From: Alan Lambert Richard, As I stated in earlier post , all that is needed is the bolsterplate end off of a S-Helper knuckle coupler which they include with their cars.It will not interfere with underbody detail. I know. thanks, Alan
--- On Wed, 4/13/11, Richard Karnes <[email protected]> wrote: From: Richard Karnes <[email protected]> Subject: {S-Scale List} Forward vs. Backward Compatibility To: "S-Scale" <[email protected]> Date: Wednesday, April 13, 2011, 7:33 PM All -- So far I have sat back and watched the debate on the SAL B-7. But I can stay silent no longer. There are two things here that really bother me: 1. I thought I would never say this, but here I am agreeing thoroughly with John Degnan. And disagreeing with Carey Probst and others. Let me give you a little personal history before I get to my point. I started in S scale at the age of ten when my folks gave me an AF Hudson set to replace the Lionel O-27 train that I gave to local Chinese immigrants. I immediately began looking in model magazines to find scale-like equipment to go with my Flyer stuff. At age 12 my folks bought a house with a basement, so I had space for a layout. At 13 I built my first scale kit -- an Ambroid ACL watermelon car. (I still have it.) This car was fitted with Northeastern sprung trucks with hirail wheelsets and Stewart scale dummy couplers. I built my layout with Tru-Scale milled roadbed and code 125 brass rail. I taught myself to build turnouts. By age 16 I had my second basement layout. All my cars had either dummy or operating scale couplers, but still sported the hirail wheelsets. In my college years, whenever I was home on vacation, I gradually converted all my equipment to scale wheelsets -- even the old AF. Why am I telling you all this? Simple. There were an awful lot of us S scalers back in the 1960s and 1970s who were not afraid to modify and build. Our objective was to have realistic equipment on realistic track. We viewed AF merely as a starting point for realistic equipment. And any time a new kit came out (mostly from Kinsman scale models), there we all were, buying and building them. Today everything is different. The vast majority of S people are hirailers or tinplaters with little interest in building kits. The vast majority of these people will never build anything. Based on some of the remarks regarding the SAL B-7, most are not even willing to convert a scale car to hirail -- assuming they'd actually build the kit in the first place. Now to my main point: The detail that has to be compromised if a manufacturer were to make a kit or a built-up model) compatible with hirail wheelsets and AF-compatible couplers are the following: 1. Repositioning underbody cross-bearers and/or making them shallower so as to provide clearance for the larger flanges. 2. Eliminating the coupler pocket and air brake piping. 3. Modifying end-sill detail so as not to interfere with the large AF-compatible couplers. 4. For longer cars, narrowing the center sill to provide sufficient truck swing for operation on 20-inch curves. 5. Use smaller stirrup steps at the ends of cars in order to cope with the wider truck swing (as SHS does with their house cars). I would think that the modeler who would actually build the B-7 car kit for operation on a hirail layout would certainly have the skills to make these changes himself instead of expecting the manufacturer to provide alternate parts for him. Therefore, I believe most of our e-list members who espouse "backward-compatibity" wouldn't buy the kit no matter what. 2. Gathering and bookkeeping orders for the B-7. It has been difficult for me to track what's happened here because there was not a continual drumbeat for reservations on the S-scale e-list (or elsewhere). As one who has spearheaded several sucessful projects on this e-list and elsewhere, I have to tell you that there needs to be someone to act as chief bookkeeper/drum-beater. I guess this is what John tried to do, but I do not recall seeing periodic notices that said, for example, "all we need are 'X' more subscribers and we are a go." If we really want a SAL B-7, someone needs to come forward as chief drum-beater/bookkeeper and restart the project. Otherwise, we're just hand-wringers. Finally, let me say something about the ubiquity of foreign-road equipment on any given railroad in the mid-20th century (the era of the B-7): Every railroad's cars appeared on every other railroad. The appearance of foreign-road cars was pretty much proportional to the total number of cars each railroad owned. There were lots of NYC, SP, PRR, and UP cars everywhere. But you could even see, for example, WA&G, KO&G, and FW&D cars thousands of mles away from their respective homes. There were (and still are) no transcontinental American railroads, yet freight cars never had to be unloaded and reloaded at interchange points. The cars just trundled onto foreign-road rails. The SAL was no podunk operation; SAL cars were pretty common everywhere. After all, the SAL ran freight trains a thousand miles from the DC area to many Southern cities all the way down through Georgia and Florida on a beautifully-maintained double-track main line. You can't really model your favorite railroad effectively without a significant percentage of foreign-road cars -- including SAL. Dick Karnes [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/S-Scale/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/S-Scale/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: [email protected] [email protected] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [email protected] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
