Atlas N-scale Hoppers Corrections

Thank you very much for the largely positive, complimentary review of our recent N-scale covered hopper car models (June 2008, pp 52-54). The reviews highlight the important features of our Trainman and Master Line series.

However, I noted a few errors in the prototype information. The caption at the top of page 53 indicates that the ACF 5701 has hopper doors and “pneumatic air piping used to distribute the compressed air that distributes the contents…” The ACF 5701 has what are referred to as pneumatic outlets (not hopper doors). There is no piping inside the car that distributes the air or contents. In actuality the pneumatic outlets are transverse tubes that are used to unload the car. At the unloading facility the outlets are attached to essentially large vacuums that suck the contents out.

Our model of the ACF 5701 is not a Cannonaide. This is an entirely different design and type of covered hopper. The Atlas model represents a very common “plastics” or “pellet” car that does not use a “unique device that produces rotating blasts of air to help distribute the contents during loading and unloading.”

Thrall Car is used in the present tense. They are now a part of Trinity Rail Group (Trinity Railcar). The Thrall 4750 model follows the prototype of the late 70s. The term “separate storage compartment” is misleading. Covered hopper cars have internal dividers forming compartments – they are not completely separate.

Thank you for printing these corrections.

Dave Casdorph
Atlas Product Development

Thanks for bringing them to our attention, Dave. —John

HO Cropdusters

In regards to Richard Olden’s letter in the July MRN about the availability of HO-scale aircraft, especially crop dusters, Williams Bros produce three very nice plastic kits of 1:87-scale aircraft, a Corben Super Ace, a Pitcairn Autogiro, and a Stearman PT-17. In real life, hundreds of PT-17s were used for crop dusting.

Williams Bros went out of business a few years ago, but they are reopened under new ownership, and they are slowly reintroducing all the old kits. If they do not have the Stearman right now, it is coming, and they do appear on Ebay every now and then. http://www.williamsbrothersmodelproducts.com/planes.html

Bob Santos
Harrisburg, PA

More “What Happened to Kits?”

I have to ask the same question as Mr. Anderson of Phoenix, Oregon. “What Happened to Kits” (June 2008). I prefer to assemble the boxcars and so on for my layout. There are still some kits out there, but mostly RTR has replaced them.

Athearn says they are producing kits but the old Blue Box stuff is getting difficult to find. MDC? Roundhouse? It ain’t happening. Since Athearn bought out MDC there has been none of the kits run as an Athearn kit, only RTR. Accurail and Walthers have kits on the market and there are some others.

As for trucks and couplers, even the RTR stuff needs the couplers and trucks replaced. As I’ve mentioned in the past I use ONLY Kadee couplers and trucks where Kadee makes the correct truck for the car. Wish they would make caboose trucks.

Weight is another problem with the RTR stuff. Usually the cars are too light and getting them apart to add weight is a problem. With a kit, the car can be weighed and the extra weight added during assembly.

Cliff W. West
Rainier, OR

Another perspective on “What Happened to Kits?”

Manufacturers are eliminating kits due to the higher profit margins they make on R-T-R items. Hobby shops began stocking them for that same reason. The result was that shipments of kits from the manufacturers decreased due to hobby shops replacing kits with R-T-R on their shelves in order to raise their profit margins. The manufacturers then put their spin on the issue by claiming that kits no longer sell and that there is no demand for them. The truth is that they are no longer in demand by hobby shops, but they are in demand by hobbyists. Hello? The manufacturers are forcing R-T-R on the market.

The average age of model railroaders is 55 – 60+. That age group prefers kits as opposed to R-T-R, as that was their entry-level avenue of enjoying the hobby. Kits are a hot item on eBay because they are no longer available in hobby shops in any quantity or selection. R-T-R listings and bid activity are a distant second to kits. Look at the listings and bid activity under “Athearn,” “Roundhouse,” etc. on eBay to document this. Athearn’s web site lists more kits “discontinued” every time I check it. R-T-R’s minimal differentiating factors (added details?) do not justify the higher costs to us hobbyists. R-T-R is popular with the media as most items reviewed are R-T-R because that is the only format in which the greater share of new items is available.

As for missing or distorted parts causing the demise of kits, I have never had a problem regarding that in my 30 years of model railroading. If anyone does, a call to the manufacturer (Athearn even listed such on instructions sheets) will secure parts, more often than not, free of charge. If you do not like the trucks or couplers supplied with the kit, switch them out. If the kit is important enough to purchase, you were going to add your favorite brands anyway.

Thanks for writing, Jack. This is an ongoing discussion around the model railroad world. I wish I could agree with everything you said, but I can only agree with some of it. First, the activity on eBay does not constitute good marketing for someone who is about to finance several hundred thousand dollars to produce a model railroad product. Just because you can sell one ten dollar kit for fifteen bucks in one crazy night of bidding doesn’t mean you can sell ten thousand kits in three months, and that’s what manufacturing is all about. Dump ten thousand on the market and you might not be able to sell anything on eBay.

Second, I personally have received kits with missing and distorted parts. In some cases, they were older kits bought long after the product was out of production. I know plenty of other people who have had similar problems with missing parts. Sometimes manufacturers will make it up, but lots of modelers won’t bother to call. I’ve seen several guys who stopped making kits when they got stopped in the middle of one. I don’t think missing or distorted parts has caused the decline of kits, but it could well be a contributing factor.

Lighting kits with constant brightness

Your write-up in the January issue, “Fighting Dirty Track With Capacitance” got me to thinking about car lighting. Normal car lighting dependent upon wheel and wiper pickup only can be pretty blinky. Walthers’ current passenger cars can be equipped with their lighting units (sold separately), and there is nary a blink. So there must be a capacitor somewhere in that circuit.

Hi, Peter. I don’t have a Walthers light strip, so I have no idea how their circuit works. The general theory is that a constant lighting circuit uses a capacitor as a short-term battery. How much charge it holds would be dependent upon its rated value in microfarads, or µf. The more it holds, the larger it gets.

One complication of using capacitors is that this application wants an electrolytic type of capacitor, which is polarized with (+) and (-) terminals. If you try to apply current to them backwards, they tend to explode. As a result, one must use diodes to rectify the current. Typically, we would use a bridge rectifier, which is a package with four diodes specially arranged so DC or AC current can come into the input terminals in either direction or both directions, in the case of AC or reversing the DC on your tracks. The output is always the same direction.

In practice, at low voltages, the capacitor is charged up quickly and releases gradually, augmenting the voltage and smoothing out the dirt spikes. The price, beyond the components and installation is found in increased amperage draw. This is physics and you don’t get something for nothing! Typically, constant lighting circuits don’t work at all below a certain voltage but then come on once the threshold voltage has passed.

When the power is cut intermittently by dirt on the track or other problems of that sort, the capacitor discharges into the lighting circuit, keeping the bulbs burning for as long as the small charge lasts. As quick as power is restored, the capacitor is recharged. Keep in mind this only masks dirty track or failing pickups on the cars. Lubing and adjusting pickups will help, as will keeping track much cleaner. Miniatronics and other companies sell aftermarket LED lighting kits that have voltage regulation and capacitor-enhanced circuits. The Miniatronics kit even has axle-wiper pickups that are easy to install and pretty reliable.

The Miniatronics product also employs supercapacitors that hold about 1/3 Farad, a charge of about a thousand times longer duration. As a result, from the time you shut off power until the LEDs finally wink out is perhaps four minutes! This is really cutting edge technology, and we are very interested in this.

Rapido Trains, a maker of passenger cars, is selling its battery-powered lights for aftermarket installation. With a wave of a magnetic wand, the lights are turned on or off. This means there is no track pickup to cause problems. I’ll be doing a comparative article on these two approaches in the near future. —John

Comments on Aristo-Craft Rail Joiners

May 2008 was the first issue of Model Railroad News that I have read. I have just a couple of quick comments on your product review on p.94 (rail joiners).

I felt the review was unfairly biased towards the new product and unnecessarily knocked the existing products. To my way of thinking, the article plainly revealed that the reviewer is buddy-buddy with Mr. Polk — the last paragraph of the article erasing any doubt about that.

One specific: You failed to mention the very first drawback that came to my mind for the Aristo-Craft joiners, that being the way the screws would tend to push or pull the rail longitudinally as they are tightened. The lower right of the picture on p.95 clearly reveals this undesirable effect.

Matt Jackson
Durham, NC

Hi, Matt. Sorry if you misunderstood the thrust of the review. Yes, I do know Lewis Polk personally, and I know he is an honorable man who neither wants nor needs unfair bias to his advantage, since that always comes around as the same thing to one’s disadvantage. At MRN, we tend to call ‘em like we see ‘em.

So let me further explain what I saw. First, I have a layout made of stainless steel track. If I was able to drill and tap holes in brass, that’s not happening with stainless! Certain locations do not favor the joiners included with the track because you simply cannot get the tool into them. Switches combined in yards are a prime example. These locations may also create similar problems for rail clamps with side-mounted screws. I can usually get them to work, but it is often rather awkward. I’ve had trouble with the long screws bending on the side-screw rail clamp. As a result, I put several of the Aristo Rail Clamps into play in these especially difficult locations, and they worked just fine. Because the screw is tightened vertically rather than horizontally, this makes a huge difference — in these special situations. If the reader doesn’t see that as an advantage, they still have the information to make their purchasing decision.

As to horizontal creep, this is a negligible factor. In all of my uses of these clamps, I have never noticed a rail slide horizontally more than a millimeter or two during tightening. First, the screw that might impel the rail away from the gap is also bearing down and pressing the foot of the rail sideways into the grooved opposite face, both of which act as brakes on lateral travel. Second, if I’m holding the free end pressed into place while wielding the screwdriver with the other hand; that pretty much eliminates the problem. Finally, the second screw on this connection is now driving that end into the gap, tending to close it. I have about a dozen in use and have had no trouble installing them or with them in service.

I’m not advocating the purchase of these clamps; I am only relating my experience with them. They solved a problem for me. The photos portray a static situation, not the “result” of any particular situation. When it comes to fairness, I’m mainly concerned with being fair to my readers. It is fair to say I’ve had successes and problems with all rail joiners, depending upon how they work and the location where applied. A rail connector of any kind is hardware to solve a problem, and look at how many different kinds of hinges there are on the market. About 80 percent of my layout uses the screw connectors included with the track since they are included at no extra charge and are reasonably reliable. About fifteen percent goes to Split-Jaw rail clamps because they are working where they are. The new Aristos occupy about five percent, those being the most difficult locations on the layout, and may take the place of other solutions in use if their employment is to my advantage.

I have a fresh bag of Split-Jaws waiting for service where they are needed, just as I’ll keep a bag of Aristo clamps good and handy. I hope my readers come away with the realization that this new type of clamp can be an important inclusion in their Maintenance Of Way train. —John

Where are the new Tower 55 locos?

I read with interest your review several months ago about the then Tower 55 (now T55) GE Evolution locomotives. Since I am a BNSF fan, I had purchased a couple BNSF units when they were first available, and am very pleased with them. However, my main modeling interest is Norfolk Southern, and I have been anticipating for several years now the new NS GE’s and EMD’s. These have been listed on their web site, as I said, for several years now.

I am writing to see if you have some (objective) insight as to when or if T55 is ever going to produce these models. If they are not, do you know anyone that is? I am a current era modeler, and really would like to have modern power before it becomes obsolete.

Greg Yanos
Pottstown, PA

I can’t shed much light, Greg. One of the problems with being the editor of a national publication is people play it pretty close when talking to you, for fear their words might wind up in print. And they might!