Large Scale Central

Rock Island passenger train book arrived

Reviews
#1

Hey Y’all;

Rock Island passenger train book arrived in mail today. I sort-of model some Rock Island in HO, and a bit of “what-if” in On30.
Had been meaning to get around to getting this for several years and finally decided might ought to while it is available.
I’m going to say it is informative and useful.

Not sure what modeling projects will come from it.
But, 80-something year old fellow in model train club gave me an A-B-B-A set of F-something locomotives of recent production by Mantua in the full passenger paint.

So, I totally blew my October budget getting this book and a couple 1/2 price HO scale Walthers Mainline passenger cars to re-decorate for RI.

Would be fun to have both the health and income to do up a G scale train with mixed head end freight and piggyback cars and a dozen or so mixed heavyweight and lightweight passenger cars.

#2

Too bad they won’t pass for Christine.

http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=135780

#3

Forrest, I bought a new Mantua F unit just before they closed up shop. The thing doesn’t have the RP25 wheels, and so it will not run on code 83 track. I don’t know if they all were like that or not, so I am just giving you a heads up that it could be an issue.

#4

I grew up around the Rock Island in Des Moines IA. Model it in N and HO - but not currently as we are still working on our 1900 Victorian house restore.

Anyway - in HO I have old Varney F3’s in Rock Island Freight scheme that I used Athearn F7 chassis to replace the chassis that had Zamac cancer. Have an A-B-B-A set of them. I model the 1950’s era and have quite a few fallen flag freight cars like I use to see growing up. You might look to use the same process on the Mantua ones you have.

#5

David Maynard said:

Forrest, I bought a new Mantua F unit just before they closed up shop. The thing doesn’t have the RP25 wheels, and so it will not run on code 83 track. I don’t know if they all were like that or not, so I am just giving you a heads up that it could be an issue.

Has turned out to not be an issue, they do fine on the little fragment of an HO layout I have at home, which is Atlas code 83 rail. The modular layout at club is code 100.

That is where they will see most of their use since that layout is about 20 feet square and what’s at home is a strip about 7 feet long.

That picture is pretty much the entirety of what I have at home.

Building colors are based on SAL with my yellow being more yellow than ochre.

MY IHC 0-8-0 and 2-6-0 with larger flanges run okay on the code 83.

There is one loco, I forget what, that you can tell its large flanges are hitting the spike heads, but that’s okay, it’s not one used often.

I’ve had one A-B set for about a year while Bill tried to find where he had stashed the other pair.

They were maybe run once by Bill to make sure they did run. Wheels are shiny like they had never been out of the boxes.

I have yet to get Kadee couplers in the ends.

#6

Steve Weidner said:

I grew up around the Rock Island in Des Moines IA. Model it in N and HO - but not currently as we are still working on our 1900 Victorian house restore.

Anyway - in HO I have old Varney F3’s in Rock Island Freight scheme that I used Athearn F7 chassis to replace the chassis that had Zamac cancer. Have an A-B-B-A set of them. I model the 1950’s era and have quite a few fallen flag freight cars like I use to see growing up. You might look to use the same process on the Mantua ones you have.

Hey, cool.

Might try the Athearn F7 thing under a couple Bachmann FT shells which I want to do up in Minneapolis and Saint Louis green and yellow with the hatch in top of nose.

Just got to get around to acquiring the mechanisms. Had a nice collection of Athearn locomotives when I left HO for On30 in late 1980s early 1990s but gave away or sold most of my HO over the next decade.

I started back in HO when our club formed in 2009 because I was the only person who did On30, and the only person who even knew what Gn15 is.

If you wanted to be part of the thing HO was the one and only way to go.

The one person who had a G railway in their yard has since retired, sold their house, and moved away.