Did anyone notice that there were two ads in the July Aug 2002 issue of N Scale Mag for HO products? Kato was advertising their HO SD80/90's and Overland had an ad on the inside back cover for HO GP35's. One other thing, in the article on the Cheasepeake & Ohio The builder mentions he has expansion gaps in the rail every 100 scale feet. That is about every 7.5 inches. Now I am a firm believer in expansion gaps for temperature changes (learned the hard way) but does this sound a bit rextreme?
Expansion gaps at that distance is rather excessive, I feel. I remember in my gauge one days, that a customer had all his rails cut to scale lengths (80ft?) and the sound of the wheels was very realistic! But in N scale, the less gaps the better as far as I am concerned.
Kato and Overland regularly advertize HO product in N scale magizine.I suspect it has more to do with Hundman publishing than either of these two companies. To my way of thinking having gaps that close is a bit too much.
What caught my eye in that article were the "staggering" of rail joints, which seems to be a good idea for handlaid track. As far as adds go, I usually blow past any non-n adds, but I sure notice new manufacturers... AAA Precision Turntables being new in this issue. They also had their add in the latest NSR magizine too.
Their having Horribly Oversized ads does make me wonder if it's a revenue thing for them. Do they need to sell beyond N to make ends meet? Seems just a wee bit out of place in a dedicated to N scale magazine. Yes. I know that some folks do more than just N scale..... Gaps every 100 scale feet? If such is truly necessary for this person, perhaps they have a humidity issue in the layout area? I never bother with adding gaps specifically for expansion. Instead, I rely on the number of insulated joints, and also let all switches float. (Don't solder them in.) That seems to be more than enough to compensate for expansion that might exist. In 30 plus years of N scaling, never had a problem. I saw the turntable ad in NSR. Thought it looked very promising. Peaked my interest quickly! BoxcabE50
Well, here in Indiana we have had 95% + humidity for over a week now - pretty typical summer weather.
I don't have any gaps at all. My track is glued onto Woodland's trackbed (foam). Even after ballasting this allows enough movement. Earlier I used cork roadbed and had lots of problems because of temperature/humidity changes. I use a de-humidifier anyway.
Humidity is also a problem here in Southeast Texas, sometimes it is so bad you'd swear you could swim from place to place. That's why God and Carrier invented air conditioning.
Did anyone find out the cost of the turntable. I understand that only the Arnold motorized turntable has proper indexing although I was interested in one made by L.A. Products using a Peco table and pit. Don't know if it had indexing or not but the low price seemed to indicate it did not.
not to mention all this rain we've been having. but I'm more central. We've been hit hard with all sorts of flooding. Hows everything over there?
Rain??? Humidity???!!! Mousture???!!! Haven't seen much oif that for a LONG time! Although the monsoon has officially returned...so far it has been real weak...another summer of watching it rain in the weirdest of places while not raining in weider places just feet away. Here's an edit....Humidity at Davis Monthan Air Force Base is 18% [ 06 July 2002, 07:57: Message edited by: Benny ]
I see y'all are drying out about now. Looks like Houston did June of 2001. Hope you didn't get swamped. Did I meet you at the LSR convention?
Don't feel bad Benny- I had to pull out a dictionary just to remind myself of the definitions of those words BTW, I hear they got that nasty-a@@@ fire contained in Arizona finally- kudos to the fire crews for their work in hellish conditions. Incidentally, the humidity here in Ely has been in single digits for a long time as well.
Just like about everyone else, I read both N scale publications and Model Railroader from cover to cover. Of course I focus mainly on items in my scale. However, in N scale magazines ads for HO stuff if advertised with N stuff should be clearly identified. Too often in MR I see ads for new products and I don't know the scale. I was surprised that Overland ran ads for their HO locos, probably because they had paid some heavy bucks for the pre-printed copy used in other mags, and costs to change it was prohibitive. Maybe they don't know that the amount of people in our scale are less likely to be in other scales. Ken "Steamguy" Willaman I really
