More Stuff

I had mentioned some of the treasures I found in Louisville. The hobby shop is called the Roundhouse. You have to see the place to believe it. Anyway...Some of the hoppers seem to be old Varney products. Things were so simple back then. The cars have the general appearance required to look like hoppers. Seperate brakewheels is the extent of the add-on details, much like Athearn and other manufacturers of that "era". One car has a "sort of" brakewheel cast in...

Cast On Brakewheel

The cars are also heavy. While it limits the length of the train a loco can handle this IS a good thing. They track very well through turnouts...

Cast Metal Frame

Most of the cars in general also have kadee couplers. METAL Kadee couplers from back in the day when cast alloy was the only way to go. The trucks are almost all sprung with those teeny springs that go flying at the first opportunity, never to be seen again. Fortunately this usually occurs at the workbench when you're trying to replace wheels... 

Sprung Trucks

All in all they look pretty good, go together fast and perform very well. Works for me.

I'm currently working on a set of Roundhouse ore cars. Three cars come in the kit. Although they are supposed to wood chip cars I left off the wooden extensions and kept them as steel ore haulers. They are short with metal frames and seperate plastic castings for the brake system components. The frames are solid, not open like they might be today on such cars. They are rugged and simple to assemble...

Roundhouse "Three In One" Ore Cars

I've wanted a short train of these little guys ever since I saw them in Gorre & Daphetid photos when I was a lad. That's about five decades ago.

Another EBay purchase was a real surprise. I ordered some embossed brick and stone papers. They are exquisite..

Embossed Paper

They came from a fellow named Dimitris Tastsidis way over in Thessaloniki, Greece. He has a store on EBay. The detail is amazing...

Detail

I'm hoping to use them to build structures. Brick paper is rather old school but these embossed sheets are light years away from the old stuff. They equal or surpass their plastic rivals. One place I can use the stone is the viaduct at Quotidian where the branch passes over the mainline...

Quotidian Viaduct

The colored stone will make great foundations for several buildings in the town, including an enginehouse I'm contemplating.

Regards

Frank Musick