I’ve had a particularly nice last week running a near perfect train. It is just a pleasure to do nothing more than sit with a cup of coffee in the morning and watch a good model train running on a layout where everything is ship-shape and working well. That pleasure is not just about any particular loco or set of cars, or the layout for that matter, but comes from having everything come together and fit” - all working well and looking good. When that happens . . . life in the train-room is wonderful. This week it all came together as well as it ever has.
- A good model loco is an important part of getting it all right. This week it was my new Vision GS-1, certainly the best of my seven Vison locos and maybe the best loco I have ever owned. It a Northern (my favorite type of loco) and a particularly handsome Northern, at that. A spectacular runner, it is well-behaved, and pulls better than I thought a brass loco would, with really good sound and as much detail as any loco I have. It is 1:48 scale and looks big but is actually noticeably smaller than a UP FEF, NYC Niagara, or ATSF 2900. That means it looks better on the curves on my layout, where long articulated steamers, or even those big Northerns, look a little bit out of place and un-natural.
- The cars are twenty-two scale PFE reefers, assorted brands (MTH, Lionel, Atlas, K-line), none new, and some maybe up to nearly twnety years old, but all well cared for. All are scale, detailed with excellent couplers and low-friction bearings, but with different brands and ages, varying shades of paint that looks very much like the variations you often see in the real world. Missing from this train (I have 24 PFE reefers) are two Lionel Reefers with freight-sounds. The make too much annoying noise!!
- And a Lionel scale UP caboose (because I don’t have a SP caboose).
They look good together – which is often not the case with a train one can set up, even if everything is scale and realistic to the prototypes. They ran particularly well this week. Hours of zero hassles and no problems at all. Again, not always the case. But the loco was new and good,the cars all recently oiled and checked, and the track recently checked and lightly refurbished, then scrubbed clean and polished When everything works it is sheer joy! Makes all the work on the layout worth it!!
It was just a pleasure running them. I spent another two hours this morning just watching and not doing much else. No radio, TV or internet - just me and the trains. Wonderful.
