Hi Pieter! Thanks for the welcome!
You said: "Would you believe that this past weekend I had collected notes and photos from your posts (here and on OGR) about your Baldwin project?" Well I'll be. Who'd a thunk it? I'm glad you can find some tid bits in my efforts to help your project along. "Combined with Matt Hogan's work...<snip>" I saw the pics in the S Scale Photo section of what Matt's doing. Nice! I like his idea on modifying the trucks. Doing that makes it a "sustainable" modification. In otherwords, you don't have to rely on a secondary market for a detail that may/may not be available or mfg'd any more, instead one is modifying the box stock part. I would love to be able to see firsthand how his repowered S-12's perform. My box stock one's are pretty good. I'd say they're within about 90% of my SHS switchers. (Maybe I just got some good ones?) Anyway, I would like to compare my S-12's to his repowered one. (Would prefer NOT to repower/modify the drives... but I have repowered many times in my HO past to get the performance I wanted.) "...they will be the guide for my planned modifications to an AM S-12!" Oh? What roadname will your S-12 be? They're cool engines. I'm very glad AM makes them, warts and all. FWIW: Was going through my KC Lines main folder and viewing the sub folder containing the "KC Prototypes". Was again wowed by the original paint scheme on the Chicago Great Western S-12's. Why... the CGW was just down the street from the Frisco in the West Bottoms! Hmmmm.... "Hope you get "back on track" with the West Bottoms project, and keep us all posted!" Ah, my West Bottoms layout. If I can't get this little layout up and running with a semblance of scenery in: There's no hope for me. My KC Lines West Bottoms layout has FAR less construction/track laying scope than almost all of my previous layout efforts, and every one of them got to the 100% functional stage and even some scenery. Main thing is that I am still figuring out the "new" S scale market (think: no more SHS) and how to adjust my "druthers" in regards to the scope of my roster I wanted. Looks like I'll be in the secondary market for the foreseeable future. All in good time, though. Right now the wife and I are getting pumped about our upcoming Colorado vacation. Serious S scale dabbling will have to wait until I return! Andre Ming
