Hi All,
For kicks and grins the past couple of years, I have been working on building a small armada of 3-rail O-gauge 1/48 scale-size (or nearly so) freight cars and locos. Mostly WbB locos, with an eclectic variety of freight cars such as Lionel, MTH, Atlas, Industrial Rail, MPC, Menards, K-Line, etc., etc.
One of the funnest aspects that I have been doing is buying inexpensive, new and used freight cars at train meets for $5/$10/$15 or so, and fixing them up to make them look better. Such as adding brakemen's stirrups made from staples, lowering the cars for better looking ride height, making custom loads, making brake wheels and staffs for flat cars that have none, scratch-building end rails and ladders for cabooses (cabeese?) that have God-awful looking, molded plastic representations, scribing wood flooring to put in box cars, scratch-building brass ladders to replace broken plastic ladders on box cars, changing out old trucks with new die-cast Lionel, Atlas, and MTH sprung trucks, etc., etc., etc. Nothing mind-bending, just simple little projects that may take anywhere from a few hours to a few days or so to complete. I haven't done any weathering yet, but that could be a future possibility.
I like dull, drab, mundane box car red and other earthy-colored freight cars. Silver ain't too bad either. I don't want colorful, fanciful, cartoonish, neon, glow-in-the-dark, fantasy freight equipment. I have real, live, past and present (mostly past) prototypically-named freight equipment. NOT Mickey Mouse, Peanuts, Scooby-Doo, Lone Ranger, or other non-prototypical equipment (not that there's anything wrong with that, just not my cup of tea). That being said, I also have some O27-sized locos and freight cars that more or less meet my criteria (except for the 1/48 scale factor, of course). Prototypical road names and paint schemes, or at least somewhat plausible. Nothing outlandish.
I currently have a small double-oval MTH Real Trax layout on a 6' x 16' table to run my trains on. I prefer large radii curves, so O27 and O31 don't cut it for me. Someday I wouldn't mind building a bigger layout using GarGraves track with either the same or else Ross switches. Currently I'm fine with the standard lobster-claw couplers, no plans at this time to convert to Kadee couplers. I prefer scale-looking scenery as opposed to toy-train scenery.
I guess my problem is, what type of a model railroader would I be considered? A Hi-Railer? A 3-Rail Scaler? Something in between? Or something else? What's the difference? Seems like there was a topic on this not too long ago. But after that post, I still don't think the folks ever clarified the difference between Hi-Rail and 3-Rail Scale, IIRC.
Any ideas? Thoughtful input appreciated.
