Strasburg Meet - on the 14th?

We will be there at the front tables as usual. Place your orders for meet delivery before Tuesday of next week. See you there!!!

I have several 2 rail conversion to deliver at the show and am expecting a large group of 3 rail locos from a modeler in the Boston area that he wants 2 railed.  I will be at my usual 2 tables with a few things for sale.

Joe Foehrkolb

Baldwin Forge & Machine

Carl Dimino and I will be there , Glad to see some good friends, with luck make a few new ones. Great meet !! Come if you can very worth the trip.

Just one week and it's Strasburg - Come one come all!!!

yup

Okay...so who THREE rail two rail locomotives, and gas electrics, Mack railbuses, etc., and all the other stuff not available in three rail?

Colorado,

Good luck with that...converting a model built for 2 rail to 3 rail is a lot different than converting a 3 rail model to 2 rail.  When converting a 3 rail model to 2 rail, part get smaller, wheel width tread profile etc.  The opposite is true when trying to convert a scale 2 rail model to 3 rail ,the same things have to get bigger... tire width, flanges etc.  I would not attempt this for anyone.  It would be a nightmare.

Joe, Baldwin Forge & Machine

colorado hirailer posted:

Okay...so who THREE rail two rail locomotives, and gas electrics, Mack railbuses, etc., and all the other stuff not available in three rail?

I am unaware of anyone who does this for others - all those items that I have seen taken in that direction appear to have been done by individuals.

Would not miss a Strasburg meet.  Some of the neatest stuff comes out of hiding at each one.  With  all the custom buildings, road vehicles, scenery items, $15.00 Weaver cars easily converted to 3 rail and  widgets galore, one does not have to be a two railer to find rare jewels at Strasburg. 

I'll be looking for a bunch of dual track tunnel portals.  Hope to start scenery soon.  I'll be at the engine room doorway with a container of extra trestle bents and some PW ZWs.

Tom Tee posted:

Would not miss a Strasburg meet. 

Sadly, I will miss this one due to a prior engagement that I cannot escape from this year.

Some of the neatest stuff comes out of hiding at each one.  With  all the custom buildings, road vehicles, scenery items, $15.00 Weaver cars easily converted to 3 rail and  widgets galore, one does not have to be a two railer to find rare jewels at Strasburg. 

Got one the neatest little scratchbuilt steeple cabs there a few years ago that re-surfaced in my column in OST. 

I have little doubt that great gems are readily available at this meet every single time.

"Would not miss a Strasburg meet.  Some of the neatest stuff comes out of hiding at each one.  With  all the custom buildings, road vehicles, scenery items, $15.00 Weaver cars easily converted to 3 rail and  widgets galore, one does not have to be a two railer to find rare jewels at Strasburg". 

You blokes have it made over there I'm envious, I don't mind admitting. Nothing over here, I'm broke at the moment anyway so.....

Not much use talking if your stony broke and walking. Roo.

colorado hirailer posted:

Okay...so who THREE rail[s] two rail locomotives...?

I'm not sure it's possible, for the reasons Joe said (and he would know!)  A 3-rail loco has wide wheel treads (nominally 0.215") so the frame has to be a little narrower, the cylinders are more widely spaced, etc.  All of these considerations force minor compromises in appearance.  If new 2-rail wheels were fitted with a narrower tread, it seems that the extra side-to-side play could be taken up by adding spacers between the wheels and the frame, etc.  But if the frame of a 2-rail loco was originally designed for a .145 or even a .172 tread, and you try to install 3-rail wheels with their wider .215 tread, either the wheels will end up gauged too wide, or the frame will have to be narrowed to make room for the flange side of the wheel.  That's a lot of work!

I might be mistaken about the technical details of why this conversion isn't easy to do.  But I've seen a thread on another forum where an experienced modeler tried to convert a Lobaugh Berk to 3-rail and ran into some of these difficulties.  He ended up putting the whole mechanism from a 3-rail Williams Mikado under the Lobaugh boiler.  And I remember all the grousing about the Atlas 0-6-0 for similar reasons... The frame, cylinders, etc., were all designed for the wide three-rail 0.215" wheel treads.  The factory made some adjustments on the 2-rail version for the loco to accept narrower wheels, not unlike what Joe might have to do in converting a loco that was originally 3-rail.  More than a few two-railers were unsatisfied with the Atlas 0-6-0, and Atlas O hasn't attempted another steam loco since that initial effort.

Joe for our education can you be more specific about what makes it so hard?

There is another option to converting 2 rail to 3 rail.    Many years ago, I had a 3 rail layout built with Gargraves track and switches.      I started building cars from kits and wanted nicer (more scale) locos than I could get from Lionel.    I realized that the rail had a FLAT TOP vs lionel tubular track.    So I tried just putting rollers on a 2 rail loco and running it on the track.    - - - And surprise it worked!     Now the sample is small, I was modeling early pre WW I and had small locos.     I had an All Nation 4-4-0 I built, two International 0-4-0s, a Gem PRR Mogul, and a Gem 0-6-0.     

A second small example is a friend who currently has a 3 rail layout with Atlas and Gargraves track and he has 2 OMI Western Maryland 2-8-0s  that are 2 rail, and he just put rollers on them.    They run well in most places except on a few older swtiches.

I don't have any examples of very large locos, but it does work on smaller ones.    The track gage is the same for 2 rail and 3 rail.     The curve radius has to be big enough to handle the locos.    In my two cases, it is 36 inches.     The track has to be laid without kinks.     The switches are the most sensitive area too.    Probably numbered switches work better and wider ones, such as #4 to #6 are better than curved switches with sharp radius.

PRRJIM,

I cannot have models derailing after I completed working on them and return them to their owners.  That in, my opinion, would not be a successful conversion.  Actually if you put an NMRA wheel gauge on a 3 rail wheel set you will see that the hi rail flanges do not fit in the gauge slots at all.  The back of the hi rail flanges are further inboard on the axles.  Track gauge is the same but the wheel profiles are completely different.  When I convert a steam loco model to 2 rail, the drive wheels get all new tires that conform to NMRA practice but in the case of locomotive drivers they are machined to a total width of 0.160" instead of 0.172".

Diesel conversions are accomplished with modified 172 tread NWSL wheels.  At one time I was using 145 tread wheels but a large Eastern O Scale club told me the 145 tread wheels derailed on some of their older trackwork, so I stopped using 145 tread wheels a few years ago.

I don't need problems after returning a model.

See you all at Strasburg on Saturday morning!

Joe, Baldwin Forge  Machine

Roo, You seem to have a rather complete operation.  What would your shopping list include if you were to go to a US 2 rail  show?

Tom Tee posted:

Roo, You seem to have a rather complete operation.  What would your shopping list include if you were to go to a US 2 rail  show?

I like where you're going... let us know what you're looking for Roo and we'll keep an eye out for it and try to get you contact information!

Ne'er better than bringing together O scalers. 

Joe,

I agree a 3 rail to 2 rail conversion must be done according to your standards.   

You had said converting 2 rail to 3 rail is very complicated, and I was just saying in some cases, conversion other than pickups is not needed to go that direction.

prrjim

Well, l have converted O scale cars, railbuses, gas electrics, would tackle a brass McKeen car if l find one, to three rail, but guessed a steamer would demand a machine shop and skills to go with it.  The guy in Tenn. used to offer kits that could be bullt either way.  Wonder why the mfrs. of the 1950's were so much more imaginative than those of today? Some of the those things l three-railed were made in the 1950's!

I'm always looking for cheap old Atlas 52 foot Gondolas in any condition I put my own trucks and couplers on them and repaint if necessary.

It would be nice to pick up, say, 6 in one go to save on freight costs to West Australia. On ebay the most I have bought is two at a time when I'm lucky. 

What else?

I can't think at the moment but you know how it is you go to a show and see all those tables of items for sale it jogs your memory for that long forgotten project to get restarted again, or maybe you see something and you say "now that would be nice in that space I have reserved" or "that is just what I need boy, I'm glad I came today" and you go home full of enthusiasm with dreams of building something new!

Of course you might buy endless stuff and never use it  but that's what a show is all about apart from meeting friends and looking at layouts. I can't speak for America my shows overseas have been limited to England and there is not many USA items there!

I'm not complaining, I have built up a nice layout considering I live in an isolated area and thanks for any offers of help.  Roo. 

Roo posted:

I'm always looking for cheap old Atlas 52 foot Gondolas in any condition I put my own trucks and couplers on them and repaint if necessary.

It would be nice to pick up, say, 6 in one go to save on freight costs to West Australia. On ebay the most I have bought is two at a time when I'm lucky. 

What else?

I can't think at the moment but you know how it is you go to a show and see all those tables of items for sale it jogs your memory for that long forgotten project to get restarted again, or maybe you see something and you say "now that would be nice in that space I have reserved" or "that is just what I need boy, I'm glad I came today" and you go home full of enthusiasm with dreams of building something new!

Of course you might buy endless stuff and never use it  but that's what a show is all about apart from meeting friends and looking at layouts. I can't speak for America my shows overseas have been limited to England and there is not many USA items there!

I'm not complaining, I have built up a nice layout considering I live in an isolated area and thanks for any offers of help.  Roo. 

 

 

I don't have a video camera but I've often entertained the thought of walking up and down the aisles of a show and videoing the tables for those who are unable to get there.  Then there's the video hosting issue though. 

Would be nice to do train show videos since they sure beat giving tons of money to eBay or other online resellers. 

I have loaded a video from: Views from The 2017 Indianapolis O and S Scale Midwest Show

Well let's see what we can do.   I will  volunteer to be a point of collection for that requested half dozen cheap 52 footers w/o trucks or couplers.  (That's 13" in ruler speak)   Now just watch, not a single one shows up .  You never know what winds up on those tables.

I will be set up in the engine house doorway with an assortment of new and almost new curved turnouts  46"/48", 50"/70", 80"/120", most with ROW frogs and guards.

Roo, give me a US $ amount  number that translates to Aussie cheap?

That's very kind of you Tom.

Keep in mind I am looking for the OLD Atlas Gondolas yes they are 13" in real length now also keep in mind I don't care if they have trucks or couplers and when I say "cheap I am talking between 10 and 15 US dollars I would go to 20 dollars each if necessary. I really only want the bodies and frames I use them around the steel mill roughen them up and weather them for scrap metal trains my steel mill needs about thirty so far I have about 23 last count.

Here are photos of some of them in use I just went out to the room just now and snapped the photos the layout has been used all day today and is now staged for the next session that's me today with a Slag train! 

Roo, 70's understood.   Already got some in the pipe line.  Please contact my Comcast address  off line.

Another Strasburg show wrapped up.  Purchased five 52 footers for Roo and out of no where Frank Ogee walks up and donates the sixth one. Thank you Frank!!!

Prices were so good that I got a bunch of hoppers for C&O and N&W coal drags.   Also there were some great priced turnouts and snap  track  that I could not resist and a case of MRC powerpacks.Thanks John and Rich.

Roo, $35 total for five 13" early Atlas gondolas plus a Frank Ogee freebe.  Please contact me via the comcast address in my OGR profile.

Thank you Tom, Thank you Frank.

It must be an early Christmas for me I'll keep in touch. Roo.