More Work With The N Micro

I'm feeling my way along with how to operate my 3-2-2 N scale Inglenook. I did a fair amount of N scale 30 and 40 years ago, but never much switching. I'm starting to think N scale cars need more weight for this, plus near-perfect trackwork. Building a layout from recycled track materials has its challenges, but two steps forward, one step back!

I've been able to unpack several N freight cars from long-term storage, refurbish them where needed, and put them into operation.

ATSF 48240 is a Micro Trains car from about 1980. There was no internet source of freight car photos at the time, but looking up photos of cars like this now shows Micro Trains got it pretty much right. I believe I added the COTS and U1 wheel stencils when the car was new.

N&W 12987 is actually a car of 1980 vintage, but I got it recently off eBay at a good price. I added Micro Trains roller bearing trucks with couplers.

When Conrail was new in 1976, Walthers brought out decals for some of the first cars with Conrail paint patches. This is a Micro Trains car that I painted Penn Central green, masked off areas to represent clean new paint patches, weathered the rest of the car, and then applied the Walthers decal patch lettering over the clean areas.

Southern 78197 is another Atlas car that I renumbered by covering the last three numbers on the factory paint with boxcar red patches, then added new numbers from a Micro Scale N Southern freight car set. The numbers matched pretty well. I also added the COTS stencils. These are the 1970s style consistent with the prototypes I saw at the time.