Show Off your early 1990s K Line Trains!

I've two of those NYC Alco A-A sets.  I've sacrificed the frame from one of the 2115 dummy units so I can have a set of Wabash Alco A-A sets.  Photos to follow at a later date.  But how about some Pacifics for now.

NYC 3010 up front of the first picture and Anheuser Busch 3014 in the back of the second and third pictures.I'll try to get some better shots of those also.

Here are a few of mine:

K-line S-2 dual motored switcher.  I love this engine.  It's short enough to navigate my 0-27 switchers and curves and with two motors its smooth and pulls like mad!

Here is the somewhat larger MP-15

A miscellaneous box car I picked up along the way.

Best Wishes

Don

Some years ago, I had around 80 (yes, eighty) of the K-Line S-2 switchers, which I obviously actively collected. All sported different liveries, which gives some indication of how many of those little buggers K-Line actually produced, including a good many uncataloged limited runs. I sold most of them at York over several years, and don't believe I have any left, although I seem to recall running across a B&O version when I was packing to move a couple of years ago.

Here's just a couple of my fleet of smaller K-Line locos, needless to say in custom paint schemes not done by K-Line on these particular locos. There's many more shown in my repaint thread linked below.

When K-Line moved production to China from their Chapel Hill plant, the quality of their paint schemes improved quite dramatically, even on these lesser expensive starter types of products. Many of my repaint locos were done with the US produced models with their more primitive decoration and unpainted molded plastic colored shells.

Just because I'm an 027 "toy" train guy, doesn't mean I don't like modern road names and/or some suggestion of implied realism, even if prototypically these railroads I've done repaints for, never had any S-2 switchers or Alco FA diesels.

When I first re-entered the hobby, my first set was a Lionel. But the vast majority after that were K-Line, which is how I grew my layout. I've never had any trouble with locos running them with a 1033 transformer. No need to rewire the locos with the B-U voltage post setting: They WILL run slowly.

OK I posted this on another thread but it seems appropriate to show here.  It is a 1992, custom decorated K-line box car turned into a celebratory display for the 90th Anniversary of John Deere in Columbus, Ohio.

I figured some of our K-line collectors might like to see this.

Don

Hi Red****r214,

I only have one K-Line engine, it's an S-2 diesel.  I picked it up at a train show right before Covid hit.  It was a great deal that I couldn't pass up.  Since my layout is small (~3' X ~9'), it's the perfect size and as Don McErlean said, "It pulls like mad."  One thing that bugs me about this engine (and I see it in the photos posted by others) is the lack of "windows" on the front of the cab.   I've thought about trying to cut them out but it's probably more work than it's worth.  In the future, I'd like to rewire the motors from parallel to series and add LED bulbs inside.

John

LOL!!  Looks like I misspelled Redshirt214. 

No offense intended. 

John

Here's an S2 that started out in SP Black Widow paint, a handsome livery that didn't have a home on my railroad.  It was bought as a chassis donor for a kit bashed boxcab that never came to fruition but it became the perfect donor to lead my USAF train honoring my daughter's service to our country.

I shave off all the cast in grab irons and replaced then with staples.  I tried to shave of the window shades and thought I had done a good job, however, once it was painted I could see more sanding was needed but don't want to paint it again. I added an engineer, Atlas O pilots and homemade fuel and air tanks(not shown).  A winterization hatch was added to the top just to alter the profile a bit. I'm currently dressing a BEEP in Air Force blue and that has caused me to take a look at my S2.  I've some more decaling to do and I have to mount the pilots better.  A recent revelation by @JHZ563 over on Switcher Saturday that the fuel tank on the S2 is actually situated under the cab has me rethinking my custom fuel tank and air tanks.

I’m so glad I got such a great response from this topic!

K Line had some great items, both in terms of decorations, subjects, and overall quality for their time.

I’m very impressed by the super detailed Alco S2’s... I second their smooth performance, especially at low speeds, and the overall good running of the K Line double motor units generally. It’s a amazing K Line was able to stuff the mechanism into that short switcher body! For non-top end units they preform really well.

Alco units have a business like look to me that screams railroading, which I’ve always loved.

The custom John Deer boxcar is neat to see!

I don’t know if anyone else finds this on their old K Line cars, but the couplers on mine never seem to be quite correctly adjusted: the “thumbtack” disks on them seem to hang too close to the rails, so they won’t really depress and thus you can’t really get them to couple without the ole 0-5-0. I’m not sure why that’s the case, perhaps just age, but it can be annoying.