Friday, August 5, 2022

Throw a couple of stakes on the layout

Three more from the bag of N-scale rolling stock. The flat cars are Roco #2308 German stake wagons, and on the end is a British brake van from Peco (I don't know its product number, but it appears to be a common item from Peco).

These stake wagons are the longest freight cars I've attempted to run on the layout. Their axle to axle measurement is about 52 mm, which is around 28' in N-scale, and 14-3/4' in HO. Previously, I thought the box car, with its overall length of 15' in HO, was about the limit for this track, but I had to give these stake wagons a spin to see what might happen.

There's a little hesitation as the 0-4-0 pulls through the switch, but after chipping out some ballast that was glued against the inside rail, the bump through the switch is gone. However, if the speed is too low when pulling these wagons and the van, the loco will stall in the switch when it rolls over the switch's plastic parts.

No such problems when pulling the stakers with the HO-9 Gmeinder diesel. These wagons don't look too out-of-place scale-wise as HO-9 items - as long as the viewer doesn't know better. One of the wagons has a broken stake that's been lost to time, and I'm thinking of giving it a proper yellow Lands & Forests paint job to see who I can fool :-)

No comments:

Post a Comment