And they're making high quality items too, not rushing them out.

Desertdweller & J3, Thanks for the info! The two reasons i asked was personal curiosity and because im doing a model railroad series soon. The Catch is, i want it to be about running a railroad with the same characteristics as Thomas the tank engine (Talking trains, lessons to learn, ETC). One of the "ideas" on my online notebook was a project of L&W cars, with the LW reporting marks. The cars include gondolas, box cars, center beam flat cars, coil cars and a couple of fictional cars of my personal choosing, sense they don't have covered hoppers, open hoppers or cabooses. I definitely want to get a few gondolas and box cars, sense I've seen them in person. So that would be a way to make some profit past loaning historic equipment to museums, or anywhere that likes running that kind of stuff, the CV&WS is a good customer with that one, they love to loan cars for their photo freights! (model railroad club, but it is true, they use most of my stuff on photo freights  )

Would love to hear some of those stories about lost loads and such, always makes my day a bit brighter reading about interesting railroad events!

I'm sure im not the only one wondering this (if i am... oh well!   ), But how does the freight car business work?

Now, I've learned from previous threads that this subject is a bit broad, so i'll narrow it down the best i can to a few simpler questions.
1. If a railroad is using another railroad's freight car, I.E. NS using a CSX freight car, does CSX get paid for their freight car being used?
2. How does a company get freight cars? like if NS didn't have any cars on the property, do they contact someone or (i seriously doubt this   ) go send a couple of MP15s to go snatch some from someone else's storage yard?
3. If a car gets in a wreck, does the owner pay for the repairs, does the railroad it happened on pay for the repairs, or if its a reroute/trackage rights, does the railroad in charge of the train pay for the repairs?

I'll probably come up with a few more as time goes by, mainly if someone can answer #1.

Boco was in teething troubles in season 5 last i checked.... don't know if he made any more appearances past that.

Quote from: RW James on February 09, 2012, 12:38:11 PM
[quote author=jettrainfan link=topic=19696.msg156840#msg156840 date=1328805627
Bulstrode really doesn't have a purpose anymore, he could possibly have a "second chance at life" like Bulgy had... but I don't think it'll happen. He had sunk, and heavy wagons dropping that far from the ground is going to do some serious damage. If you really wanted to have a "he's done for" scene, sir top hat can sink him for a marine reef project. (This is actually a common thing in NY & NJ)

I thought he was left on the beach for the kids to play on...
[/quote]

Yea, i was typing on my phone, forgot to mention that...whoops! 

What i meant by second life was, Bulgy was used as a hen house and later became a vegetable bus. As for Bustorde, he was left on the beach for kids to play on, as you mentioned.

I'd say dennis is easily a character for merchandise, along with molley, but she has made a good amount of cameos through the series. Bulgy made a come back, in a very clever way. I never thought they would've brought him back, and they gave him a happy ending with a lesson to learn.

D261... if you don't remeber, he insulted the engines quite a bit and almost made a passenger train late. The problem with him was his injector sucked up the inspector's hat, while this would be embarrassing on its own, the fact that he couldn't prove himself useful just made him look like a waste of time, explaining why he ran off at the end.

Derek had a similar problem. He had teething problems (THE DIESEL HAS A TOOTH ACHE?!). He could barely make it up Gorden's hill, running light! He did a good job with his train... till the hill and he probably blew something like the turbo, so he was sent home.

Bestrode really doesn't have a purpose anymore, he could possibly have a "second chance at life" like Bulgy had... but I don't think it'll happen. He had sunk, and heavy wagons dropping that far from the ground is going to do some serious damage. If you really wanted to have a "he's done for" scene, sir top hat can sink him for a marine reef project. (This is actually a common thing in NY & NJ)

Now an example of how NOT to end a character on the T&F series. Let's use Hank. He was sent to the island as a strong K4 american 4-6-2... good storyline for him. He likes to help... check. He helps Thomas in the end, all is happy and he never shows his face again! (As far as I know, I stopped at CGI) he litterly vanished, no cameos... no nothing. For all we know, he either went home, going through a major over haul, stuck in a shed.... or the great hand of modeling took him away to some place.

Now this last one is a good debate!

I never suspected much from hector, he wasn't like toad, where he was almost always assigned to one engine. He made his debut in hector the horrid and as far as I know, returned in the episode where james is taking coal. The story actually says they needed a lot of coal so they brought in hector. Think about it... brought in as an emergency extra because a town didn't have coal in the winter. I surely don't want to be using a huge hopper then need it for such a crisis. So he's probably in storage.

My point is, some characters have a reason they never showed up again, while others just vanished into thin air, never to be seen again in some cases! Let me know if there is another character that you'd like the ack story of and I'll gladly help explain.

The limited sound decoder is for the fA-2, FB-2, S4 and 2-6-0. The 4-4-0, 4-6-0 and 2-8-0 with sound have the full decoder sounds.

I grew up with a G scale Bachmann Big Hauler, at a young age (and its still alive! Aha! ) the problem with me back in the day was i always ran the train too fast. On30 would be perfect for them. Just teach them that the train can only go so fast on the layout.. I'd try to keep the speed under 75%. The wooden and plastic toys are also a good example of teaching them to run trains. I'll admit it, i used to crash them, but after a while i got sick of crashing cause cars would go around a sharp curves and tip over.

War bonnet is the famous ATSF scheme of a chrome white, red and yellow

Blue bonnet is the ATSF freight scheme of blue and yellow

Peach fuzz is a BNSF unit that seems to have a bright orange (more like a faded orange) that is like the earlier paint scheme of BNSF, but you can easily tell the difference if they were side by side.

BN executives are the BNSF SD80macs (correct me if wrong) that are ex. BN units from the early 90s with a green BNSF on the side.

CSX stealth is a gray body with blue lettering

CSX YN1 is like stealth, but has a lighter gray, and has a yellow nose plus yellow lettering.

CSX YN2 has the yellow nose, still light gray, but some of the parts are blue as well (SD40-2s, AC4400s, almost any freight loco CSX owned)

CSX YN3, also known as "dark future" paint has a yellow nose, yellow lettering and the rest of the body is blue.

NS has 2 differnt paint schemes, one plain and the other is a "horse head" whichis like the name, it has a horse head with the paint.

That's all I can think of off the top of my head, I've been to berea and heard these names reffered to (and I use them myself) so I think they're the offical names.

I model the Lakewood & Winterton railroad, which runs on the Ex. NKP, running from bellevue ohio to cleveland ohio. interchange is done with NS and the CV&WS, which just happens to be another fictional railroad, but is owned by the model railroad club I go to. NS meets up at a small interchange yard outside of the big yard they own. The yard in cleveland, right by the RTA's yard, rarely sees traffic stopping there these days, so the L&W got it. Power consists of steam engines, and older diesels. Rental engines from HLCX and LTEX are usually on the property. Trains consists of mixed freights, intermodals from NS, and coal trains.

When I get a bigger layout going, it will be really similar to the NKP (focusing on cleveland, lakewood, rocky river, vermillion and bellivue ohio) but some changes will be made. Mainly adding in bussinesses that I film along the chicago line and would like to add the flats industrial railroad in cleveland, sense that is accesible from the NKP. Right now I'm just mapping things out and going to paint the first engine for it by october. The loco is gonna be C&O 2707, it was stationed in cleveland ohio near the zoo, till around the 1980s when the illinois railroad museum got it. It has no lettering on the tender currently, so I'm gonna buy an undecorated bachmann 2-8-4 berkshire and go from there.

for a coal shoot like the classic one from season 2, then you can probably easily build one, it actually looks like a simple, yet fun project, i might try it myself if i find the materials at the local hobby shop (or i get around to it, busy with uploading youtube videos and school)

I saw 2 Bachmann S4s from a club member, they can haul 22 cars no problem out of the box, but going up a good sized hill with no running start, they stalled right at the top. my Bachmann 2-8-0 can haul a 20 car train up the same hill at 75 throttle. I'd say its a bit less than 2 percent grade. Technically, you can run a S4 backwards and forwards. The RS3 was built with its cab moved up a bit for better visibility going long hood forward, so that could also be ran forwards or backwards... heck, I've seen a Dash 8 and a High hood SD40-2 from a yard job that they didn't bother turning around go long hood forward from berea ohio to Bellevue ohio. Sure it must've been pretty awkward... but its prototypical.

I've never owned or ran a Bachmann RS-3 (would've loved to own 3 Southerns... i can dream, can't i?) but i know that the Bachmann GP7 is a great puller, matches up with a bachmann 4-8-4 or bachmann 2-8-0 no problem.

when did railroads stop using stock cars to deliver cattle and why?

(yes i know circuses still use stock cars)

merry Christmas! hopefully everyone has a train under the tree! 

I agree rodgertra, a good example is if bachmann made ALL SD40-2s. (http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=2123603) Its a railroad company in Brazil, and the main difference is the horns are closer to the hood than the roof like most American locos, some being ex. Union Pacific but the horns were still modified. Its a good idea to do your homework if your aiming at being prototypical. If bachmann were to make an ALL SD40-2, they'd probably have the horn on the top, because its not really what customers are aiming for. But no worries, you can always remodel it for it to be prototypical