Last week I said I think On30 sucks. What I meant was, it sucks as a medoum for modeling 2 foot or 3 foot gauge prototypes. I stand by that. However...
Once I was looking for a specific car - a 1973 Dodge Coronet station wagon. Every week I would search on line using several different search engines, plus I would manually check Craigslist postings in every city I could find listings for. Over the course of a whole year, I only found one and it was in poor shape. I was talking about it with one of my friends, and he did find one it would probably be in Reno (where I live). He'd read some artical that stated most people searching for a car - no matter how rare - eventually find it withing 20 miles of their house. So last year, sure enough, I found a 73 Coronet wagon in Reno. Not just any Coronet either - this one was a rust free big block car with factory metalic blue paint, and the price was actually very reasonanble. I didn't end up with the car (my wife said I could get it but I'd have to sell the Buick) but it proved my friend's point. So back to talking about On30...
When Bachmann started selling affordable On30 locomotives and rolling stock, I really liked it. I just couldn't bring myself to model a 3 foot gauge railroad with 30 inch gauge track. I searched high and low on line for prototype US railroads that used 30 inch gauge track and came back empty every time... so I figured the Bachmann On30 equipment - as cool as it is - would never be of any use to me. However...
Over the weekend I was looking through one of my favorite books (Railroads of Nevada and Eastern California, Vol. 1) and something jumped off the pages at me - the Eureka Mill Railroad - a real 30 inch gauge prototype railroad. Not just any railroad either - this one was practically in my own back yard. It took ore loads from the Virginia and Truckee over a 1.12 mile line to a stamp mill on the Carson River. The entire equipment roster constisted of a single 0-4-0 Porter, ten 5-ton ore cars, and two flat cars. At the south end of the line, the track was built on top of the flume that provided water to operate the mill. Talk about and interesting little sort line. So On30 turns out to be a great scale/gauge combination after all. You just have to find the right prototype...
No comments:
Post a Comment