Passenger Cars

Budd Wiser

When word came round last August that the hobby shop had just gotten in a large N scale collection, I went to see it, thinking I could use another passenger locomotive, or perhaps some more Kato passenger cars. You know, something with lights, that would look good in a darkened driveway. What I found checked both boxes: a Kato RDC (Rail Diesel Car). The prototype was manufactured by Budd, the same company that made those lovely stainless-steel streamliners, and served as a one-car passenger train for railroads working to economize their passenger service. Never mind that none of the railroads I model had RDCs, this one was in Budd demonstrator livery, so it’s easy enough to rationalize its presence in my railroading activities.

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This is Gonna be Lit

Kato, bless their hearts, makes it easy to add lighting to their N scale passenger cars. Let me rephrase that slightly: mostly easy. Their lighting kits aren’t quite the no-brainer drop-ins they’re intended to be, but I’ve installed enough of them now to know their quirks. (more…)

Upgrading My Broadway Limited

Broadway_820

I remember my first trip to the big show in Springfield, nearly ten years ago. I carpooled with some clubmates, and we spent a weekend operating on a very large Ntrak modular layout, with members of several clubs participating. On Sunday afternoon, there was a competition known as the “Parade of Trains.” The idea was simple: put a train on the track, and run it for three laps around the layout, past a panel of judges. My entry was a mix of mid-Sixties freight cars, weathered, pulled by three diesels in two different paint schemes. A lot of the other entries were passenger sets, matched cars taken straight of of the box and dropped onto the railroad. “That’s pretty lame,” I said to myself, “I’d never do something like that.”

Actually, that’s exactly what I do with my Kato Broadway Limited passenger-train set. I have to eat my words now.

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Lead Us Not Into Penn Station

GG1_523The trouble began a few years ago, at the Syracuse show. I had just dropped a sizeable chunk of pocket change on a new NCE PowerCab, thus hurtling myself headlong into the world of Digital Command Control. With only two decoder-equipped locomotives in my entire fleet at that point, I had some tough choices to make. In order to get more decoders, I had to swear off buying any more locomotives for a while. It was easy at first, but then the GG-1 on the table winked at me. (more…)