The Superbowl Drive

I had not been very happy with the drive that I was able to put together based on a Tyco GP-20 drive that I had been using on my Orient decorated Kemtron GP-7. This engine was available set up from the factory for either a Baker drive (with a belt drive) or the Kemtron-Lindsay drive (with the motor down in the power truck). My engine was set up for the Lindsay drive, and it came to me with one that was incomplete. It looked great and ran with the Tyco drive I installed but not very well.

Fast forward to just a couple weeks ago. I was able to acquire a Schorr RS-2, which I mentioned in this post. It is in rough shape and had a drive on it that had been worked up from a Kemtron-Lindsay drive like my GP-7 needed. As I plan to repower that locomotive with Athearn drive parts there was an opportunity to shuffle some parts around. Doing the majority of the work during the Superbowl I was able to disassemble and rebuild that drive and mount it on the engine which now runs much better and it is also a good bit more powerful. And it still looks great.

It was not a simple job as it involved replacing the axles which were damaged. Fortunately, I had spare wheelsets that I found a few years back installed in if I recall correctly a S-C passenger truck. Save everything!

Thus, the photo is a bottom view of this type of drive, set up and completely operational with vintage Hobbytown universals. The truck sideframes are suspended and hang from the ends of the wheelsets with the bracket on the bottom. Click on the photo for a closer view.

I actually have another GP-7 that I have not been able to operate. It has the Baker drive and was purchased from Pierre Bourassa, featured in the post below. That engine will be going through the shop soon, I now have a replacement universal for it I can salvage from another drive and I think have everything I need to get it running given a few hours to work it over, a project for another weekend. When it is running I will post a photo of that engine as well.

A Difference of Decades II

Another “OOldtimer” (a term I first saw used by Temple Nieter) is Pierre Bourassa. I have been in touch with him lately by E-mail; he will be 93 in just a few days. I have enjoyed knowing him by mail for many years now. He recently sent me two photos I would like to share.

His layout was featured in the March, 1956 issue of Railroad Model Craftsman, “The road of the reds and greens - Pierre Bourassa's OO Gauge layout.” This first photo was taken on his layout not long before it was acquired by the late Dr. Donald S. Fraley Jr. and moved to Pittsburgh in 2001. I LOVE this photo of a modified Lionel 4-6-4 with a Schorr RS-2 and the town and the big curve with the long train of hoppers. This is inspirational OO modeling of a type not seen today, perhaps never to be seen again. And for train collectors out there, yes, the layout went to same Donald Fraley who edited Lionel Trains, Standard of the World, 1900-1943; he was an OO enthusiast.

Pierre sent me this specific photo because some years ago I purchased that very 4-6-4 from him and it runs on my layout today, as do a number of other cars purchased from him. This Hudson has a can motor, smoke unit, and Nason drivers and is pretty ideal for my layout where I posed it in a similar view. I run this locomotive and many of the cars regularly and actually have purchased several more cars that certainly Pierre made on eBay as well.

The final photo is of another 4-6-4, this one by Nason as built by Pierre. Canadian Pacific number 2817 has a DC71 motor and smoke unit and was a favorite locomotive of his. He gave it as a gift to the late Ed Morlok and this particular one he would actually like to track down again. It is not certain if it passed through the Morlok auction or not but if you have seen it Pierre would love to hear from you; contact me if you have information on the whereabouts of this handsome engine.

I actually for three years, before we moved to Arizona, lived only a few hours away from Pierre and could have seen his layout. I never was able to as our two children were literally in diapers and the time was just too limited then. The layout must still be in storage somewhere, but I don’t know where it is at this point and if it will ever run again. I do know that Pierre still runs a few trains on a shelf layout. I wish I had seen it when I had the chance but at least we all can enjoy these photos from a great OO layout. Thank you Pierre for sharing, and best wishes to him as he enters his 93rd year.

A Difference of Decades

Back a few months ago I had a post where I had a photo which I will repeat below, of a locomotive and cars on the layout of David Sacks ca. 1980. At the time he sent it to me as had I purchased the locomotive in the photo and several other cars (as I recall a coach and baggage car and also some flat cars and a reefer), and he also threw in copies of the Nason 1940 catalog and the Scale-Craft Round Lake catalog which were very much appreciated at the time on my college student budget. I reference both often to this day.

The layout of David Sacks was a feature article in Railroad Model Craftsman in June of 1955, as described in another prior article in this site. At the time he was in New Jersey which was arguably the main hotbed of post-war OO activity with not one but two round robin clubs very active at the time. He was a member of the North Jersey group, described here.

Sacks moved to California in 1961. Jumping forward, he passed on over ten years ago. A relative of his knew that a regular reader of this blog was interested in trains and showed him a couple items as they wanted to clear them out of the home (from an outbuilding, I believe), and after some discussion the residual equipment from his layout made its way to my home this week, with the main stipulation being it not be turned around for resale and that anything I did not want would be given to the OO SIG for members of the SIG. To find out more on that you will have to join the SIG; more details will be in the next issue of The OO Road.

In terms of the value, it was all a bit picked over and had also been in storage for a long while in less than ideal conditions so nothing is at present of that high a value. I am saving two sets of items out of the group to try to lightly restore them as groups to operating condition (a long heavyweight Green Brook passenger train and a number of Green Brook coal hoppers), and also I am saving some of the items that are more generic and at the point of needing very heavy rebuilding, which I will rebuild over time. More on projects such as that in the future, but the cars in this second photo intrigued me a great deal.

Compare these cars with the cars in the first photo: all these cars are in the layout photo he sent me with the locomotive I purchased in 1982! They are a good case study in the difference a few decades can make. Click on the photo for a closer view.

Of these cars, the first one I noticed unpacking them was that green Tyco covered hopper car, a HO conversion. It is a pretty distinctive car. The trucks on this car actually have rusted axles and if the car was not plastic it would not look nearly so good now. Three of the cars were still operable and have already made a few tours around the layout after checking that the wheels were in gauge; the Lionel Erie decaled boxcar, the Picard based D&H boxcar, and the Picard based reefer with Champion sides. The final car of the group is the green reefer of origin TBD of which the decals are only about 60% left. One of the articles on Sacks states that he was a machinist by profession, and I have no doubt all of these cars ran well for him, but these cars suffer from heavy paint jobs, sketchy details, and now condition issues including fading, rust, peeling paint (see the boxcar roof), and decals lifting. I am sure he had fun with making the cars and running the trains, don’t get me wrong, and he clearly made a lot of cars, but based on what I see in this group many had quirky details such as reefer hatches on wood boxcar with steel doors and arch bar trucks as on the D&H car. For another example, one of the modern HO conversions was on Schorr arch bar trucks. Still, he liked them enough to keep them running on the layout into his last years so that is all worth something.

The third photo thus is of the currently layout worthy cars from this group on the layout with the engine I purchased from Sacks and rebuilt seen in the photo from Sacks. It is interesting seeing them all together after the passing of time.

Finding the above cars left me wondering, are any more of these cars that just made their way to Arizona visible in the photos in the 1955 RMC article? There are only two that are obvious and similar but probably are not actually the same cars. One is similar to a camp car on p. 14 of the RMC article but it was either rebuilt later or is only similar. The most distinctive one is the car in this last photo, which I would describe as an extended Lionel caboose. There is a caboose of the same style on p. 15 of the article, but this caboose is no. 8 and the one in RMC is no. 9. It could be the same car repainted and renumbered, but also could easily be a twin. It is a little crude in workmanship and the trucks need heavy work before this car rolls again but at the same time it is certainly an interesting vintage item and in terms of condition one of the best in the group. This one I want to keep for running with the Green Brook hopper cars for the coal unit train, it is the perfect mate for the train and very representative of David Sacks.

Only one car in the whole group, a kitbashed HO caboose, had Kadee couplers. The Green Brook items I retain I will not plan to upgrade to Kadee couplers, as I will run the hoppers and passenger cars as a block. The other items, more in the category of heavy rebuilding, will be upgraded to the general level of operational standard I have, which includes Kadee couplers.

Periodically I will come back to items from David Sacks; there are some interesting items here and lessons to learn. I look forward to working over a number of these items in the coming years.

The Schorr Twin Hopper and Caboose

Two cars that I don’t own examples of that are among the nicest ever produced in American OO are the Schorr twin hopper & caboose. They were brass imports from Japan.

Dick Gresham supplied these sharp photos of cars from his collection. First we have the twin hopper. Comparing it to the triple hopper in the page linked above you can see they are similar models and were pretty up-to-date models when produced in the early 1950s.

The second photo is of the caboose. This is a great car and one that if you see it you know it is a desirable item.

The thing about Schorr specifically today is it has something of a crossover market of people interested in American OO and people interested in early brass imports. Even if a collector is not specifically interested in OO it is such a unique size that my theory is once you hold some in your hands you want more.

Either of these models actually only rarely shows up on eBay although you never know, there might be three of them show up next week! Because that is the number of Schorr RS-2 diesels that sold on eBay just yesterday, two of them lettered for the road of Fred Schorr himself, the Yorkville and Western. I have a photo of a couple of these RS diesels in an older post and I also just acquired one from a non-eBay source. Mine has some fairly serious condition issues and was modified (bottom of shell cut out) to use the drive that was shipped out with the Kemtron GP-7 kit. If I can get that drive to work it may find its way into my Kemtron GP-7 and with the model modified already my RS may end up as a RSC-2 or an RSD-2 depending on how I work out the drive. I would like to work with some Athearn components to really make it a runner. More on that in a while.

The Nieter Molds

The one lot that I really wanted from the Morlok auction was the Nieter molds. Some time back I posted on my memories of Temple Nieter and his teaching me how to cast my own parts back when I was in high school. For years I have basically left the molds I made resting in a box and for almost the same number of years these molds from Temple Nieter have done the same.

This first photo is of their new home in Arizona, organized into three containers. I can’t tell you an exact number of how many molds I have but there are over 100 molds the collection and of those I believe that about 80% are still usable. I have his 1980 list of what he had available (which he offered to other OO gaugers at the time at nominal cost) and most of the molds seem to be here and more. It will take time to fully inventory what is in the collection.

The second photo gives a good idea of what the molds look like. This particular mold was selected to illustrate as it is not only the largest mold and one of the last made, but also it is ironically of the Limco MP54 car featured a few posts ago. So a few of these are for sure out there! Note the part in the mold, left there to help the mold retain its shape, and also note that the mold inside is rather black. This may be from a mold release (graphite? Must re-check my notes from him) but I am inclined to think it is a result of the metal alloy Temple used for the castings. He used scrap Linotype. The melting point on this alloy is fairly high and in my past experiments with castings I never had good luck with it, probably in part because I may not have got it hot enough.

As to the future use of these molds, with their age I am reluctant to use Linotype again because of the melting point. I have a good supply of Cerrobend which has a lower melting point and will start with that sometime when I have a bit of time. I will also start with one of the less important molds, some of which are of Sn3 or HO parts usable in OO for example. The big Limco sides will certainly wait; I suspect that they will be pretty difficult to cast actually, as to fill these gravity castings well the metal has to remain liquid until all the air is vented out which is tricky. You can see that his last casting in the Limco car side mold was actually unsuccessful.

Plastic resins are another possibility. I tried these in the past as well and never got a good part out of any of my molds. The tough part is getting all the air out. I may experiment with making a device to spin the castings or vibrate the castings. That might actually work for the Limco side molds for example. There are also side molds for the very rare Graceline hopper as well that it may be possible to reproduce in this manner.

One final item I would like to note that will tie together this with the previous two posts. Back in 1978 I sent Temple an Eastern freight car frame. He marked it “Nieter for Ericson 4 Feb 1978,” made a mold of it, and sent the original back with several copies. Another copy that he cast was actually in one of the Famoco kits mentioned yesterday and in the molds I easily found the mold he made to make those parts. Thus, in the final photo we reunite the original part with the Nieter mold and the last copy that he cast, which for me personally at least is a very interesting thing to see together after 30 plus years.

I am happy to have these molds now and as I get to the point of making parts I will post on them further.

A Famoco Box Car

Another surprise in my purchases from the Morlok auction was this very nicely built up Famoco boxcar. It was in a Famoco box (surprise!) and needed absolutely no adjustment to put right on the layout, coupler height and wheelsets were all spot on standards.

I have posted on the history of Famoco in general previously so I don’t have a lot more to add to that. This specific car is one of the nicest Famoco cars I have seen built up, and this looks to be all original other than the Kadee couplers.

In the bottom view you can see the easiest way to ID a Famoco car; the frame is clearly marked Famoco. The frame is not a single casting; one casting is used for each half. Click on the photo for a larger view. Also it is worth mentioning here again that Famoco and Eastern OO box and refrigerator cars share perhaps 75% of the same parts and their production runs overlapped.

Among the Famoco kits in the lots I purchased were a couple with hand-written notes in them in the hand of Temple Nieter. He had apparently purchased these kits from someone who had taken out some of the parts and Temple substituted other similar parts. Some of these kits are duplicate kits for me and will be put on eBay over time, after I have a chance to inventory them for parts to be complete and all original as much as possible.

My final post (for now) on what I purchased from the Morlok auction tomorrow.

The Eastern OO Gondola

In a prior post on Eastern I have a photo of an Eastern OO gondola kit. While I was interested to have a built up car, I only had that one sample kit and I am always reluctant to build up a kit, preferring to keep one of any kit I come across in the archive.

I played it fairly safe with what I bid on by phone from the Morlok auction. My box of purchases arrived and it was like Christmas but better as it was all OO! Mainly I purchased kits and one other lot of special interest to me which I will post about on Sunday. Most of the kits were still kits but a few were built up cars in kit boxes and others were partially built. Among the last two categories were this Eastern gondola and three started gondola kits.

In the first photo we have the built up car and two of the started cars. This car is not often seen as it is post war and also when it is seen it is not necessarily in good shape. It is a pretty easy model to spot with the Eastern frame.

This particular car is pretty solid other than the cardboard sides have warped a bit. It did not take much effort to get it layout worthy. It was on Schorr trucks but I changed it over to be on a good pair of Eastern/Famoco trucks from another car that came in the lot. That car is sort of a sad story actually [see UPDATE], someone had spent a lot of effort to scratchbuild a hopper car from balsa wood and it is not very salvageable due to being partially crushed in storage. I will save it, maybe there is a way, but the trucks were a great pair and match this car perfectly. I prefer to run cars if possible on the brand of trucks that are the same as the car.

Back to gondolas, the second photo is of this same Eastern car in a view to compare it to a brass Schorr gondola, which was also in one of the boxes from Morlok and is a great example of the car. This also needed very little work to ready it for layout use again (coupler height only). The Schorr car is finer in detail (a Japanese brass import--more here) and this is pretty easy to see in the photo.

More tomorrow from the Morlok auction.

UPDATE: Since I mentioned that hopper, a photo of it as well. It was built of balsa wood with Eastern roof ribs, ladders, and end sills. There may be a way to partially restore this. The other side is in better shape but also damaged. It speaks to the importance of careful storage, with a side point being don't scratchbuild cars from balsa wood.

Lessons Learned from Norfolk and Ohio Hoppers

Following up on my post on the Norfolk and Ohio hopper cars I purchased in the fall off eBay, I have picked up a few lessons working on these classic Scale-Craft cars from a classic layout to bring them to the point of all being operable again.

As I mentioned with this same photo in the first post, all five cars had added details in the brake equipment, including remounted brake wheels, air tanks and valves, and the air pipes that connect not only these parts but also represent the hoses between cars. As the cars are black this is difficult to photograph but pretty visible in real life. It is a bit easier to see if you click on the photo for a close up.

Also in this photo you can see one of the couplers. One car in the set of five had dummy couplers for unknown reasons that were not actually compatible with any OO coupler I have ever seen; they are smaller and were I believe made for HO. I can think of two possibilities. One is that they could have been put on by a seller to prep the item for sale. The other is he used them on some cars because they were closer to scale. This car would have to be mid-train between transition cars if that is the case. In either case, I had couplers from an estate purchase that matched the old style Kadee couplers on the other cars so the oddball car was converted to use those for operation with its current mates. And I can believe Carl Appel was a jeweler putting them on! Modern Kadee couplers are much easier to work with.

On one car an intermediate owner between Appel and myself for sure had switched out the trucks. It was the car with Schorr trucks. They looked great but the car was in fact inoperable as set up and clearly used to have Scale Craft trucks when it was in operation, based on the way the paint was scraped on the bottom up where the wheelsets can scrape off paint in handling. So that car I restored operation with a good pair of Scale-Craft trucks that matched the look of the others closely.

Speaking of the trucks on the other cars, all the wheelsets were in gauge (which makes perfect sense as he was an operator!) and they were all weathered in the same manner as the cars they were on.

He clearly used custom decals as he had a lot of cars to letter on his big layout, as seen in this photo which is also a repeat from my prior post. Three of the cars I purchased have complete decals and two are missing some on one side. He did not seal the decals with something like Testors Dullcote. Lifting decals is a problem seen on a lot of vintage cars that have been exposed to improper storage, especially high humidity.

Finally, I was hoping that he might have painted the cars with Floquil Engine Black. Unfortunately, he did not and I was not able to easily match the paint, and the weathering complicates things further. I have enjoyed running these five classic, vintage cars for the past few weeks but for now I am going to leave all the chips unfilled and store the cars carefully. At some point I would like to buy a whole lot of different black paints (as I have done with box car reds) and see where the closest match is, if I can get the match really close I would love to restore them a bit further.

Red Adams on Scenery, and also Scenic Progress

In spite of a busy schedule right now I am making some scenic progress on the layout. This area is the last area to get scenery roughed in, as it took a long time to make some decisions. With those now made, grass and roads will follow soon. It always surprises me how quickly this can actually go down when you make a few decisions and get going.

Besides the 1937 issues of Model Craftsman mentioned in the previous post, I also recently purchased some from 1943. Red Adams wrote a series of articles on OO in this time frame for Model Craftsman, and in the March 1943 issue we find a more general article, “What’s a Pike Without Scenery!”

I have quoted him in another post and I really do enjoy his unique writing style. This article follows up on his layout since the time frame of the earlier article I quoted, which was published in 1939. Jumping to his second paragraph in this 1943 article,

As you remember, I used to have a very simple OO gauge layout down in my basement, utilizing an 8 1/2‘ x 14’ space. It was merely a double-track oval with turntable, roundhouse, a couple small storage tracks for cars and a few switches. It endeavored to depict a small division point on the Mohave Desert and allowed change of engines, water-stop and other simple servicing of transcontinental trains. As far as the actual railroad went it was very elementary stuff, no fancy panel board or track diagram, but I could control all my train movements, I did get it practically finished within a year’s time, and the scenery was complete. This scenery was of course the simplest there is to construct, just the usual wood fibre plaster over screen wire, painted, and then small bits of Christmas tree glued around in different spots to simulate the cactus. This was quite effective, as lots of visitors would give it the once over and holler, “Gee, so that’s where Rommel hides his tank force, hey.”

Now I ain’t goin’ to describe any more about this layout, as it has gone into the ash-can. I had to move (yeh, I paid the rent O.K., but he sold the building) so was lucky to buy a small shack out here in the woods of Beverly Hills, and be my own boss, me and Uncle Sam, that is for another few years, anyhow. The old woman decided that I had to do extensive interior decorating for her before I started on the layout again, so I don it to keep peace in the fambly—for a short while anyhow. I finally got her work done and started on the new system, on which I hung the non-de-plumb of Beverly Western Railway. ‘Course the job ain’t done yet by a long ways, but I have the main line open to traffic, even though it ain’t ballasted yet, have eight switches working and can at least see ‘em roll now. However it still ain’t a railroad, cause it ain’t got scenery yet! Next time you come up, I may have it all set and will describe it in detail, but now I’d like to delve into the wonder of wonders—a TREE!

The remainder of the article is, as you might guess, on making trees but there are four photos of a finished portion of the layout with equipment including an observation car, one of his 4-6-2 locomotives, and the above photo which shows a caboose with his Beverly Western logo. H. L. “Red” (Herb/Herbert) Adams wrote over 30 articles under a couple different variations of his name between 1939 and 45, it is a name to keep your eye peeled for.

Early OO Manufacturer: LIMCO

One recent eBay purchase was the full year of 1937 of Model Craftsman. In the first issue, January, I hit pay dirt and found a very clear, small ad for LIMCO, the Long Island Scale Model Company.

The subtitle of this post is, “have you seen this model?” I have never seen one, but I bet someone out there has one that they have wondered, “what is this?” This photo is from the advertisement of their PRR MU coach. The photo is small but you can clearly see the drive shaft drives the left truck. The ad copy reads,

GET THIS M. U. COACH
An Exact Scale Die Cast Reproduction of the P.R.R. 64 Foot Motor Cars

The complete, powered kit sold for $19.75 and a trailer was also offered along with a 64’ “Die Cast Steam Coach” and “our new fully equalized and sprung, roller bearing type, passenger trucks.”

These were all produced at least to the point of a pilot model or three. Any out there?

Limco also produced a catalog of which I have a Xerox in my files. From that we learn that you could purchase a finished car of this MP54 MU coach for $41.50. They at that time produced a reefer with printed card sides for WFE, wood body, cast details, and equalized Arch bar trucks. Other later advertising I have seen indicates that they offered also a box car and a tank car of uncertain construction details.

In addition to those kits they offered other parts. Besides track materials and 6 wheel passenger trucks that were die cast, the list below indicates that they had at least a plan to produce a steam locomotive:

Air pump, bronze
Booster, bronze
Boiler, cast aluminum
Cylinders, bronze
Deck plate and air pump bracket
Drivers, bronze, machined or unmachined
Pilot, bronze
Smoke box front, bronze
Tender truck frames, bronze
Trailer truck pivot bar, bronze
Valve gear bracket

So far as I can tell Limco was active from about 1936-38, and parts of the line may have been picked up by other makers. Maybe we don’t need to resort to milk cartons to find what Limco is out there still but if you have any treasure it and I would love to hear more about it.