Randy....3200????? $80 in tichy wire? It's about $2-3 a tube with a dozen or more 8" pieces inside, that's a lot of wire. You do know that BLMA, GMM, and a few others offer grabs both pre bent from stainless wire and photo etched? It's worth paying a little more for uniformity of the pieces and your sanity. http://www.blmamodels.com/cgi-bin/w...13&&c=detail.red.htm&t=main.red.htm&itemid=60 BTW - +1 on the Tichy wire. I typically use .008 or .010. I find that the Phosphor bronze wire is stiffer/straighter than the brass, bends cleaner and is much easier to solder. This is a combination of Gold Medal Models Stanchions, Tichy PB wire ad BLMA drop grabs.
I've been in N scale now almost 5 years. Before that I was building models but not necessarily railroad models, though my final design project in architecture school was a high speed rail station. Back when I was much younger I had some HO scale Tyco junk. I don't have 200 cars. I am building up a fleet of around 20 or so. Good luck with the handrails!
I went a little off the deep end buying up car kits.. one Hiawatha consist turned into ALL of the passenger train consists.. I wish the grabs were a standard size but the differences preclude using BLMA grabs, I wish I could use them!! BTW Skip gear are going to number your SD-45 8993? That was an engine I ran on WC.. Randy
Nope, It's CEFX9500. It runs on the I&O around here and rumor is, it is due for a Rail America family repaint here shortly so I may do another one. BLMA does 15" and 18" both straight and drop. JNJ adds 24" and 30" to the mix. GMM has a photo etch set that has 5 different sizes and styles for a total of 165 grabs on one fret. I can understand having to make them for odd size applications but creating them all from scratch is a very daunting task to say the least.
Walthers has them in stock now; http://www.walthers.com/exec/productinfo/304-16032 so you can get them through Walthers or any shop that is a Walthers dealer.
