Regarding Prototype Content in Reviews

I always get informed and motivated by your writing. I either want to comment to you, or express my own opinion on the subject to someone else, or otherwise release the creative tension you create in me.

This time I want to comment on your editorial concerning prototype content in reviews. Do not change your policy for all the reasons you state but also because, beyond the product review itself, you add to the body of railroad information accessible to me. I model in S scale. I subscribe to a majority of the comprehensive model railroad publications. None of them devote as much attention to S as you do. Yet your magazine is more product oriented than all of them taken together. I, however, can read the prototype info on any review for any scale and gain from it. That is one reason I continue to renew my subscription. Incidentally, your thorough and thoughtful replies to letters to the editor are always appreciated, and your work on advancing knowledge of DCC are other reasons.

Keep on the track you are running,

Dave Jasper
St. Paul Park, MN

And the Boxcab Follies Go On…


Martin Kern’s kitbashed boxcab/electrics work a cut of cars.

Thought you might like to know that one of the main reasons I subscribed to MRN is the proto info included in the reviews. It is really nice to learn about the history of the prototypes of the models we have an interest in. Keep up the great work!

Regarding the boxcab, check out the attached photo. I picked up the Roundhouse boxcab at a train show some years back and decided to kit-bash it into a boxcab electric. And, yes, it does sound like “gravel in a blender!” I built it to run on our club’s trolley layout (as you can see) but the Roundhouse drive train just won’t negotiate trolley curves... so I simply run it back and forth on the straight-aways. And, yes, it does operate off the wire.

Interestingly, I didn’t care too much about being prototypically accurate... the objective was fun! However, ironically, a month or two ago I was watching a video on RFD-TV when, lo and behold, a prototype of my loco shows up! Couldn’t wait to show the guys at the club, even the trucks are correct... there’s a prototype for everything!

Martin Kern
Abington Lines MRRC
Richboro, PA

Working the Editor Through the O-Gauge Primer

As always, I’m enjoying the new MRN that just arrived, but as a former (some might say a “recovering”) O tinplater/high-railer, I did notice a couple of things that seemed a little off.

In your “Larger View” article about scales and gauges, you said:

“Tinplate tubular track won’t quite fit on a basic sheet of plywood since the minimum loop would be 54 inches across.”

Remember that Lionel and other three-rail O track is measured in diameter, not radius... “O27” track is 27-inch diameter, Lionel “O” is 31-inch diameter, and the old Lionel “Super O” was 36-inch diameter, so all would fit on a 4 x 8 foot sheet. In fact “O42” was introduced by K-Line 20+ years ago to allow the widest possible curve and still fitting onto a plywood sheet.

Also, in the review of the new Lionel Hogwarts Express, Jennifer Lindsay says:

“Note: Lionel uses Alternating Current to power their trains, never place the locomotive on Direct Current (DC) track or use a DC power pack with this set - you will destroy it!”

Now, you certainly can run AC engines on DC power - it’s the other way around that’s the trouble. Back in my teens I often ran a Lionel switch engine from an MRC DC power pack with no trouble, in fact it ran a little more smoothly on DC. Eventually I replaced the E-unit reverser with a bridge rectifier so I could run it as a straight DC engine.

The only real problem with it is that Lionel in the past has operated their engine’s whistle or horn by DC - pressing the whistle button on the AC transformer sent a low-power burst of DC to the engine, which only affected the horn or whistle. So if you run a Lionel loco with a horn in it on DC power, it will run fine, but the horn will blow the whole time there is power to the track!

Anyway, just thought I’d drop you a line to mention these things. I really look forward to the new MRN in the mail, and I read most all the reviews, even for products in scales I don’t model in - largely for the prototype background info. Keep up the good work!

Bill Stixrud
Cottage Grove, MN

More O-Gauge Questions

I enjoyed your article on the various railroad scales, but have a question regarding “O” scale. I have been an HO modeler for a number of years and had O scale around the Christmas tree as a child. Having attended a train show in Rochester, NY, I was very impressed with a 72 x 72 foot “O” Scale modular layout. In talking to one of the modelers, he stated it was standard gauge “O” which seemed larger than I remember as a child. However, in a newspaper write-up, it was quoted as being tinplate.

Could you help define the difference between “standard scale,” “tinplate,” “O27,” “two rail,” “three rail,” and Lionel? Also, when you refer to “O scale” in your magazine, which is it?

Ron Kloosterman
Wesbster, NY

They Won’t Do That Anymore!

Your December 2007 issue on page 17 has a press release from Deluxe Innovations. Let’s look at the first paragraph from a journalistic perspective:

“Deluxe Innovations is releasing new containers, trailers, and chassis. Samples were not available for photography at press time and prices had yet to be released; the models should be available from the company and on dealers shelves next spring.”

Now then, from a reader’s perspective, this means: We can’t show it to you, and we don’t know how much it costs, but it doesn’t matter because you can’t get it now anyway!

Regards,

Glenn Koproske
Fenton, MO

We’ve Got What He’s Looking For...

1. Your editorial in the Dec 07 MRN certainly describes what I am looking for in a product review.

2. To be honest, I wish you could still use the old, larger size paper for MRN. As it now is, MRN can be confused with some of those “lesser” magazines.

3. A magazine containing nothing but product reviews and ads is the perfect magazine. 

After more than 50 years in the hobby I am far less interested in new techniques and layout tours than I once was. New techniques and layout tours have their place for those new to the hobby so I’m not criticizing those “lesser” magazines.

Gene Green
El Paso, TX

Just a couple of comments on your December issue. Regarding giving prototype information as part of a product review, please keep doing so. I find it very valuable in making purchases. I cannot tell you how many times I have passed up an otherwise attractive model at a hobby shop or train show because I was not sure that it would fit in the era I model. I remember going to a train show a few years back with a friend where we both admired a particularly nice model, but neither of us bought it. On the way home I asked why he had not bought it. He models the 1990s and I model the 1950s. I had passed on it because I thought it was too new for my era and he had passed on it because he thought it was too old for his. At least one of us was almost surely wrong, and maybe both. We both laughed about it, but I am sure that the manufacturer and the vendor would not have found it that funny. How much extra would it cost to print a couple of dates on the box or the directions, for example: 1939-1955?

Also, I am sure that you must have heard by now from just about every one of your Canadian readers that the “looney” mention in your Rapido Trains article on page 17 is a coin, not a bill, as is the “tooney”.

Ed Ahrenhoerster
Hartford, WI

Wye Tracks in the Garden

Some time ago, you discussed wyes. The attached picture is the Jud Jones Wye, named after a friend who insisted that it should/could be done. (His passion is HOn3.)


John D’Aloia’s #1 Gauge Wye track installation.

The original GR layout, dual gauge, just went around the pond to the left. I had no real plans to make it any bigger. The left leg of the wye as you are looking at it is the original circuit. The fence you see in the background and the deck to the right did not exist. Then one day, I found a dog swimming in the pond - it could just as easily have been a child, so the fence became a project. As the fence was going in, it dawned on me that the fence became the right-of-way for what amounted to a level, give or take, line around the area to be fenced. (The ground slopes away from the point where the picture was taken.) The around-the-fence line tied in to the original loop out of picture left, and back in this picture in the foreground. It ultimately became another leg of the wye. With the line now coming around the yard, it would have made using the existing steps to the lower yard “interesting,” so Jud, a carpenter, build the deck. Once the deck and the around-the-fence line were completed, Jud started bugging me to just put in the third leg of the wye.

Not simple. The rock wall to the left of the picture was originally about 18 inches to the left and had to be moved out, to the right, to provide a bit more solid ground for the elimination of what had been an S-curve on the around-the-fence line and to shorten the new bridge. The original bridge between the rock wall and Under-the-Deck tunnel was removed and a new one built, then the bridge for the final leg of the wye was built, as was the turnout on the low trestle. I did “tracings” of the existing track as templates for the turnout, then built it in the shop. The fit was almost on target - still working out some bugs.

Trains will run through on the pond line, but I’m still having a bit of trouble with a train entering the turnout coming from the tunnel. (It was going to be a spring switch, but I am going to install a Pettibone-Mulliken ground throw on it.) Better weather and a bit of patience will solve the problem, along with slow-order running. One of these days, I may also make some bents to put under the bridge from the stonewall to the tunnel, but not having any does make cleaning out Dry Creek easier.

The around-the-fence line is just Gauge 1, not dual gauge - the original loop was enough. Once the fence was in and the around-the-fence line completed, the next project was a foot-of-the-fence line. You cannot see it in the picture - it has reversing loops with spring switches at both ends so that I can set a battery-powered interurban running on open-house days without having to worry about control - always motion. The north reversing loop is just a simple loop; the south reversing loop winds its way under a high trestle, past a small town, around a tree, then back under the trestle through a farm scene.

John D’Aloia
St. Marys, CA

First, thanks for an entertaining and very informative monthly “Thinking of DCC” column in Model Railroad News. I look forward to your column each month in a magazine that I’m finding I look forward to more and more every month. Good work on everyone’s part to upgrade the magazine.

With respect to the NMRA DCC Standards, Didrik Voss, et.al. discussion (Dec 2007), I think the solution is and should be in the marketplace. If model railroaders want conformance to NMRA DCC standards (and RPs), then they should purchase conforming products, and conversely not purchase non-conforming products. Doing so will drive manufacturers to produce conforming products and encourage them to be inspected and approved by the NMRA C&I program. Demand by the manufacturers to have products inspected will drive the NMRA to increase its C&I capacity, and to creatively find the resources (people and funds) to do so. It’s a win for everyone. Forcing a solution - regulation, fines, or otherwise - or complaining about non-conformance won’t work. Modelers can’t expect manufacturer’s to care about conformance if they don’t insist upon it. People are led to solutions, not forced. Model Railroad News may be on to something! Keep at it.

Steve King
Germantown, MD

I am a new subscriber to Model Railroad News. I am wondering if you have any articles or publications on how to upgrade HO diesels to sound. Some of my engines have DCC decoders already installled; some do not. Any advice you can provide would be greatly appreciated.

Ed Schofield
Greentown PA