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I just got a brand new Kato Conrail sd80mac off ebay. It's way too big to look right on my small layout, but it was a good price and I gave into temptation. I'm glad I did, too. Man, what a beautiful, smooth running engine! Hats off to Kato for such fine work :thumb:

Thanks! Just some contact paper on a piece of plywood, but it does the trick. Now that the wiring's all done I can finally move on to scenery.

Looks great! Nice job with the hill there. How do you plan on making the water?

Wow, I'm responding to a post that's more than 5 years old. Anyway ... did you ever resolve the screeching problem with your SD-50's? I'm having the exact same trouble with my B40-8 and I'm anxious to fix it without having to send it back to Atlas.

Alas, no, I'm running DC.

Hi everyone, I have a brand new Atlas B40-8 that is giving me some trouble. There's a fair amount of motor whine and it runs sluggishly going forward. The whine is worst when it first gets going; after a few minutes of continuous running it's not as bad, but still pretty noisy. It runs and...

I've had that power pack for ages, since I got my first HO train set when I was a kid. It's definitely time for an upgrade, but it does the trick for making sure the wiring is sound. Speaking of power packs, can anyone recommend one with a good momentum feature? I'd like my trains to slow...

Thanks for all the encouragement. I actually did get a few ideas (like the foam core base and some of the track arrangement) from the Carolina Central design. I was considering adding a small lake at some point, but we'll see how things progress. I'm going to build it in stages, so the next...

Hi everyone, Just thought I'd share a pic of my little layout which is in the works. It measures only 2'4" x 3'11". The last few times I tried something bigger the projects all stalled, so I thought I'd keep it small and manageable this time. But there are possibilities for expansion with the...

It might just be the curse of my neurotic perfectionism. :oops: I tend to notice even the slightest imperfections that normal folks either wouldn't notice at all or would shrug off as no big deal.

Just wondering if anyone else has noticed the tendency that some Atlas engines have to lean slightly to one side. If you look at them head on they're a bit cockeyed. Not all of them do this, for example, the ones in the "classic" series don't, nor do the old Atlas/Kato models, but in others...

Cool :thumb: Come to think of it, maybe a little extra weight would be a good thing. When I test run my engines, I have to keep the throttle at the lowest possible setting or they're off to the races.

Regarding the dummy units, I may just be insane enough to gut one of my beautiful Atlas gp-30's for that purpose, but I'm not sure how. Looking at the schematic, it seems I would have to leave the metal mainframe in since that's where the trucks are mounted. But wouldn't that make for a fairly...

Thanks for your responses :wave: At this point I'm running analog with block wiring. The layout is so small that I thought DCC would be overkill. When I expand to a bigger layout I'll convert everything to DCC, but for now I guess I'll just have to use the "hit and miss" method you mentioned...

Greetings all, I stumbled across this forum just the other day and immediately signed on. I've just taken up a little n scale layout that I've been meaning to work on for years and it's great fun. I hope to have some pictures up soon of the first stages of progress. I have a question: I...