I have picked up a tiny bit of O scale 2 rail equipment over the course of a couple years, and I was wondering what I should do with it: A: Sell it all, and expand my N empire. B: Stick it in a box until I have space for a 100x50 foot layout C: Build a small switching/running layout, if this is your choice, suggest a prototype: *** The equipment consists of: A small 4 wheel industrial switcher, made by rivarossi, currently done up in a freelance paint job, no lettering. So might as well be undec. A Weaver C&O covered hopper An Atlas 40' Box car, and I think I have some Seaboard decals for it somewhere. An Intermountain SHPX 36' tank A yet unassembled craftsman kit for a Southern Ry cattle car Four Atlas 24" radius turnouts (2L, 2R), and some sectional curves Several pieces of Atlas flex track *** So what do y'all suggest?
I may get flamed to a crisp for this, but I'd go with option A. Adding scales compounds the headaches exponentially.
That's why I've left HO behind. I just find O interesting because of how big it is. Almost unusually big! Anyone else got suggestions? I have a question... does anyone make any reasonably priced turnouts compatible with the Atlas flex? [ 22 February 2002, 03:13: Message edited by: RidgeRunner ]
I would make the change and go with O, or go to S scale. I have modelled in HO and prefer the S and O. Of course my eyes prefer the larger trains. You are in luck. Atlas has just announced their return to the 2 rail market, meaning that they will offer 2 rail track along with their 3 rail. It will include flex, fix radius, two new switch sizes and two crossings. It's supposed to match their old flex track in rail size but have a more American looking tie and tie spacing. Also MTH, is supposed to start offering 2 rail track and 2 rail trains again. Now as for a layout, a switching layout is doable in a small space. Kadee offers metal and plastic couplers that work very good. There are switch kits that make switch building a breeze. As for a prototype to follow, any layout book that promotes small layouts can give you inspiration. Even an interesting switching layout can be based on BNSF or UP or any other large railroad. Shortlines abound all over the country. One idea to consider is making a time-saver layout and just switch cars to be switching. If you can get your hands on one more switch, you are almost there with what you described. Greg Elems
One thing I've considered is how would I fit a Southern cattle car in a tiny switching layout? Most switching scenes like that would represent city industry. Ideas there? Should I just sell that car, or try to find a way to use it?
Ridgerunner, did you loose your imagination since you were a boy? I found myself caught up in the propaganda that "it has to be prototype or you are a low life" too at one time! Then one day while I was agitating over the same point you are asking about; my Dad asked me, "Who am I trying to please, me or them? What makes them so important that they govern my fun?" It was the rich big shots at a club that were belittling me because I had an AT&SF engine double headed with a Pennsylvania engine, and they were just having a hissy fit! They didn't even HAVE layouts of their own! They had some BRASS that they never did run, but they sure were lording it over me, and how dumb I was to mix the two railroads! So I ended up allowing them to shove their club a way up where the sun couldn't possibly shine! My imagination allowed me to run whatever I wanted to "see" run, and I'm sure they still have their jaws in gear gnawing away! Build your cattle car, and run it! You can "play-like" it has cattle in it and is just passing through. Enjoy what YOU like, not what we like!!
Keep the cattle car, if you like it. Make a small stock pen to spot it next to. In the late 60's, on the Tidewater Southern railroad in CA, they would run a train with stock cars and stop to unload them. The cattle were transfered from the stock cars to trucks on the edge of town. Once empty they were taken on into town to be put on a train going back to Stockton. The Tidewater Southern ran all kinds of cars and had little 70 tonners for engines to pull them. Spot the stock car at the oil spur and when someone calls you on it, wink, and say they passed the test. That's the nice thing about model railroading, anything can go. If you don't want to do the stock pens or transfer thing, just say it's on its way to a museum. Greg Elems
Come to think of it, I suppose a meat packers could be near a city... and I could have just enough of the pens to lead around the edge of a building or to the end of the layout so it wouldn't take up huge space. Sounds like a plan!
Heres another take on the stock pens. For many years stock cars were delivered well wthin the city limits of Portland Oregon to a huge meat packing plant there. I've forgottent the name of it am not ambitious enough to go look it up at the moment, but I do recall that the Portland Terminal Railroad was created primarily to switch this plant. It seems to me that somthing like this would make a nice flat as packing buildings are often large plain structures with no windows and unloading stock directly int a door in the side of the plant seems workabe enough to me. I'm too fond of cattle to have stock cars on my railroad, but there were a lot of them on the prototype into the 70s.
