty and I got to talk with the CEO Ms. Luce. She was so nice and told us about their new additional interchange with the CSX was getting ready to go in service soon. With this event, we were encouraged by Ms. Luce and her HR to take a few more cookies for home. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Well it must be that because my daughter has COVID and I can not leave the house, that I seem to keep buying more trains. Today was another Kato GS-4 with factory installed ESU Sound decoder. Added to that was a pair of CSX SD70M's and ESU LokSound DCC boards to go in them. Having the decoders in place now, and can wait to get a speaker and install that later. I think this is what I will be doing from now on with new locomotives. When this all comes in I will get a photo of all the new stuff.
1) some 3D print stuff from Shapeways-a F40PHM-2 so I can build METX 211, the CB&Q heritage unit and coalveyor extensions so I can make some C&D cars for WC. 2) from Ebay, 2x air slide hoppers, a CEFX trinity reefer, a gondola, a trash flat car, and a DODX tank car. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Hope you and your daughter are okay. Nice therapy though, whether for COVID or cabin fever: when life hands you lemons, make lemonade!
I got a 4449 with Southern Pacific Lines with ESU Loksound. I Already have the original post war version with the large Southern Pacific lettering from the original run.
The two 'War Baby' locomotives I got are also not DCC. There is no current DCC or DCC/SOUND aftermarket decoders listed anywhere. Hoping Kato will stock some soon.
Nothing directly for the layout. But, Sunday I got the safety cover for the extension cord. So I don't trip over the cord and can roll the vacum over it. I did do some dreaming and studying.
Well Happy days, all my new locomotives showed up and all the decoders and RailCom transmitters to go in end of train cars as well as some existing locomotives with non RailCom decoders. Sorry do not know why the site pivoted the photo 90 degrees.. If you click on it it will display correctly....
One thing I found out, The DCC conversion of the Kato SD70M's is not that straight forward of a board swap with the ESU decoder. The Kato light board has soldered pickups and regular LED's. The ESU board comes with no pickups but has LEDs to cut to length and then solder to the decoder. Not that any of this is difficult, just not what one would think of a simple board swap. Perhaps I will punt the previous idea and return to TCS drop in decoders. They do support Railcom which is what is important to me. I will find other Kato locomotives than the SD70M's for the decoders.
I don't think I've contributed to this thread before... and this will not be earth shattering, guaranteed... Down at the walking-distance-from-home hobby and craft store I picked up a can of Tamiya Spray Paint... in orange. I have a couple of low-end Model Power "refrigerator" cars (one hatch per end, people, really?!?) that just got "shot." I suspect I covered every single one of the few details on these cars with my heavy-handed spraying. Whatever would that be for? Stay tuned... Halloween is coming...
didn't want to, but finally bit the bullet and ordered the Kato office building I wanted. Not even discontinued, just obnoxiously expensive whether you buy it here or have it shipped here. Either way, I couldn't talk myself out of it.
By no means a new model, but new to me, a older Bachmann FM H16-44 in the Virginian Railway paint scheme. Yes, she's a little bit of a growler and does not have flywheels, but still a decent runner. I also removed the dummy Bachmann couplers and replaced them with Micro-Trains 2004 couplers.
Here's another Earth Shattering Latest Purchase: Atlas Rail Joiners. Oh, wait, that was the second latest purchase. I decided to pick up some of the new Atlas 17 Inch Radius Track as an experiment. I was planning to use their 19 inch radius track as the standard for the visible portions of the layout I'm (very slowly) working on. (Yes, I know, flex-track, Code 80 vs Code 55 wars, etc.) I'm thinking that while this is a further compromise to the prototype radius (which would be something like what, 200 inches reduced to N Scale?!?) it might still "look OK." We'll see...