These just in from my painter, an ABA set of Amtrak E9 locomotives! I now have 2 sets of these. Next up is sound decoders for all of them.
What I like most about the paint scheme is that to my knowledge, Kato never released this paint scheme, except in the Anniversary units.
So did you ever get a tracking number from DHL? Nice looking haul! The N700S was my last Shinkansen purchase. As soon as they show the new Kato catalog in stock, I'm putting an order in.
Yes! A DHL tracking number was immediately available as soon as Plaza Japan changed the status to Shipped. Plaza is highly recommended. I was floored on how they packaged things!
I got me a new loco today, and a slightly out of scale building for a T-Trak module… oh and a new command station for my home layout. the Loco, a ALC-42 Charger painted in Amtrak Phase VII (Yes the decoder in the background goes to the loco) The building. I didn’t know what scale it was prior to buying it, and the videos I seen on YouTube were kinda hard to tell so I got it anyway. Maybe I will make a 3D model of this house to print at a later date. And lastly a Digitrax DCS52 for the home layout. My original plan was to use my DR5000 from Digikeijs but they went out of business and the engineer that started a new company making the same stuff, doesn’t have things going very strong right now from the chip shortage issues… so Digitrax it is.
Nice haul, Massey. The Amtrak Phase VII is super cool. It’s impossible to tell from the picture but are the house and cars close to scale? A little too big? Close enough to pass for N scale?
See this is the exact issue I had when I bought it. It looks close in the pics but it’s more HO scale than N. But it is also an easily recognized house and I think it will pass as a single module. I mean after all, the Fast and Furious franchise is bigger than life, so why not the models be too?
I have been given a couple of boxes of old structure models of mixed scales. I found that the best estimate of scale is to measure the front door with a scale ruler. Whichever scale comes closest to saying that the door is six feet tall is probably right (more or less). That said, a walk down the street reminds me that houses come in all shapes and sizes. Sent from my SM-S901U using Tapatalk
I would hate it if doors were only 6’ tall… I would have to duck through them. I use 7’ for my measurement but the same applies.
Yeah... I know. It's six... ish. One of my engineering classmates was 6' 8" and he pointed out that commercial doors were generally 6' 6" so yeah, he had to duck under every single doorway in the engineering building.
Wow, that's nice. Does Kato have it so that the exposed side of the engine area is lit? I think the prototype is this way and it's kind of cool.
You can use a Kato 11-211 lighting kit to light it: https://katousa.com/alc-42-charger/ I finally caved and bought one of these from this second run. Haven’t gotten it yet or installed lighting(but plan on doing it) but I do use those 11-211 kits for my Kato bilevel coaches (Pullmans and Nippon-Sharyos) and they are very easy to install, I assume they designed that interior light on the charger to be as simple. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
A pair of M88 recovery vehicles and a pair of M1074 bridging vehicles. Got these from PnP Trains. They are now calling their line of N Scale 3D printed military vehicles "Bushmaster".
Pics later but a Rivarossi Mikado showed up here. Got it on the test track ... stuttered a couple of times, then took right off! Gonna have to reletter the Vanderbilt tender as it's marked Pennsylvania. It has air pumps on the front of the smokebox, so it might become a Seaboard, C&O or GN [o-3 class].
Yes, you can add a lighting kit to the chassis and the engine room light will then be lit up. I have done it to my other Challengers and will do it to this one once I put the decoder in it.
Yes it is, you simply remove the white shell piece and slip the board in the slot. It’s pretty simple. The worst part is taking the shell off. That really sucks.
I have a question, since these were all custom painted, and I only run DCC, should I put sound decoders or stick with regular motion decoders? I am having a difficult time deciding....
I’m not a big fan of N scale sound so, if they were my locomotives, I would install non sound decoders.
