Ertl Collectibles HO Freight Cars

When they came out in the 1990s, I passed over the HO freight cars from Ertl Collectibles. This post at a site called Intrernet Modeler gives some background. What it misses is the reason I initially passed them over -- the gondola at least was a knockoff of a Maine Central prototype that was done as a urethane kit that was available from the onetime store at the Rensselaer club. It may have been a certain snobbery on my part that kept me from taking the line more seriously at the time.

More recently, I saw these cars in use in photos of layouts posted on Facebook now and then, and they looked remarkably good. They were quite well detailed for plastic models of the time, they were very well painted, and they were recognizably different from run-of-the-mill cars by Athearn and Roundhouse. So I began to look for them on eBay. At this point, It's hard to find vintage cars with all the pieces on eBay for less than $15-20, while current cars from Accurail are about $20. I've found Ertl cars in this general range. It's possible that their original prices were high for the 1990s market, so there's a lot of new old stock out there.

My most recent find was one of the flat cars. This is a 40-foot car with a K brake, so its prototype dates from about the 1920s through 1940s,and the paint schemes seem to reflect this. Here is the car, a Cotton Belt version, serving as an idler for my Sheepscot pile driver, which is one potential use for these cars on a more modern layout.

I've discovered several things about these cars. One is that the Kadee clone couplers are plastic, and the knuckle spring is a single plastic finger that loses its springiness fairly quickly. It should be replaced with Kadees. However, getting the coupler box cover off without damaging it is a challenge, and anyhow, all model couplers really need to be mounted with screws to allow replacement or adjustment down the road. So the boxes need to be drilled out #50 and tapped 2-56, with matching holes in the covers drilled #43. This will help make the car operable, as will replacing the plastic wheels with Kadees or equivalent.

The flat cars don't have any added metal weight, which means they also need loads to bring them up to an operable weight. The decks are removable and held in place with two small screws under the chassis, which makes weathering the deck easy. Since the paint schemes and details of the cars put them in the 1920s-40s period, potential loads on a more modern themed layout would probably best involve railroad maintenance items like diesel engines, track materials, and so forth. Another use would be to convert them to log cars with log bunks and log loads.

Below is one of the Ertl gons, this one lettered for the Jersey Central.

This has a Chooch 7055 40 foot scrap load installed. This fits easily, a little bit short for the inside length of the car, which is 42 scale feet. The gon also generally dates from the 1920s through 1940s, but it has a nicely detailed AB brake system, and the available paint schemes seem to date more from the 1950s.

This style of low-side 40-foot gon seems to have been common in New England, the Pennsylvania anthracite coal fields, and the Southeastern US. The Ertl road names generally match railroads in these locations. Unlike the flat cars, the Ertl gons have metal weights, but like the flat cars, you need to do some work to install Kadees and metal wheels.

Model Engineering Works Die Cast Caboose From The 1950s

Many years ago I found a small logging caboose of die cast zinc alloy at a hobby shop. I gradually converted it to use Kadees and shimmed up the trucks to get the couplers in line.

A web search brings up a reference to a Model Engineering Works ad for this car from 1953. It has a prototype that ran on the Grasse River Railroad in upstate New York.

After I painted it, I found I had to do more work, including drilling out the truck screw holes in the bolsters to handle 2-56 screws and tap, which led to some dings in the paint. I still have to do more work adjusting the play in the truck screws so that it stays on the track reliably. Then I'll touch up the paint and add lettering. But the phtos suggest it didn't have glass in the windows.

I vaguely recall seeing a photo of one of these on John Allen's G&D, but I haven't been able to find anything in the photos I've found on the web. It's entirely possible that nobody ever got these to run well.

Sheepscot Pile Driver Conversion For The Walthers Crane

Some years ago I ordered a Sheepscot Scale Products pile driver conversion kit for the Walthers crane. Sheepscot for a time offered a number of kits from materials including cast metal, etched brass, wood sheet and strip, and cast plaster. I found a donor Walthers crane at a swap meet and assembled the kit, but I never got around to painting it.

I finally did paint it this past week:

I'm still not sure how I'll letter it. I've found a few similar prototype pile drivers on the web:

The Kato Pocket Line Steeple Cab

The Kato Pocket Line N scale steeple cab electric loco is an intriguing model and probably about the least expensive powered unit in any scale. A web search shows a price range between $35-$45.

Unlike some other cheapo locos in that price range, this has a state of the art coreless motor, and it runs very well. However, Kato warns that running it on DCC without a decoder will damage the motor, so outise of a first test to see how it does on DCC, I've run mine on straight DC. It will run on DCC, but it gives out a loud screech, which doesn't sound good. Given the coreless motor, it runs very well on straight DC. There is a YouTube video on DCC conversion using Z scale decoders like the Digitrax D126.

I'm not satisfied with the pre-molded plastic colors. The easiest solution would be to paint it all black, and some of the closer prototypes in the US were this way:

Even painitng the pantograph black would be an improvement.

Refurbishing Structures And Scenery

I've been refurbishing some structures and scenery, cleaning things up and, where possible, adding Just Plug interior lighting.

The photo above is EGG tower at West Egg. This is a Walthers kit for a standard PRR design. I painted it in PRR colors when I built the kit, but here I've added Woodland Scenics diffusing window film and a Just Plug LED to the top floor.

The is a Downtown Deco Downtown Overlook Hotel. I cleaned up the street in front and added a length of Downtown Deco sidewalk.

This is the Downtown Overlook Hotel from the opposite angle. The Life Like station kit still isn't completely level, I have to fix this.

New Walthers Mainline RS-2

Chicago Great Western fans have had several new models in recent months. I talked about the Broadway Limited F3s in this post. I recently ordered one of the new Walthers RS-2s. The CGW had eight units numbered 50-57, built in May and September 1949. The Walthers models are numbered 53 and 57, both in the final CGW diesel scheme of bright red with black roofs. I ordered the 53:

I haven't been able to find any color photos of the prototype 53 in the late scheme, but here's a photo of the prototype 52 by Jim Sands:

The red on the Walthers model seems a little too maroon, but it definitely isn't the older maroon of the 1950s scheme, which is illustrated in this photo from Steven Rush.

But here's a photo of a cow-and-calf set in the 1960s brighter red from an unknown photographer:

This seems closer to the red of the model. I've never been a believer in exact colors on the prototype or model, since this can depend on the age of the paint, lighting, weathering, and in fact where the individual shop or railroad bought its paint. A model can be wildly off, which is one thing, but I don't think the Walthers model is wildly off, and I can live with this color.

Notably, the prototype of 53 has a lengthwise stack, while the model has a crosswise stack. This is a bit odd, because Walthers advertises that each road name version has the stack in the prototype position -- however, 57, the other number Walthers did in this run, had a crosswise stack. On the other hand, I haven't been able to find any photos of either 53 or 57 in the late bright red scheme.

This run of RS-2s has the new standard Mainline features of diagonally cut gears in a newly tooled chassis, and this is the first Walthers run of RS-2s with factory sound. I weighed this updated unit on a postal scale, and it came in at about 10.5 ounces. I weighed an earlier-run Walthers RS-2 on the same scale, and it was heavier, at 11.5 ounces. I assume the need to allow space for a speaker in the retooled frame accounts for the difference.

The sound is ESU LokSound Select, with limited features. This is well-suited to a loco of the 1950s and 60s, which didn't have features like flashing ditch lights. I liked the Alco sounds.

The headlight is satisfyingly bright. A good feature when I tested the loco for a first run was that it began rolling very, very slowly on speed step 1, without any need for running in or tuning CV 2 for starting voltage.

Kalmbach Sells Its Hobby Magazines

I've got to say I'm not among the mourners here. I stopped reading Trains in the early 1970s when I realized I was getting far more of the information I wanted from Extra 2200 South (a more technical railfan publication that began in the early 1970s), and then CTC Board. Both featured direct reader involvement in reporting news in a way that prefigured the internet. But I'd lost interest in Trains before then, it mosly carried superficial dazzle, lots of Steinheimer and not much else.

I stuck with Model Railroader a lot longer, but I wrote the editors a number of long critiques. I finally gave up in the early 2000s. My last hurrah was with MR Video Plus around 2012. The original promise was that new videos would be added weekly, and you had to be a subscriber to watch them. But quickly the definition of "new video" changed, there was less new material, and more irritating, they'd frequently make new videos free to try to encourage new subscribers, which meant that I was paying the same for less than they promised, while they were giving other stuff I was paying for away for free. Er, why not offer me an extension of my subscription to compensate?

I e-mailed David Popp about this, and his reply was they couldn't make everyone happy. So much for Kalmbach, as far as I was concerned.

The announcement from Kalmbach said in part,

Trains Magazine, the company’s other rail magazines, and Trains.com are among assets that have been sold by Kalmbach Media to Chattanooga, Tenn.-based Firecrown Media, the two companies have announced today (May 1).

Other Kalmbach titles involved in the transaction are Classic Trains, Model Railroader, Classic Toy Trains, FineScale Modeler, and Astronomy, as well as Kalmbach’s online stores.

. . . Kalmbach employees were informed of the sale this morning and told that most employees working on the brands will be offered positions with Firecrown after screening. Kalmbach CEO Dan Hickey called it “a difficult day in our storied history” in an email announcing the sale.

Frankly, this sounds like the usual corporate downsizing happy talk -- "most" employees will be "offered positions" "after screening". Presumably this will be one of those deals where they have to reapply for their old jobs, and good luck, except that a favored few will know where they stand right away -- like David Popp. He posted about this on Facebook Friday:

Since the release said "most" would be "offered positions" "after screening", that leads me to believe there will be worker bees who won't be grinning in a few days or weeks. For Popp to be gloating this way while many of his colleagues are in a state of uncertainty is unseemly at best, but I also get an uncomfortable feeling that this guy is tempting fate.

As far as I can tell, Kalmbach was held by members of the Kalmbach family, and in selling most of their magazines, they were disinvesting from the business. Comments on various forums indicate that they are also selling the former corporate headquarters in Waukesha, and although the former Kalmbach magazines would still be published in Wisconsin, it would be in a new facility. For the family, they're selling out, which says something about the value they saw in the business.

It sounds to me as if nobody at Kalmbach had a winning formula, including David Popp. I'm not sure how Firecrown Media thinks it can change things with the same team, but we'll have to see. Still, if I were David Popp, I wouldn't be planning for a long stint at Firecrown.