In replying to a question on the Sn2 list I started to figure out more clearly
where I am going in S scale. From time to time since I joined the list some
other members have encouraged (probably some in earnest, some tongue-in-cheek)
me to dispose of my very considerable accumulation of O scale and focus on S
scale. Ain't going to happen.
I am somewhat amazed as I occasionally come across some of the O and On2 I
built twenty and thirty years ago to think I had the motivation to do that
level of work. I think I still have the same skills, perhaps a few even more
highly developed, but not quite the same urge to work steadily on a major
project. S scale is a very nice size--I can't imagine ever going back to HO,
however many prototypes and detail parts have become available there relative
even to O scale--and I can imagine once I have retired and relocated in a year
or so having both S scale and O scale small operating railroads (although not
collocated), but while I PROBABLY am going to build those S scale wood kits, I
don't plan on acquiring very many more, nor probably even more of those
quite-nice PRS styrene cars (several of their NMRA closeouts are likely to be
stripped and repainted for prototype alongside them). I can't imagine paying
the price for S scale standard gage brass which focusing only on S scale would
argue for. I have, in a desultory fashion started to think about the few more
S scale cars I might still add to what I have already, mostly roadnames I want
(SHS Rutland single-sheathed box, Genesee and Wyoming PS-2 triple, Portland
Terminal single-sheathed box) with no sense of urgency to find them.
Otherwise, I am not averse to another few cars not on that short list if I come
across them at a tempting price, but my major buying spree in S scale is pretty
much over.
Now just looking to the time when I start laying track on which to operate them.
Jace Kahn
General Manager
Ceres & Canisteo RR Co./Champlain County Traction Co.
I picked up one each of the Sn2 items from Train and Trooper over the past
several months of his inventory reduction sale, and more than twenty years ago
I bought half a dozen Sn2 truck sideframe sets from Swede Norlin and a couple
Sandy River Sn2 car kits (mostly because I was buying one of everything Peter
Barney made at the time). It will never be a major commitment, as I have far
too much On2, much of it still to be built or finished; even there I have been
thinning rather than my original purpose of acquiring all the On2 available
(but back then there wasn't so much available).
The past year or so I've been buying S scale standard gage (without at all
abandoning O scale) and am about at my limit of what I can use:
six diesels and two steam locomotives and knocking on the door of a hundred
freight cars. Didn't plan even to get that many when I started.
And some Sn3, mostly at the lower end of the price spectrum. While I have six
or eight wood craftsmen kits in S scale, and perhaps a dozen good-quality
plastic cars to assemble, I have come to realize (partly through working on a
couple of PBL Sn3 car kits) that I don't really want more challenging projects
at my age--having two lifetime's supply of O scale left--and I prefer most of
my S scale standard gage pretty much ready to operate, such as the SHS.
Although not so much that I am going to buy my PBL Sn3 cars that way when there
is the kit option (very old prejudice of mine).
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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