Shipping was 10 Euros (about 12 bucks) for these parts so at least, the cost of the parts was more than shipping. I have had shipping costs stop me,too. Right now, there is a Rapido 2-6-2, one of their early steamers and the one on which they based their original "American" Pennsylvania steamer, for 36 bucks BIN which, to me is a pretty good deal but the shipping pretty much doubles the cost from Europe. I'm watching it but if one shows up here in the states... I saw some brushes and springs for the Lima pancake motor, too (I'm assuming that's the one you are talking about) but the shipping was pretty outrageous so I did the same thing as you, waited until I saw some Lima locos/or chassis that were beat but still had the brushes and springs in them, and bought those. I think that was to get my Q1b fixed which runs a lot better than I was expecting after reading about them. Doug
My friend across the street had one of those l'il Rapido steeplecab electrics. How nice to see one! His too was a nice runner.
My complete and excellent BR41 2-8-2 (catalog number 2511, although I think this may be a newer version due to some differences I see compared to my other one) arrived today and everything works. At first the smoker wouldn't after I put some Seuthe (pronounced ZOY-teh) smoke fluid in it (it was included with the locomotive) and I thought, "Just my luck" but, it just needed more and suddenly - smoke! Of course, maximum smoke is at 12 volts which means a fairly high speed but there is still visible smoke at 8 volts even if it is a bit more wispy. I also like the switch so you can turn the smoker on and off. And yes, the top of the boiler gets oily but I don't care. It wipes off easy enough. I still think smoking locos are neat. Doug
I had one of Rowa's Y6 2-8-8-2s that was marketed by Rapido and it smoked nicely. I know what you mean regarding the smoke oil spilling down the sides of the smokebox. The Seuthe oil never attacked or weakened the plastic.
Ah, another loco I've always wanted and never got. I have a Berkshire, built pretty much like the Y6b and it runs great. No smoke, though. There was was a Y6b on eBay not long ago I was going to try to get but the bidding got higher than I wanted. Some day, maybe. It does show how good some of the early N scale stuff got. Doug
My Great Northern BSB SW-1, I know they never made it to this scheme, but what if. And it is left over parts from a previous project
I wasn't going to post a picture of my latest BR41, since it looks pretty much the same as the one I already posted but, there are minor differences. Arnold switched to pins for the side rods instead of screws and I know there are differences inside but I haven't been able to get the boiler off. I think the smoke generator is stuck in the holes. There is also a shiny, thin piece of metal right above the pilot truck in there that's not in the earlier version. I think the motor mounting is a little different, too. Basically the same motor, however. You can see a yellow capacitor in there right above the rear driver and, on the earlier version, the cap is further back and mounted on a small PC board. The switch for the smoke generator is directly above the crosshead guide where it turns vertical toward the running board. The front buffers are there on this one and they will be on my other one, too, once I get the spare parts from Deutschland. Doug
Speaking of capacitors, do any of you recall how our trains messed up TV pictures and put static on the radio back in the day? I remember not being able to run my trains at times because of family complaints, most often from my brothers. The motors produced sparks which produced radio signal wavelengths. The capacitors served to reduce the sparking, though the remedy wasn't perfect.
We did not have a television in the house so there were no issues. However, if the neighbors ever had problems, they did not know where they were coming from and just took it out on their TV sets.
How well I remember, "Doug, are you running your trains again, down there?" coming from the top of the basement stairs from various members of my family. It usually mitigated the "battle" a bit if I ran them slower. Yup, the solutions were never perfect. The Treble-O-Lectric locomotives and power feed terminals had caps in them but it didn't completely stop the interference. The only thing that pretty much stopped it was when we got cable TV. Doug
Russell, I can imagine a conversation between your neighbor and TV repairman: "My TV's got static a lot of the time." "But sir, I checked everything out and there's nothing wrong with your set." "There HAS to be something wrong with the set. It's on all three channels!" "Well, I can't find anything wrong." "I'll just get somebody else to look at it." Doug
This may sound funny now, but cable TV was not available at my parents home until after I joined the USAF in 1979. Went to the USAF and we still had 5 channels, came home from the USAF and we had 13 channels plus HBO. HBO was on channel 3. One thing I never could figure out, why the local channels were not on their over the air waves channel number? It's still that way today on cable, TV 2 is on Cable channel 6, etc. What's really funny, I switched to satellite TV a number of years ago and the local channels are on the same channel, i.e. channel 2 is on satellite channel 2, etc. I work with a couple of guys who still receive their TV signal via a TV antenna. Of course today you need a digital TV antenna and you can actually pick up a lot more than those 5 stations we had when I was a kid. But yes I heard the same thing being yelled down the basement steps when I was a kid, "We're trying to watch something on TV, can you shut that thing off!". That was always a good time to clean the track or do some scenery work
Ah yes, the salvation of early cable TV. My first hookup was in 1980 when I graduated, got my first apartment and built an N Scale road that was sized to fit in the back of my Honda so that it could travel easily when I was transferred.
About the only thing good on there, recently, has been "MTV Live" where they show actual concerts. They have had The Pretenders, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Eric Clapton, and others. Very good. Chrissy Hynde sounds exactly the same as she did years ago, although the concert wasn't real recent - 2012 or around then. Doug
A couple of friends and I watched the very first MTV broadcast, seems like all of the videos were British bands. If I remember correctly Devo was on first. We liked Nina the best of all the VJ's. Joe
I seem to remember that the first video to air on MTV was The Buggles' "Video Killed the Radio Star." I have an Arnold PRR S2. Still original...still runs like a coffee grinder...lol
#5053 New York Central GP30: #5131 Pennsy Brunswick Green GG-1. This is a later release made during the Rivarossi era but pretty much identical to the earlier releases. On the BR41 smoker, I have realized the smoke generator really never has to be turned off. First of all I don't think the heating element will burn out even if the smoke fluid is allowed to run dry. I don't think Seuthe would have made them that way. Can you imagine the field failure nightmare? Also, when the fluid does run out, all you have to do is slow the locomotive a bit and that effectively turns off the element anyway, since it needs 12 volts to run real hot (and it DOES get pretty hot), anyway. Still, I like the inclusion of a switch. To me, smokers bring an additional railroady atmosphere to a layout. I mean, real railroads smell of steam/hot oil (steam) and diesel fuel (diesel) and, I imagine - I have never been around (real) electric locomotives - ozone (electric). Doug
