Herpa says on their website that this HO scale Mercedes  “deliberately features design elements” of the ‘60’s MB coupe. I believe that means that their release of the Mercedes Benz SLS AMG features a non-operating version of that car’s gullwing door. These little road rockets, initially scheduled for release in September, will be available in black at your favorite hobby dealer.  Their notes online say it only comes in black, but I do espy a red one in that picture!

Being in HO, the SLS AMG won’t feature the 6.2 liter V-8 of the prototype, but it sure does look like the real deal in Herpa’s picture.  You can learn more at Herpa’s website, www.herpa.de, or by following the link on our Resources page.

What could be more fun that a summer picnic for your model railroading club? A summer picnic where you get to ride the model trains!

Members of the Long Island Garden Railway Society held their Summer Picnic on August 14 at the Long Island Live Steamers in Brookhaven, New York. Clearly everyone had a great time…how could you not? The weather looks great, and the work on those live steamers is phenomenal.

Photo: LIGRS.Com

You can learn more about the LIGRS and their summer adventures by visiting their website at www.ligrs.com. Be prepared to spend some time, as their website is very comprehensive and loaded with pictures.

If you have pictures and stories about your railroad you’d like to share, email ‘em to me: bill.turner@poolsiderails.com. I’ll do my very best to get ‘em on the site for you.

Thanks to Trish Iannacone for the information about the LIGRS.

Photo: LIGRS.Com

Duane Imel of the Northwestern Illinois Model Railroad turned us on to some pictures from their layout. Information on the model pike is somewhat scarce, but you can find their pictures posted at TrainBoard.com.

Photo: NWIMRR

That picture of the old buildings, all decorated and clearly plucked from a previous railroad is the very essence of model railroading. Sure, the old pike is gone, but those buildings tell their own story about it.

Thanks for sharing, Duane!

Photo: NWIMRR

Herb Kern and George Nelson and the gang from the South West Alabama Railroad Modelers (SWARM) recently visited the HO Club Azalea City Model Railroaders and snapped some shots. Here’s what George had to say…

“These shots are from the HO club that we visited today — Azalea City Model Railroaders (ACMR)…

Photo: George Nelson, SWARM

…The depot is a scale model of Mobile’s GM&O, which was restored about 10 years ago and is being used for offices and as a city bus terminal — no rail service at this time.  The model was built by SWARM member, Jack Castleberry, who has also built a compressed model for our O-gauge layout.

ACMR runs long freight trains.  Today they were operating the following trains on their four main lines — (1)  stack train, 56 cars; (2) empty coal hoppers, 84; (3) hoppers, 71; (4) tank cars, about 70.  Before we left they sidetracked one of these and ran a New Mexico Roadrunner passenger train with three passenger cars plus the locomotive.  They also have a long military train but did not run it while we were there today.

As to Garden Railways, the closest we come (recently, anyway) is Wales West, a narrow gauge railway and RV park between Silverhill and Fairhope, AL, on the Eastern Shore of Mobile Bay.  The Lionel Operating Train Society just published an article in their SWITCHER magazine with photos taken during a Thomas event there earlier this year.  We had our O-gauge layout there and ran trains all three weekends.”

Thanks, George! If you have information and/or pictures you’d like to share about your railroad club, drop me a line at Bill.Turner@PoolsideRails.com!

Arrow Hobby, A-Line Products, “A Division of PROTO POWER WEST” makes an intriguing series of HO scale modern buildings, including this Jack in the Box restaurant. Per Arrow Hobby’s website (www.ppw-aline.com) the kit retails for $69.95, a trifle high for my budget but not bad considering what comes in the box. Here’s what Arrow says about it:

“This kit includes all building parts and signs. The parking lot base is not included, as the modeler will make it to fit his layout space. The kit is milled in white and black styrene plastic with clear acrylic window glazing and comes with Plastruct metal siding and cutting templates for the awnings and signs as well as self-adhesive decals and detailed assembly instructions with pictures. All parts fit together but may need light sanding in joints for cosmetic reasons. The model needs painting.”

It sounds like a bit of a craftsman kit, but also sounds like a really nice challenge. A tour of Arrow Hobby’s website is like a drive through any modern American suburb…standalone structures like this one, strip malls, even a “modernized” downtown building façade are offered.

You can learn more about Arrow Hobby, A-Line Products, “A Division of PROTO POWER WEST”, which is easily the longest name for a hobby production I’ve ever seen, at their website…www.ppw-aline.com, or by visiting the Resources page here at PoolsideRails.

Oh, and sorry about that headline!

I’ve been looking for a table saw for awhile, and price has always been an obstacle. But you can get one at Scale Structures Limited for just $33.99, and it’s the big one, too. Well, big if you’re an HO scale person.

One of the options under www.Scale-Structures.com, home site for Scale Structures Limited, is their 9000 Series, Nevada Iron Works and Foundry. I expected to see an all-in-one kit with a gazillion little tiny castings. Instead, you’ll find 30+ highly detailed pewter and resin castings of equipment to go in your foundry.

Looking around the site should whet your whistle for superdetailing your existing structures…and maybe for acquiring some of theirs. One that caught my fancy was their SS1536 Art Deco Movie Theater kit…a three story resin beauty with a deco style façade. Great for downtown Paris, Texas, but not quite so for inclusion on my Paris to Peking Railway. Resin, once coated with a good UV protectant, should hold up outside pretty well.

I imagine I’m not going to buy that $34 large table saw, however. Oh, it’s nice, but I don’t think it’s quite what I need to build the rabbit hutch my wife is asking for!

You can find more at www.Scale-Structures.com

Photo: Scale-Structures.com

The key to performing an adequate test of any system is to make sure that each component of the system works correctly. You must begin your testing from the ground up, working each part separately before testing the system as a whole.

This is a rule I have yet to take to heart so that it’s second nature. Oh, the gray hairs I could have saved!

I pulled the power truck out of my second-hand Mantua F9 diesel locomotive and applied power from a 9v battery. It seemed to run okay. I soldered the leads from the motor to a Radio Shack 9v battery cap and tested that. It seemed to run okay. Rough, but okay. I wired a whopping big switch into the circuit so that I could turn the thing on and off. It was fidgety, but worked okay when it worked. Not great, mind you, but okay. I crammed  the battery and the switch into the B unit, held it all in place with the weight that came with the B unit, rewired the leads from the A unit so that they passed through two sets of holes drilled in the ends of the locomotives and flipped the switch. It was still fidgety, but when it ran it ran okay. Then I flipped the whole shebang over and dropped it on the test track. No go. Wiggle wiggle, fidget fidget, wiggle wiggle. No go. Back on the shelf with you, you miserable piece of junk!

Sunday I looked at it again, unable to believe that the system would work on its back but not on its wheels, and took it all apart. That’s when I found my mistake: the power truck was wheel-bound. I could get it to run, but only grudgingly, as if there was a buildup of sludge on the axles. Mounted right-side up in the vise, pinioned by the mounting tabs so that the wheels could turn freely, the little guy ran smoother with a quick dosing of WD40 on the axles. I ran it similarly about two weeks ago but without lubrication, expecting the application of power to break up the gunk. Now it runs good. Better than good…gooder?

But, rather than reassemble the entire system, which is useless in any case as the locomotive will be remote controlled once I get the proper radio setup, it seemed to make sense to just run the locomotive with the 9v battery. A petrochemical restraining device (rubber band) held the battery to the roof of the F9, while power leads stretched from the top of the power truck, now mounted in the body shell, out through the after port holes and were cap-nutted to the Radio Shack battery clip. Boom…ran great, off to the test track.

If you’ve ready anything about the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Cern, Switzerland, you’ll know that it’s the largest thing ever built by human beings. It’s the largest building, the largest laboratory, the largest experiment, the heaviest thing ever assembled by mankind. With its test chamber a chilly three degrees below absolute zero, it is also the coldest spot in the known universe. The irony is that all that mammoth sized stuff is required to be able to split quarks, the absolutely smallest known things in the universe. The LHC is a pinnacle of human achievement, built by tens of thousands of specialists and scientists to incredibly intensely accurate standards.

My test track is 12 pieces of curved and 2 straight pieces of plastic snap-track that came with the New Ray locomotive.

When they throw the switch on the LHC, tens of thousands of electromagnets perform flawlessly in directing the paths of sub-atomic particles directly into the center of an electron-microscopically scanned target.

When I put my battery powered Tyco/Mantua General Motors F9 diesel locomotive on my New Ray test track, it trundles down the straight section, but one of the wheels gets caught on the edge of the first curved piece. It lurches around the first curved piece, but is derailed on the second, causing the third piece of snap-track to become unsnapped. The locomotive drags itself down the ties of the second section and falls into the gap between the second and third, lying down on its side. And the motor quits. Everything still seems to be connected correctly, but there is no go.

So, back to the drawing board. I’m sure those guys in Switzerland built that LHC so danged big so that their electron beam wouldn’t fall off the test track and stop working.

There’s a maxim for we system testers: your test results will only be as good as your test preparations. Hmph. I wish I’d learned that one before I started on this project!

If you happen to be in Southern California between August 4 and 15, do yourself a favor and visit the Gem and Mineral Building at the Ventura County Fair. The boys from the Gold Coast Modular Railroad Club of Camarillo, CA, have set up a truly magnificent display.

The modular layout includes sections of the club’s “Leddo City”, a roarin’ river that falls through “Kaboom Valley”, an RV Park, and a really nice pair of heavy industrial yards.

There’s plenty of action as a variety of trains, from vintage passenger to military to long, long unit loads, orbits the railroad. Downtown signs flash and flicker and lend a sense of life and vitality to Leddo City’s streets. One of the best features is a train-mounted camera transmitting to a wall mounted flatscreen display, allowing you an “insider’s” perspective on this well manicured display. You can learn more about the Gold Coast Modular Railroad Club at their website, www.gcmrc.com.

The fair is open between 11AM and 10PM through Sunday, August 15, and is well worth the trip. Find out more at www.venturacountyfair.org.

Need to put a bright spot on your Western highway? The Ford F350 ambulance should just about do it! While Busch GmbH, the German HO Scale car manufacturer, is not the first place I’d look for an American prototype, it was quite a surprise to find not one but three F350 ambulances that are new for 2010, two for the Wyoming Medical Center and one for MedSouth.

The “buffalo” decorated F350 in the picture looks just amazing – ah, what they can do with printing these days, huh? It’s clear that the vehicle has a full interior in the cab, but I don’t know about the box. The write-up on Busch’s website (www.busch-model.com), raves on and on in German about that printing but is a little short on details.  What I do see and don’t like is that tinted windshield…purple? Tinted? That’s a trick Hot Wheels uses to hide a scanty interior, not something we would expect from Busch.

Still, that is an impressive printing job, and it would look great on my layout. Except that I’m modeling France, and an American prototype ambulance from Wyoming might look just slightly out of place. You could get a lot of mileage out of the MedSouth van, though,  and it’s got a clear windshield.

These three models, new for 2010, fit in with their existing line of  F350-based ambulances from major American cities. The Busch site doesn’t offer a suggested retail price, but I found one for sale at HobbyLinc.com, with a suggested retail of $21.99 and a sale price of $18.47. You can find details at www.hobbylinc.com or by visiting your local retailer.

Photo: Busch GmbH

I’m not a fan of that purple tinted windshield, and at $20 a shot I’m not sure I’d be willing to hack apart a couple of these guys to swap parts for the sake of a paintjob. You could probably lift a windshield from a non-Busch F350…LifeLike makes a Chevy ambulance for about $5, and that might work.

You can find more information from your local hobby dealer, from Busch at www.Busch-Model.Com, or from HobbyLinc at www.hobbylinc.com.

Getting my Tyco/Mantua F9 converted over to a 9 volt battery operation system should be a piece of cake. Should be.

The thing is designed to run on 12v of DC. But that 12 volts comes as flat out full speed…something that isn’t going to happen on the Paris to Peking HO Scale Garden Railroad. No sir, not with those turns. In addition, I’m hoping to install some degree of remote control in the locomotive, which means we’ll be running a range of voltages, but none so high as 12 volts.  So, a 9 volt battery should work great. And it does. Sort of.

The problem is I bought this little locomotive, a handsome fellow in the Santa Fe War Bonnet scheme, from a fellow who said “it might work.” That might can be a mighty slippery word. However, I can’t really complain; he sold me three feet of nickel silver flex track, the locomotive and a matching B unit for eleven bucks!

Popping the motor truck out of the body shell was a piece of cake: it’s held in by a metal tab on either side. All you need to do is spread the sides of the shell and it comes right out.

I tested the motor by placing leads from my LGB power pack directly on the motor contacts. It runs grindingly, but it runs. It runs even more grindingly in reverse. I let it run for a good ten minutes at around seven volts, hoping to burn out the cobwebs and dried stuff in the gears. Now it runs much better.

The goal at this point is to get the locomotive to run continuously around my little test track…I have an oval of HO scale track from the New Ray construction set that will work just great. That’s all I want…just to satisfy myself that the 9 volt battery will provide enough power for this guy to run for, say, half an hour all by himself.

But you can see massive amounts of solder on the contacts in the picture…that’s the challenge. This little fella isn’t quite factory-fresh, if you catch my drift. Wiring a Radio Shack 9volt battery clip through a hefty switch from my parts drawer yielded a nice little test system that should do the trick. Flip the switch, the motor runs. Flip it again, the motor doesn’t run. What could be simpler?

It works great when the locomotive is on its back. The battery and switch hide inside the B unit, which is hardwired to the A unit. But once the assembly is flipped over, the motor shuts off. GRRRRRRR!

That’s just one challenge. I tried moving the paired units around the curve of my New Ray track using my 5-0-0 pusher unit (the one God put at the end of my arm), and found that the radius of the turn is too tight! Talk about frustrating!

So, now to clean up the contacts and oil the crackers out of the power truck and figure out why it only runs inverted and figure a way to mount the 9v battery on the A unit…this was supposed to be easy!