Why must they MaK us wait so long!
SBB CFF FFS Am 843 diesel No. 843 089-9, one of the large number of Vossloh-built MaK G 1700 locomotives now running around Switzerland and elsewhere in Europe, flies into Pratteln on October 12th, 2006, with a short local freight.
IF I WASN’T already on tenterhooks waiting for a whole tranche of US railroad models from the likes of Athearn (e.g. I note the modernised Penn Central ‘Fs’ are delayed until the end of November now), Intermountain (Hyundai containers?) and Atlas (where the hell are these freight cars that should have been out in late summer?), European manufacturer Mehano also seems to be taking forever to get its ‘HO’ scale Vossloh MaK G1700 into the shops.
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Atlas is to produce another modification of its forthcoming 5,701cf 4-bay.
HOT ON THE heels of its previous alteration of the 5,701cf plastic pellet hopper, which will see the grain hopper version produced (announced in late August), Atlas has released details of a further tooling change which will see the slightly larger 5,748cf and 5,800cf capacity hoppers manufactured as well.
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It’s surprising that no firm has announced a ‘mass market’ GEVO loco.
The 150 tons or so of Canadian Pacific ES44AC No. CP 8703 makes a deafening noise as it crashes over the diamonds at Blue Island Interlocking, Illinois, on May 22nd, 2006, with a coal train for IHB’s yard a few miles down the track. It’s partner was AC4400 No. CP 8556.
ALTHOUGH THE OVERLAND subsidiary Tower 55 has been steadily working its way through the numerous versions of General Electric ‘Evolution’ series locos that have so far been produced, I am still somewhat surprised that a company like Athearn or Kato hasn’t announced one of their own. After all, at over $250 a pop ($300 with sound and DCC), the Tower 55 models are not cheap.
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The layout plan is almost finalised, so baseboard building is next.
AFTER MANY YEARS of doodling and procrastinating, I finally have a track plan for a US outline model railroad that I’m happy with. Now all I have to do is build it…
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Ring the bells, crack open the champagne, because finally we get a TTRX spine car!
IT WAS STARTING to get to be something of a sick joke, but around a decade after the first three-unit 57ft platform spine cars took to the rails, we will be getting a ready-to-run model version, conveniently sized for HO scale.
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