Search results

What is a ZW? If you give us more detail, we might be able to help.

Hello Gary. I feel that somewhere along the line, you've got some poor connections. Your Empire Builder, at 5 amps, should be able to produce sufficient power at the end of your 60' of track buss to short across the coin - assuming you have a 5 amp transformer at a minimum of 12 maximum 22...

Montreal & Southern Counties was an interurban line that ran from downtown Montreal across the Victoria bridge to St Lambert and west as far as Chambly. I remember as a kid taking the M&SC from Montreal to Greenfield Park to visit friends of my parents around 1952. Shortly thereafter, service...

What make of command station do you have? What is the amperage of the command station? How have you connected your track feeders to the power buss - soldered or mechanical? What is the distance from one track feed to the other? (Track feeds should be about every 2' - 3') Do you have...

The Evolution Series ES44DC and the ES44AC are General Electric's newest heavy-haul freight locomotive. The only difference between the two is direct current (ES44DC) and alternating current (ES44AC) that is generated to run the traction motors. ES - Evolution Series 44 - 4,400 horsepower AC...

Atlas made a nice CN GP9, GP7 in the olive and gold colours. I happen to have about 4 of them. They are really nice runners. You might be able to find some in your LHS or at a MR show flea market. Send an e-mail to Jeff Trew at Larkspur Line and he might have one or two in his newsed supply...

Hello Ken (and you too, Brian). Glad you enjoyed your trip to Eastern Ontario. Yes, those bridges are west of Perth, actually, they're west of Glen Tay. It's kind of hard to find them when you're travelling west as the driver is the one who's looking for the bridges while, at the same time...

The Chocolate, Railway & Music Festival takes place July 21, 22, Saturday & Sunday throughout the whole town of Smiths Falls. At the Smiths Falls Railway Museum, we've got a whole line-up of railways, music (but only a bit of chocolate). There will be some layouts (Z, N, HO, G), handcar and...

The Smiths Falls Railway Museum is open 7 days a week 10 am to 4:30. I plan to be at the Museum on Sunday, eta around 9:30. If you're there, ask for me. Lots of plate girder bridges left on the old Ontario & Quebec Havelock sub between Silver Lake and Glen Tay (about 5 miles west of...

The faster you "twirl" the throttle knob, the faster the "percentage" numbers will increase. That is, there isn't a one-to-one ratio between the speed with which the throttle numbers and the speed with which you turn the knob. Digitrax calls this "ballistic tracking". On page 2 of the...

Smiths Falls - Hershey Chocolate factory, Smiths Falls Railway Museum, CPR division point, excellent spot to watch the trains sitting in the outside platform seats at the VIA station. Come to the Museum first to get your bearings. http://www.sfrmeo.ca If it's a Saturday or a Sunday, ask...

Up until 1870, there were two main gauges in Canada, provincial gauge at 5'6" and a few standard gauge lines at 4'8½". While the interchange of cars was very limited, on some lines, such as the Brockville & Ottawa (today's CP Rail's Brockville and Chalk River subs - well the Chalk River sub...

If you subscribe to "Branchline" published by the Bytown Railway Society (an excellent $40 investment if you are interested in what is happening on the Canadian railway scene), you will find listings (amongst other things) of what units are on lease with what major railway, what units are being...

So, that covers freight cars in recent times. In olden times, if you saw a foreign road freight car, it was because the supplier of the merchandise in that freight car was serviced by the foreign road. The car would be unloaded ASAP and returned empty ASAP to the foreign road. Freight cars...

That covers the major roads. Old freight cars (expecially old box cars) never die. They get purchased by smaller railways - in particular short line railways. Or rather, short line railways that have longer lines. As an example, CP Rail used to have a fleet of green boxcars used to ship...

That covers the locomotives. With railway cars, it's a different matter. Today, the majority of railway cars are lease cars. One of the major suppliers of lease cars is TTX - originally known as Trailer Train. TTX Home They have a fleet of over 210,000 - intermodal, autorack and general...

You would hardly have seen any foreign road name locomotives - even CN on CP or visa versa. If you did, it was a very rare event and cause for celebration. One of the features on a slide night in the Ottawa railfan community is to see photos of Union Pacific A-B-B-A sets or other American...

The hammerhead is the back-end of a General Electric C44-9W. This is a 16-cylinder4,400 hp locomotive that is manufactured by GE. The GM equivalent is the SD90. CN has stuck with DC locomotives whereas most North American roads are going to AC locos as they have better traction. CP Rail is...

Very rarely.

It all depends where you are when you see the freights. Here in Eastern Ontario, they're hitting 45 - 60 mph (60 - 100 kmh) on the mainlines. And that's a steady 45 - 60 mph with very little slowdowns, except for signals and sidings. If you look alongside the mainlines of the railways, you...