Inventorying My Old N Scale

I've decided to go ahead and inventory my N scale items from the time I was more active in that scale, from the mid 1970s into the early 90s. This is scattered around in various closets and even unopened boxes from our llast move. One thing that's interesting is that I was modeling largely contemporary equipment of the time that I either saw out railfanning or read about in the hobby press.

Penn Central 228470 is an X72 done from the Life Like N model, stripped, repainted PC green, and lettered with now-defunct Northeast Decals. When I worked on the car, it wouldn't have been that long after the end of PC in 1976.

KCS 4015 is a Kato N GP38-2 from the late 1980s. It was an undecorated unit that I painted and lettered with MicroScale decals. I think the decals would only allow the smallest numbers from the 1960s white KCS scheme, so that its number is basically illegible/invisible on the N model. In the days before DCC, this was OK. If I convert the loco, I will need to do something about this.

GAT 85093 and UTLX 53374 are Eastern Seaboard Models cars from about 1990, as far as I can remember. I think they used Rivarossi tooling. They're remarkably good models for their time period. I never quite took them out of their boxes until now, but I've replaced the trucks with MicroTrains. ESM is still around and still making above-average models.

Reading 41660 is an Atlas 90-ton hopper. I replaced the Atlas trucks with Roundhouse roller bearing and added styrene coupler mounting pads to body mount Micro Trains couplers in the 1970s. I also added the ACI labels and 1970s-era COTS stencils. These cars kept this lettering well into Conrail.

Althuogh I'd moved to California from the Washington, DC area by this time, I was still looking back at Penn Central and other roads that went into Conrail that I used to railfan as a teen.