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Herc, Bachmann has a lifetime guarantee on all of their locomotives. If you didn't do any damage to it, they will replace it or repair it for the cost of shipping it to them and return postage. I model ho, so am not familiar with n-scale Bachmann steam, but I had a problem with the old style...

Josh Here is a link to add to your bookmarks. He has a lot of useful info on making Athearn blue box and similar locomotives run reliably. http://trainweb.org/jfuhrtrain/tuneup.htm Another thing to consider is the motor mounts. Athearn used the rubbery mounts forever (a friend of mine...

I don't know his specific reasons, but for modelers who are going with dcc, 22 ga is the minimum required for drop wires, and larger ga wire is harder to hide when you solder it to your rails to make drops.

We have found at the modular club that Atlas turnouts have too much clearance between the rails and the guard rails. For that reason the guard rails don't function well for rerailing or protecting wheels from derailing. The fix is to use some .015" styrene and make a shim to glue to the guard...

If you have an MRC throttle, it will have three sets of terminals on it. One set is marked variable dc and will go from 0 to 12 volts. The second set is constant dc at @12 volts. The third set is ac at @15-16 volts.

I like your idea. Moving and enlarging the industries to allow a bit more space for them would result in industries that would look like they are big enough to actually be served by trains. Small industries would have been served by trains prior to WW2, but since the war, the cost of laying...

You mentioned having trouble soldering. Near the bottom of the index page for the Gauge in the "Reference Section" is a Tips and Tricks forum. There is a thread that gives a good tutorial on soldering. The one caution that I would give you is to look closely at any solder you buy. The Home...

A flower sifter is a good way to sift out any pieces that are too large for ballast. The correct size for ballast in ho scale is about the size of Woodland Scenics fine ballast. Remember that in ho scale 1/8 inch is close to 1 foot in diameter. If you get the material crushed down to about...

I would agree with Squidbait, design your layout for what you will have when the garage is finished, and build what will fit in the space that you have available now. If your steam locomotives are small enough to fit on an Atlas turntable, buy a couple turntables and put one at each end of the...

How far into the room do the pipes and electrical boxes extend? Are they all on one side and is that the side you wold put the aisle in or is it the other side? The hallways in my house are all 3 feet wide. If the boxes are on the same side as the aisle, add the amount of space they stick...

If the whiskers are sticking out of the coupler box, the part sticking out of the box is doing nothing to center the coupler. I don't see where it would make any difference to trim the part that sticks out of the box, just don't trim it to the point that the ends are not at least flush with the...

A trick I used on a DPM brick building was to take an off white acrylic paint and thin it to a wash with distilled water. I then sprayed the white on the brick plastic let it sit a few minutes and carefully wiped the white off. I did this before construction with the walls laying flat on the...

Can you sand off the bands and then touch up the bricks if the base material is not the correct color?

I just thought of something else after reading CNWman's thread titled "Worth Saving?" on the ho forum, I wonder if you might find a used Tyco Chattanooga Choo Choo steam engine at a train show or swap meet. They are cheap. It has a tender drive that could be removed and replaced with freight...

Probably being introduced late in the development of steam contributed to the diversity of the designs. By then many railroads had some prejudices toward one design over others for various components. Of course the other thing that factored in to the variety of steam designs compared to the...

Yes, but this thread has the potential to be almost as interesting as "The light at the end of the tunnel!"

I suspect that one reason that tender wheels are not counted is that the tender was detachable from the locomotive. I don't know if it happened or not, but conceivably a locomotive might use a different type of tender so that if the locomotive used the tender wheels for classification and then...

For $99.00 you are buying the locomotive at a discount and getting the rest of the train for free.

The problem for manufacturers is the cost of dies to make models. Once the dies are cut, making a plastic casting is cheap. Diesels are easy. EMD, GE, previously Alco would make a standard model and sell it to the railroads on an almost take it or leave it basis. There might be a few detail...

It is common for model manufacturers to make a locomotive shell and put whatever road name they want to on it. I think that is why the most common steam prototypes to model are USRA. A USRA light pacific, becomes a light Mikado with a mechanism change. Also the USRA models were used by a...