New products for September 13, 2012

UPS has finally allowed a model railroad manufacturer to use its logos! That's a positive development!

Oh Ya!
I think I will be needing to get some of the L&N standard tool sheds. I really wish manufacturers will read this comment, because there really isn't any models of L&N stuff for sale. They were a major part of the now CSX and were THE railroad for the Civil War. Hopefully there will be some more models of L&N, especially in HO scale, and reasonably priced. Why not kits?

Alexander
Modeling the L&N in HO scale from the 1950's to 1982

I saw Con-Cor's MU's running at the big show in West Springfield, Mass. last January; they looked beautiful and ran well.

I'd love to hear a demonstration of the sound unit Con-Cor sells for these models. The one time I've visited the trolley museum at Warehouse Point, Connecticut (just east of Hartford) an electric freight motor from Cornwall, Ontario was running. Every time the motorman blew its horn I did a double-take, because it sounded just like the MP54's that went past my Uncle Johnny's place in Secane, PA, on the line to Media and West Chester.

I lived in the Frankford section of northeast Philadelphia until 1953, when I was seven, and in one of the city's western suburbs until I went off to college; and my Dad didn't drive an automobile until 1960, I rode these MU cars many, many times. As a teenager I drew and sent Christmas cards featuring a cartoon of the front end of an MP54 with a holiday wreath between its porthole windows.

I now model the Delaware & Hudson and the Boston & Maine, but it would be tempting to build one of the 4x6' layouts in one of Atlas's first plan books, scenic it like Frankford, and run two or three MP54 MU's along with a Baldwin switcher for freight and a GG-1 with a through passenger train. That prompts a question: what's the minimum radius curve that Con-Cor's models will run on reliably?

Incidentally, after wood-bodied passenger cars were banned in the 1950's, the B&M acquired some ex-Pennsy MP54 trailers, covered the end portholes, and ran them in commuter service to Boston's North Station. Con-Cor has offered two-car sets of unpowered cars decorated for the B&M and a few other lines.