Santa has come and gone but I do believe I have been the benifactor of his visit.

Northern Pacific 0-8-0:
There has been a bunch of postings on the Atlas bulletin board about this new release from Walthers/Life Like. Some reported issues and some are thumbs up. My initial look is WOW! These engines have a great deal of added (not molded on) details. One must plug the wiring harness to the tender then using a supplied tiny screw and washer attach the draw bar tothe engine. Taking note of comments from others I carfully routed the (6) wires so they would not bind or press against either the engine or the draw bar. Some reported issues with wires pressing on these places such that it would cause some lifting of the engine and thus reducing pulling power. One issue is you will need to modify the storage box foam if you want to keep the engine and tender attached.

Once on the tracks and a few warmup laps both forward and reverse, I started adding a series of covered hoppers to see how she pulled. I guess the care I took in connecting the tender paid off. I found this engine could pull without slipping a total of 18 cars around my dogbone test track. I decided not to add any additional cars at this time. The track has 30" curves and the cars are all equipped with MT trucks/couplers. It ran into some problems backing up the 18 cars when pushing into one of the 'S' curves. On the straight sections - no problem. I was using an old transformer and was unable to test slow speed performance but my first test running was very satisfying.

People and More People (Woodland Scenics):
Park Bums (trouble at the carnival?)
Dogs and Cats (future dog pound?)
Picket Line (trouble at the bagel bakery?)
Canoers
Children
Newsstand
Policemen
Campers
Bicycle Buddies
Accident Waiting to Happen

Detail Items:
Road Kill - squished people, snakes, dogs, etc.

Vehicles:
Gold Cart
NASCAR race cars (144 scale?)

So what did you all get under your tree or on your layout?

__________________
Bruce (McToots) McElhoe
KAMRI President
and Web Site Moderator