Layout maintenance

Saturday we visited the 'modelspoorbeurs' in Arnhem. A toy train heaven for h0 and N scale enthusiasts. One stand had quiet a few Athearn American trains in h0. For 0 scalers there were two stands interesting selling pre-war Märklin and JEP for enormous prices: one passenger car from Märklin for 220 Euro or a lantern for 70 Euro. This is quiet in contrast to the low prices for conventional h0 wagons of 5-10 Euro per car. It has been suggested before and it is probably true, due to the global Ebay trade common toy train cars are becoming cheaper and less common cars are becoming extremely expensive. We enjoyed the three layouts on the side. The real steam powered engines in scale G (LGB) were running and those are the most impressive to watch and smell.

Sunday was a good day for redoing a part of the layout. Because the new engine house requires a track distance (center rail to center rail) of 13 cm (5 1/5 inch) instead of the common 16 cm (6 1/4 inch) on Lionel 027 layouts, a special Z-bend had to be made. I took two half curves in 027 topped them off at 10 cm curve length and soldered them back together with brass pins. This brings both tracks just the 1 inch and a bit more to each other and indeed the engine house is now ready for use. While being busy soldering I decided to connect one switch more and to make a circular power line for accesories. I only managed to connect two red bumper lights, but this simplifies the connection of other fun things in the coming months. For instance, the rotary beacon that still does not turn.

B and O Lionel freight express

This rainy weekend was very suitable for playing with Lionel toy trains. With the help of a tripod and a little natural sun light I was finally able to produce a reasonable video.

On the photo and for those with sharp eyes also on the video is the new orange AC-2 covered hopper from DT&I. It arrived this week. This club car from the TCA-MG forum is for blended sand only and was specially produced by Weaver models. It is amazingly detailed and has die-cast trucks and springs. It is still a light weight car. It states that is for 031 curves, but it runs perfectly on my 027 layout as well. The hopper is precisely 1:48 scale, so up to now I have only run it with the few 0 scale cars that I have. But the mismatch with Lionel cars that are a fraction smaller is only minimal, so I think it will run with some more trains soon.

Building a big 2 stall engine house

This weekend, I used almost all evening hours to construct the BIG 2 stall engine house that I purchased a few weeks ago. This nice model structure was made by IHC and although clearly intended for the American toy train market, it mentions "made in Denmark", well that is a surprise. The building instruction is one piece of paper with one drawing and that is a bit short, but the construction is straight forward. One aspect is not completely clear. There are two rectangular holes where we could fit two different ventilation blinds in, I just chose one. The construction time is about 6 hours and the resulting building is enormous: 27 1/2 inch long (70 cm), 10 1/2 inch (26 cm) tall and 12 inch (30 cm) wide. Four engines easily fit inside. It is a model-MEGA-structure or a train cathedral. I didnot bother about the BIG when buying it, but buyers beware, this thing is HUGE. My layout is full now. But it sure looks good.
One aspect is a bit daft though. The center-to-center rail distance for the two tracks is 5 inch, whereas for Lionel 027 6 1/4 is conventional. Well, this means I have to cut and solder a special rail to get it fitting. But for the rest it is a great structure.
Unfortunately, IHC do no longer offer 0 scale structures, in month time they vanished from the IHC website. Fortunately, Atlas 0 has included this engine house in their catalog, so most likely they have purchased the moulds. But this Atlas structure is with 2 chimneys, whereas the IHC has four!