Tom Baker et al --
There appears to be a lot of interest in the topics on Tom's list, so I would
like to address each of them. I was 25 at the time, on the staff of the
Herald, and owner of two versions of the Enhorning diesel drive (and acquired a
third version later).
1. The Hobby Shop, St. Albans, VT, as I recollect, was a mail order business,
not a storefront. When The Hobby Shop closed, S Gauge Herald publisher Wally
Collins got the rest of the PermaBilt kit inventory as payment for
previously-unpaid ads in the Herald. These are the same kits that Bill Fraley
furnished to attendees at his recent hands-on "how to build a PermaBilt boxcar
kit" clinics at NASG Conventions.
2. Frankel was a con man. Not a very effective one either. All he asked was
for people to send him a buck or two for a catalog than never came. One
wonders how he could get rich on such a penny-ante scam. The US postal
authorities got after him for using the mails to defraud.
3. I actually visited Bernie Fate in 1962 in conjunction with the NMRA
National Convention in Cleveland. A bunch of us (all the known S scalers at
the Convention -- about six of us) showed up at his house while Bernie was
rehearsing at a local playhouse. His wife got him out of the rehearsal (to his
relief, I think) and he hosted us in his basement for a few hours. His work
was nothing short of artistry -- apparent perfection! Of course, everything
was N&W prototype. He even built his own N&W-specific tender trucks.
4. Regal Kits was owned by Wayne Riggle, who also did the plan page on the
back cover of nearly every S Gauge Herald. After he left the scene, much of
his line was continued by Bob Ristow under the name "Wisconsin Central Supply."
I suspect Dave Engle might shed more light here.
5. Frank Titman is undoubtedly the man who has contributed the most to the
survival and present health of S. You all know a lot about him already; enough
said for now.
6. All the Enhorning diesel shells eventually developed the hump. It was
caused by residual stresses in the cooled moldings that "relaxed" over time and
thus relieved the internal stresses. Such behavior is the result of
large-thickness material (the center screw-hole post) adjacent to
small-thickness material. The small thickness cools much more rapidly than the
large thickness, so when the large mass eventually cools it build up stresses
in the already-solid thinner material. Plastic is really a supercooled liquid
(i.e., not crystalline like metal), so in the presence of a continuous force it
distorts over time. (Glass is similar. It actually runs/deforms over long
periods of time. A glass rod leaning in a corner will become bowed over
several decades; 18th-century window panes are thicker at the bottom than the
top.) The Enhornings could have resolved the problem by leaving the carbodies
in the mold and allowing the mold to cool before
removing the carbody, rather than just popping the carbodies out of the molds
into ambient room temperature.
There are four versions of the Enhorning drive that I know of. The first was
essentially a non-powered unit with plastic inderframe, powered by Miller
axle-hung motors. These novel motors used the axle as the commutator shaft.
The second was the one described by Dave Engle. Each truck was essentially a
three-compartment gearbox. The two outer ends of the gearbox were equalized
(could rotate slightly side to side) with respect to the center portion. The
wheel axles protruded from the sides of these gearbox components. The
sideframes were rigidly screwed to the center portion; the lightly-sprung
journals contained the axle ends. The center portion or the gearbox had a
short vertical shaft that not only served as the truck kingpin, but also as
part of the drive train. Once the truck was inserted into the floor, it was
held in place by a monster planetary gear with a set-screw. These two gears
(one on each truck) were driven by a center-mounted motor (I do not know what
brand) via shafts that crossed over the planetary gears to engage the gear
teeth at the extreme ends of the loco. Flexible shafts were not necessary with
this arrangement.
The third was a heavy cast-metal frame that supported a hefty Pittman DC-94
double-shaft motor. It drove a gearbox on each truck via a flexible spring
shaft. Each truck's gearbox drove only one axle. The second axle was driven
via a rubber belt (an O-ring) on pullies behind the wheels in one side of the
truck. Weird as it sounds, these drives were very powerful and trouble-free.
The fourth (and last) style was simply awful. Each truck was built upon a
cast-zamac T-shaped bolster that supported a cheesy can motor mounted
vertically, with the worm pointing downward. The sideframes were screwed to
90-degree tabs cast as part of the bolster. The worm engaged a gear on one
axle, and the O-ring pulley arrangement drove the second axle. The underframe
was plastic. The entire loco was too lightweight, and the dual drives were
flimsy. The T-shaped bolsters, contaminated with lead, deformed and eventually
crumbled sooner than the body hump developed.
Postscript to Rollie Mercier -- The 1946 AF plastic cars were molded in tenite,
not styrene. Tenite is unstable over time, even in the absence of stress.
(Arden Models' X-29 boxcar kits' ends and lateral roofwalks were also molded in
tenite; they suffered the same fate.) As you stated, AF switched to bakelite
starting in 1947. Some years later, styrene replaced bakelite when the
passenger car doors became integral with the molded bodies.
Dick Karnes
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