Dear Mike:

I think you and your staff at Model Railroad News put together a very interesting magazine. Though I’m an avid HO modeler, I still like all the information on all aspects of railroading — from the smallest to the biggest — and Model Railroad News fills the bill. Keep up the good work, and don’t worry about spelling and grammatical errors. (Letters, December 2000 issue). The wounds received from thrown stones will heal, but the stone-throwers will never heal.

On a different subject: Is there a web site out there (with a printable page) that shows the abbreviations used on (past & present) U.S. and Canadian railroad equipment — and what those abbreviations stand for? For example, P&LE stands for Pittsburgh and Lake Erie. This information will be used as a learning tool for some up-and-coming model railroaders.

Charlie Campshure
via the internet

MRN:

I appreciate the depth of your review of the Proto 1000 RDC-2 in the November, 2000 issue. However, I wonder if your readers might not also be interested in the versions released by Life-Like Canada. They include several CPR schemes, some CN, and the single BC Rail prototype that traveled the northern rails — there may be others I didn’t memorize. I don’t have a US version to compare to, but I have three Canadian models, and the steel/aluminum paint on my models looks quite good. The Canadian models were somewhat delayed compared to the US release, and it is possible that they cleaned up the paint problem before the release. I don’t exactly know the relationship between Life-Like Canada and Life-Like US, but the Canadian division apparently has some autonomy in their releases..

Stephen Lowens
Kensington, CA

Dear sir,

A brief comment on the review of the Life-Like F-M Erie-builts in your January 2001 issue. Speaking of the prototype in that review you state that, “The engine, though successful in marine applications, did not work out well for railroads due to the complicated nature of the machine and the high cost of maintenance.” What was so complicated about the opposed engine? Yes, it had two crankshafts and some extra gearing but the opposed piston design was otherwise probably less complicated than any other engine of similar horsepower. F-M even designed it so the pistons could be removed without having to remove either crankshaft, that being the maintenance drawback of other opposed piston designs. If you research the matter more carefully I suspect you will find that the real reason the prime mover was not successful in railroad applications is that locomotive frames are not rigid enough to provide the solid base this type of motor seemed to require that marine and stationary applications offered. I have never met anyone who ever worked around an F-M railroad locomotive that didn’t complain that the F-M always had the dirtiest engine room they were ever in. Why? Because they couldn’t take the flexing created when the unit was in motion and always leaked oil. This may well be due to the fact that the cylinder block of the F-M Model 38 ten cylinder motor was a welded unit comprised of formed steel plates and forgings rather than a huge, and heavy, casting. For an excellent review of this prime mover I refer you to pages 230 through 240 of P. H. Schweitzer’s Scavenging of Two-Stroke Cycle Diesel Engines, published by MacMillan in 1949.

Don Valentine
New England Rail Service
via the internet

Edward W. Horm
via the internet