on 11/3/08 2:28 PM, Richard Karnes at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
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
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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