Brittle Varney casting

[RAM]

Now we are really getting off base.

[jbrock27]

LOL!  1st, 2nd or 3rd??

[jim s]

Hopefully home plate..... I guess we have gotten a little off subject but it is the world series.... got my replacement chassis today gonna try and put the Varney together tonite.. hopefully with better luck one front pilot step is gone but what can you do when you try to get old parts. Ill be glad to get it together and move on to a  penn line that's waiting on the shelf. Got half a dozen roundhouse and some Mantua to build also... my wife is beginning to think I am a train addict... so what's so bad about that

[Trainman203]

I especially loved the Roundhouse 0-6-0, an SP engine much like T&NO engines we had back home.  I passed up a chance to get an assembled and painted one for $30 at a train show last year, still kicking myself.

Anyone remember "Aristo-Craft" HO steam engines?  I had 2 of them, still have the tender from the "Royal Blue" 4-6-0, have no idea what happened to the engine.  I thought they were good looking at the time but looking at pictures today, they were pretty crude models.

I tried to make a MoPac 2-8-0 out of the Mantua 2-8-2 by cutting the frame shorter, an indescribable ordeal with a razor saw.  Then I tried to put the boiler from a scrapped Varney Casey Jones on it.  Of course it didn't fit over the motor. I ended up losing two engines in the process when I could have just bought a Varney Old Lady 2-8-0, a fairly nice looking engine, and kept the other two.  But, then, I was 16 with no money, no tools and not much sense of figuring out the best option, we've all been there.

Baseball footnote.... I am in a family that had three college quarterbacks years ago.  Baseball didn't matter to them at all.  MLB is on tv Saturdays during the season but no one here watches it much ........  In general Major League Baseball is a sports footnote in the Deep South where SEC college football is almost an obsession..... Like model railroading  

[jbrock27]

Jim, I thank you for being gracious enough to understand for allowing some baseball talk to filter into your topic.  My apologies for aiding in taking it a little bit off course.

[jim s]

Jbrock, no problem no need to apologize... I know everyone is having fun... just for a heads up I got the Varney dockside up and running last night ... on to more projects. Might try to recast the original parts but that's a project for a different day....

[jbrock27]

Thanks.
Glad to hear you had success!  Never seems like the projects end, does it?

[Woody Elmore]

Roundhouse steamers were good kits. A friend re-motored his 2-8-0 and got a really nice running engine. I know from other people that the switcher, an SP prototype, performed well.

I found a solution for those broken steps on zamac frames. Use plastistruct parts and make a step - if you have to, take off the remaining step and do a pair of steps.. Epoxy or ACC the step in place and you won't know the difference. The plastic may be a little thicker but then the whole die cast engine is bulky!

I bought a Varney Old Lady after Varney was sold to Life-like. What a sorry kit that was. Life-like used some cheap motor and the parts barely fit. I understand that Lew English of Bowser wound up with the dies. The zamac engine era has passed but the kit engines were a significant part of the hobby for many years.

My southern relatives all watch Nascar - it is hardly noticeable as a sport up here. Baseball has really gotten slow that's why so many schools are into, dare I say it, soccer.

Thanks to the Bachmann people for letting us stray off topic. If Bachmann has been making engines when I was really active in HO I probably would have one of everything they produced (except Thomas).

[jbrock27]

Baseball has really gotten slow that's why so many schools are into, dare I say it, soccer.

Soccer is a fall sport Woodrow and does not compete with baseball.  It is lacrosse, a spring sport, that has been diverting school kids from playing the 'traditional' sport of baseball.  In your neighborhood, this should be self evident.

[jim s]

I live in the deep south Florida.. the kids play baseball year round. Football in the fall and soccer in the spring.. and believe it or not hockey leagues. I watch a lot of baseball, hockey and of course nascar. Can't stand my local buccaneers... so football is out unless I really feel like watching someone else play. Trains are my release and I'm glad to see all the discussion of everything.... good people in these forums... everyone is friendly.