The Smoky City

After watching eBay for over a year for one of these in good condition at a reasonable price, I finally lucked out.

I took a new approach to bidding on this one. My old approach was the way eBay recommends, which is to determine the most you’re willing to pay, then bid that amount, and let their automatic bidding handle the rest. But that method favors sellers and eBay, not buyers (It jacks up the price as bidders fight all week long.). This time, I determined early on that I was willing to pay no more than about $70. But I didn’t bid on it until five seconds before the auction ended. I also didn’t add it to my Watch List. Auctions that have more bids and people watching tend to get more views, and potentially more bids, and I didn’t want to encourage that. The bidding gradually reached $28 over the week, and after I won, I could see that two others placed bids in the last eight seconds, but at $34.00 and $36.99, they were too low to beat my $72.37 max bid, and they didn’t have enough time to bid again, so I won it for $37.99. …

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I always had a fondness for the blue and gold color scheme of this model that my dad had. He also had some N&W coal hoppers to go along with it. I bought this particular model from eBay as something to practice weathering on. I realized once it arrived that some of the hand rails had been broken, and the bell was missing. The horn broke as I removed the model from the box for the first time, unaware that the cab roof was loose (it fell to the floor). There’s also a small scratch on the front, but otherwise, the model was in good shape.

Because the hand rails are part of the chassis, the only way to replace the railings is to replace the whole chassis. So I would occasionally check eBay for replacements, but never really saw one that was a good deal. At the 2017 Great Train show, however, I found a dummy with missing trucks that had the N&W’s bicentennial color scheme (pictured below). I just have to remove the shell and fuel tank to re-use its chassis, which is molded in the same blue as the powered unit with broken railings. Swapping that part …

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My dad had this particular model as part of a set that consisted of freight cars branded with Kellogg’s breakfast brands, such as corn flakes and Eggo waffles. Last winter, I found one of these locomotives on eBay, sold as “new in box”. I was pleasantly surprised to find that it really had never been used, but unfortunately, the cab roof was loose, the horn was partly broken upon arrival, and the bell had completely broken off. Fortunately, all of the delicate railings were still intact. I’ve seen this model sold with black trucks and silver trucks, but I think the one my dad had featured black trucks, like this one.

It ran well out of the box, but I still removed the old grease and re-lubricated it. One other small problem the model had was that the original grease had been applied very heavily, and at one point it had started to leak out of the gears, and some of it made its way to the outer shell. No damage was caused to the paint job, it it did require some cleaning.

This was purchased to use for weathering practice. I originally also planned to replace the horn hook …

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This was another model my dad had in the late 70s, but I have very little memory of it. Mostly I just remember seeing it loose in a large box of mixed items, and I don’t recall ever seeing it run. However, it stuck out in my mind because of its unique shape and color scheme. It was the only c-liner I knew at the time, and it was probably my first exposure to the Pennsylvania Railroad’s “Tuscan Red” color scheme with the five yellow stripes.

While browsing some used HO scale models at the 2017 Great Train Show, I found one of these in good condition for only $10.00. I bought it as yet another locomotive to practice weathering on, and I originally planned to replace the couplers with Kadee knuckle couplers, but later decided the cheap model wasn’t with that effort. I’m just going to list it on eBay after weathering, anyhow.

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By a stroke of luck, this model of my dad’s somehow stayed with my own collection of trains when I moved out on my own after high school, and thus escaped the auction of many of my dad’s trains from his storage unit. Still, it has had a rough life. I have a clear memory from sometime in the early 80s of my dad, brother and me being surprised that it still worked after I was allowed to play with it for quite some time, off the tracks, as if it were a toy. I remember my dad or brother saying, “It’s a miracle!”, and then expressing my delight and surprise by repeating the phrase myself, over and over again. I was less than ten years old at the time. My memory of this model between that point and when I took my own collection with me is basically gone, but by that point, it had sustained damages on several parts:

• Missing draw bar in back (for coupling multiple units)
• Broken/missing draw bar pin on front
• Missing trolley pole spring
• Missing trolley pole retention post
• Broken and glue-smeared window plastic
• Damaged passenger silhouettes in windows
• Cracked chassis
• Missing headlight bulb

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My dad had one of these models in the late 70s, and it always seemed like a very good runner, with six pick-up and drive wheels on each truck, and a flywheel. Of all of the models in our house, this was the only one with a flywheel. Sometime in the late 80s or early 90s, something went wrong with this engine, possibly a short. It ran slowly and got too hot, eventually melting some of the plastic around the motor, rendering it useless. I later removed the gearing so that it could be pulled as a dummy, and I’m not sure what ever happened to it after that.

I found this same model, with upgraded details, at a good price on eBay last year. It runs just as well, or better, as the one my dad had. The previous owner, who had a B&N layout, had a friend of his add some details, including a new motor and flywheels, Kadee knuckle couplers, a flashing cab roof beacon, MU cables, a fuel tank breather pipe, painted hand rails, new number boards (white lettering on black background), and two parts that I can’t remember the name of (two things that on …

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