If you'd stop camping so much, and get back to creating, we could have these by now! I'm surprised you haven't done the 3d printer stuff yet! But I get it. What a pain.....
Actually, I JUST finished cleaning my workbench enough to start a modeling project. This is the first time in over a year and a half that I will do some modeling, and I have been sitting here for an hour trying to think of something I want to build.
I wish I had you out here in the east for a few weeks.....I have hundreds of kits to be built! That's the problem with following your "get it now" advice.
Once you are retired, you can start building a kit a week and in a couple winters you will have them all done. I just got my AZL 1917 Tank Cars, and my NP Loewy Passenger locomotives in, so my next order of business is weathering my tank cars.
I retired at the end of October, so we'll see how that goes. I've had other train related projects in line ahead of kit building, including reorganizing the collection for eventually getting back out on the show circuit. As you've read, been doing some decaling and renumbering to get my feet wet again. I actually still have a few of YOUR kits to build, also. Hope you catch the bug again now that you finally have your Loewy F units!
I'm going to do a little of everything this winter. First I have a family snow trip this weekend with a little ice fishing. We, (a group of 20 family and friends) rented a large cabin on frozen over Lake Cascade. After that, it's solid trains until the annual March Snow Camp, then more trains till May.
I pulled the MTL couplers out, cut the large panels off the front/rear pilots then painted the "stumps" to match. I cut the coupler from an AZL roller bearing truck then trimmed the coupler box down to about 1/8 inch (0.15 inches to be precise). The coupler slips into the pilot opening and stays with friction. This works fine on my R195 tracks.
That is perfect and thank you for the photos! It will be a shame to loose the plows but if it works better than it is worth it. Maybe having the AZL coupler protrude less from the frame keeps it more centered over the tracks and thus doesn't drag the next car off the side of the rails. Now I just have to cut the AZL coupler box without having it all come apart! Those things are hard to work with LOL.
Here is a photo of one of my moguls with AZL tender attached for better pickup. It kinda helps make the overall size look better.
