scaletrains.com Announces Pending Delivery of Standard Turbines

[C855B]

Educate me. I'm ignorant. Did these turbines run from Council Bluffs west?

Yes. The question is whether they made it west of Salt Lake City with any regularity; I know they were persona non grata in Southern California due to the noise through suburban neighborhoods.

I received my pair today, along with an extra tender for #57 since ScaleTrains.com offered that grille configuration without a tender. The prototype acquired a tender within a year after delivery. Mine are "DCC ready" since I don't do sound; so there are now a pair of the recommended ESU #59629 LokPilot V5 decoders on their way. I'm not even going to open the boxes until those arrive, to minimize handling. 

[up1950s]

My 4 with tenders DCC ready have gotten to Lambert Hobbies . Paid invoice , being shipped Saturday ........... hmm today .

[cgw]

A heads up for those who want to add sound to their new GTELs,  for some reason scale trains changed their decoders.  The one in the GTEL  require the loksound  ESU58429  with the 21MTC connector.  If you ordered directly from scale trains ask them to program the sound file also.    (for some reason the sound file is only available from them).  If you ordered the decoder used in the previous n scale runs its not going to work.   they have the next18 interface on the board.     Scale trains price is competitive with other online retailers for the decoder.   

[w neal]

Yes. The question is whether they made it west of Salt Lake City with any regularity; I know they were persona non grata in Southern California due to the noise through suburban neighborhoods.

Its hard to imagine the residents of suburban Omaha being super thrilled either. Wish I had a time machine. I'd park in Ralston or La Vista and just listen for one...

How about the Marysville Sub, did any make it on those tracks?

[C855B]

Yeah, but Omaha = UP, UP = Omaha. Or Nebraska, for that matter. That's why they call their highway department "Nebraska Department of Roads", and not "Transportation" like most other states, implying there is and will be no regulatory authority over the railroad business, i.e., UP. I was a systems contractor at NDOR for several years.

I'm not sure on the Marysville. It wasn't the traffic monster then that it is today. The turbines needed dedicated fuel facilities, which at the time would be CB, North Platte, Cheyenne and SLC. Marysville and KC would be doubtful. Sounds like I need to spend some time in the UPHS library I have in the living room. Wish I had Turbines Westward, but it's long out of print and a king's ransom when one appears for sale.

[arbomambo]

[wazzou]

Nice!  How’d you get weight in all of those reefers?   

[arbomambo]

They came already weighted.

[Nato]

       I received my three locomotives yesterday, two sound and one DCC only. All I can say is 'Wowzzers!" Nate Goodman. (Nato). 

[spookshow]

I wonder if they corrected the slight binding issue with the base plate for the motor.

I tried to find the thread where I discussed my findings... but could not.

Basically the motor poles were getting pinched if you screwed the lid on tight over the motor.  My solution was to motor tool a depression in the plastic motor mount base a bit to give the poles some room.

Completely different design here.

8500 -



4500 -



-Mark

[peteski]

Full width chassis.  C855B will be surprised.

[C855B]

Full width chassis.  C855B will be surprised.

More like disappointed. 

[CBQ Fan]

These things are just awesome!  Fun as all get out to run!

[C855B]

You guys shamed me into letting out the factory air.



Quick looksee for a couple of issues.

Span bolsters join each truck pair. However, there doesn't appear to be any weight on the dummy truck, the truck's bolster pin loosely sliding in the spanning member. It's possible there could be a few grams holding it down, but if it is, there's not much.

Retrofitting couplers: usual practice for ScaleTrains.com, their sprung-knuckle coupler in an MTL 1015-compatible box, cast into the pilots. So we TSC fans are again not accommodated without hacking the crap out of things.

Here's something that really surprised me - it is apparent that they designed with the intent of powering the inner trucks, via a universal joint to each end truck, which have the gear towers. It is old-school HO practice, with a worm shaft down the center of the driven trucks and worm gears on the axles. I can easily imagine that the test mules probably didn't work well enough for production.

(Now that I've had one apart I was seriously mistaken. Must've been a bad day. Or something. It has a conventional N scale geared tower drive. So, never mind.)

Haven't run it yet. Again, waiting on decoders, the two I have are DC/DCC ready.

[peteski]

Mike, I'm curious why you didn't buy them with factory installed (ESU) decoders?