I got carried away while browsing ebay listings just now. I searched for new listings with a buy-now price under $45 in the locomotive category. Clicked on a few, saved them for later. Oh, what's this? A cheap Athearn in BN colors. Okay, let's take a look. Not the best pictures, but wait...
Enhance, enhance, enhance...oh yeah! I'm pretty sure that's the tiger stripes right there!
I looked for these specifically before and there were a few, but none at this price point. $30 and free shipping. Hmmmmmmmmmmmm oops I clicked the buy button.
What can I say? I like gaudy colors. 
And hey, the road number is accurate too.
http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=5144499
And more purchasing-related updates! Today my "prodigal ebay shipment" finally made it here. This was shipped from Illinois, made it here to PA, then went back west to Missouri for some reason, and stayed there for longer than I was comfortable with before finally getting on the right truck to come back to PA. A week late, in the end, but all's well that ends well. And it combines four of my hobbies: Fords, model building, railroad scenery, and vintage oddities.
Remember Lindberg? Yeah, they made a few HO scale kits, and here's two of them. An old Ford F-series heavy-duty box truck, and an old Ford W-series cabover (likely the most forgotten of the old Ford cabovers.) And garages too as a bonus.
Also, this arrived from Europe. A Ford Sierra as the box says, but basically indistinguishable from a Merkur XR4Ti at this scale.
Lastly, I'm enjoying the engineering challenge of converting to body-mounted couplers on various cars. Here's one that needed several chunks of styrene to go between it and the body, so it sits level at approximately the right height.
I'm assuming you've got a sign like this in front of your house:
Don't get me wrong, I love what you're doing here.
Jump on this. There's $50+ worth of switches alone in this lot.
Misc. HO trains
In reply to Appleseed :
Aw dang, it says "Pickup Only" in the shipping info. Someone in NC wanna pick it up if I win?
kazoospec said:
I'm assuming you've got a sign like this in front of your house:
Don't get me wrong, I love what you're doing here.
Hehe, it's true. Although this gondola I'm working on has metal wheels! That's like, fancy and stuff!
slowbird said:
I got carried away while browsing ebay listings just now. I searched for new listings with a buy-now price under $45 in the locomotive category. Clicked on a few, saved them for later. Oh, what's this? A cheap Athearn in BN colors. Okay, let's take a look. Not the best pictures, but wait...
Enhance, enhance, enhance...oh yeah! I'm pretty sure that's the tiger stripes right there!
I looked for these specifically before and there were a few, but none at this price point. $30 and free shipping. Hmmmmmmmmmmmm oops I clicked the buy button.
What can I say? I like gaudy colors. And hey, the road number is accurate too.
http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=5144499
Pro-tip: get the handrails all aligned and then you can secure the stanchions on the handrail with a drop of superglue applied via a needle or pushpin.
In reply to slowbird :
Start a fresh thread with "Anyone able to pick up some trains for me?"
I did the same request for some giant LGBs in Minneapolis. Stewart in MN came through with flying colors.
So I have some cheap track pieces being picked up for me by a friendly GRM member. Teamwork!
I also went a bit nuts and also bought a cheap Bachmann Amtrak and a vintage Lindberg switcher with a parts loco included. I'm incorrigible.
Late-night absurd idea: the "excursion" trains running through the layout will include boxcars and other freight cars, specifically designed to offer adventurous individuals the opportunity to get the old-fashioned hobo train-hopping experience. Provided they sign all the waivers, of course.
Stuff is here! Not the Athearn, yet. But the Linderg and Bachmann are here. The Bachmann runs but has cracked gears 
I guess I'll have to fix that.
The Lindberg didn't want to move when I first tested it, but one axle was misaligned in the truck, and I managed to figure that out and put it back together. Now it rips! It's incredibly weird though. The motor gear, facing the back, turns a huge gear on a long shaft, which spins a long metal spring that loops around and attaches to itself, which runs down and around the front axles to propel the locomotive. Very strange. The spring band is kind of bent in a few spots which I suspect causes the jerky behavior exhibited at low speed. But it will really rip at high speed, it's kind of like a banshee. Very interesting.
Speaking of Lindberg, I got this thing put together! The trailer that comes with it looks kinda small, so I paired it with one of the Tyco piggyback trailers and I'm pretty happy with it. I could still add more detail painting in a few spots, but it's pretty much finished.
Not bad-looking for a tiny 60s model kit.
The tiger is here! A little cleaning and maintenance, and this thing will be the pride of the land. Or something.
In reply to slowbird :
I found a random assortment of spur and worm gears on Ebay for like $12 or something like that. Might have the gears you're looking for.
I wanted to get the assortment, a random lot of geared bogeys from some dead N scale diesel locomotives, wire up a 5mm pager motors with said worm gears, and make little HOn30 boxcabs.
In reply to Appleseed :
Yeah, I was trying to find just the exact gears I need, but it's dang hard to search for. It's actually a double gear and Bachmann doesn't seem to sell replacements. I might give in and buy one of those assortments of them. The other options I considered were: superglue and baking soda on the gears (I have my doubts about this method), try to find a different frame to put the shell on (probably not worth it in this case), or convert it to a dummy and acquire a higher-quality F40PH to pull it around. I still might go the dummy route if all else fails.
Acquiring more mini cars will continue until morale improves.
These Monogram Mini Exacts were a short-lived product line in 1/87 scale, but they do look rather nice. These came out sometime around 1990 and only lasted a year or two. There were some open-wheel cars too. In addition to the race cars, there's a smattering of classic cars, supercars, and other street cars. I think Herpa bought some of the molds and re-released them, mainly the street cars.
These will work great in a local oval track scene when I get around to that someday.
The Athearn GP50 runs okay, but it seems kinda loud, so I took it apart to look at the gears. The worm gear went flying and I may have lost one of the bearings, unless it was missing all along, which I can't rule out. Guess I'll order some new bearings. Hmm, the axle gears don't seem to be on there too firmly, might be cracked. I'll order some of those too. Hmm I read somewhere that these wheels aren't the greatest for conductivity, there's replacement wheels made of nickel silver that are supposedly better. Oh and the gears in the truck seem a bit worn maybe. Hmm maybe I should replace the motor with a new Genesis motor, and the driveshafts with the new style too.
Brand new locomotives are starting to seem less expensive...
slowbird said:
Acquiring more mini cars will continue until morale improves.
These Monogram Mini Exacts were a short-lived product line in 1/87 scale, but they do look rather nice. These came out sometime around 1990 and only lasted a year or two. There were some open-wheel cars too. In addition to the race cars, there's a smattering of classic cars, supercars, and other street cars. I think Herpa bought some of the molds and re-released them, mainly the street cars.
These will work great in a local oval track scene when I get around to that someday.
I have probably 20 different street mini exact models. Ferraris, Vettes, tbird, among others. Really nice detail.
The Goodwill package arrived today. Thanks again, Steve!
It was very well packaged. Once I got everything unwrapped, I was pretty excited with what I got. I think 3 EZtrack turnouts, a road crossing, some curves, a bunch of standard track, and basically a whole train. An old but surprisingly decent-running Bachmann locomotive and a few cars. Oh and a small freight station building.
It's an F-unit of some sort, I don't know the exact version. It has the two front lights which is different than my other one, so that's neat.
Now I really need to get a bench put together to hold the layout.
If you or anyone you know works in construction, watch sites that have concrete being poured. Foam insulation is used in slabs. There is always chunks that are getting tossed. My buddy snagged quite a few pieces for me, one that was large enough for my micro layout base.
Slowbird- Sent you a PM...
Buying lumber is hard. (Gotta leave the house, gotta directly ask for someone at the store to cut it into chunks small enough to fit into a regular-ass car, gotta actually stop buying other stuff for 5 seconds in order to have money for it...)
So I'm stocking up on other E36 M3 instead! First, a 1973 F-100 in Chessie System colors that was out of stock almost everywhere I looked. Couldn't even find one on ebay. (Plenty of 1960 F-100s though.) But I did find one on a site called Hiawatha Hobbies, and now that it's here, I have to say that it's beautiful.
CSX licensed product? That just makes me think, "do a proper Chessie heritage locomotive you jerks!"
And also Chessie-themed, this old Athearn blue-box kit for not one but two cabovers! I mean, they aren't Fords, but cabovers of any kind are pretty sweet.
Look at the price tag. Four bucks! Unfortunately that's not the price I paid to get them from ebay.
I swear I'm going to actually do some layout work before the end of 2020.
In reply to slowbird :
I used to be an occasional customer of Hi-Way Hobby House on NJ17 in Ramsey NJ. Big store that lasted a ong time.
Layout-building may start this weekend. I think I can get some 2x2 and 1x4 lumber in the car if it's cut into 4' pieces. But I gotta share more stuff before then.
#1. This Walthers Trainline GP9M that I got for $21 on ebay is now my best locomotive (a low bar to clear). It was a little noisy so I cleaned and re-lubed the gears, and now it's super quiet. Runs fairly decent at low speeds too. I still need to clean the dust off the body though.
#2. Stumbled on these at a good price and had to have them. The D&RGW was a fascinating railroad, and these will make really nice cars for an "excursion train" in my opinion. One needs assembled, the other one is already assembled and weathered.
#3. So, I bought this thing. It's a monster truck chassis that you can put underneath whatever you want.
Of course, I'm going to put a Ford truck body on it. I got these Life-Like trucks for nostalgia reasons, but the blue one had a bit of a paint flaw on it. They're also the weird "Camper Special" style with the stretched wheelbase that makes the bed look funny.
Okay, it's a bit too long. We can fix that.
Much better. Need to repaint it and glue it together. Can't get the glass out, so I ordered some liquid masking stuff and when that arrives, I can mask off and paint the thing.
Right. Where was I? I bought some wood to build a sort of bench/table. Haven't started building yet. Lazy.
I went to Cleveland to get a bunch of stuff from ebay. It was listed under the HO category, but well, it turned out to be mostly N scale, aside from a few HO scale buildings. So now I have a partially disassembled N scale layout and a crapload of rolling stock and scenery. I'm not even disappointed, I kind of wanted to try N scale anyway.
Here's just a small sample of it.
There are 4 locomotives in the lot. The best of the bunch is this Kato SD90/43MAC.
I also bought an airbrush from a different person in Cleveland. It's an old Sears-branded Badger 200 single action model. Should be good enough for painting this VO-1000 into the weird purplish-pink color of LaSalle and Bureau County.
