May 2010
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May 2010 |
Pacific Electric Cars at the Orange Empire Railway Museum Spring Rail Festival! The Orange Empire Railway Museum held its annual spring festival on April 24-25, 2010 and all the normal activities took place. This year, two Pacific Electic cars shared duties as the Car Barn 4 shuttle allowing visitors to ride one car down to the barn and another one back. One of them was the recently refurbished and repainted Hollywood Car 717, back in it's original 1920 era colors.
A return to English's Model Railroad Supply (EMRRS)! In our November 2009 issue, we related the move of Montoursville, Pennsylvania's English's Model Railroad Supply (EMRRS) from the facility, where they had conducted business for years, into space in the Bowser Manufacturing facility made available when a large part of manufacturing was finally moved to China! So Trolleyville came back last month, enjoyed the many improvements made in the last six months.
EMRRS has installed two separate road race sets that customers can operate. We found them fun to operate while keeping the cars on the tracks.
This move, after 45 years in the Howard Street location, was a major undertaking which was estimated to take a year to fully complete. The move would permit many improvements not possible in the previous location. EMRRS is a well-known model train store that gets more out-of-town visitors, than you might expect. Once most true hobbyists visit and look around a while, they always seem to come back! If you are a modeler planning to paint and finish models and are looking for those fantastic color books on various railways, there is a huge selection. There also are an ample amount of large scale trains, including an LGB New Orleans streetcar, now becoming a rare item.
This store still serves the true died-in-the-wool model train hobbyist. First of all, there is always a sale table stocked with many kits and other items at very reasonable prices.
Are you looking for detail parts? When the store relocated, they constructed seven huge sliding doors for detail parts, so there are fourteen walls of such parts. Shown below are the J. L. Innovations, Cal-Scale and Pikestuff walls. Remember, each of these doors is eight feet high and contains 48 square feet of parts and there are 11 more walls of detail parts to examine.
We just could not resist shopping here. We eventually had over $500.00 worth of hobby items shipped back home. None of these items had we planned to buy. This is a really great shop! If you are traveling on Interstate 80 through western Pennsylvania, it is definitely worth taking a side trip on Interstate 180 and stopping in Montoursville. If you can't physically get there, call 570-368-2516, fax 570-368-5046 or email EMRRS@chilitech.net. Ask for Richard Cox, Retail Sales Manager. The store is open for business Monday through Thursday 9:00 AM to 5:30PM, Friday 9:00 AM to 6:00PM and Saturday 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM (Eastern Time Zone). You'll find the service great and the prices surprisingly acceptable! If you are in the area and do not stop for a visit, it will be your loss!
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Two Summer Train Shows Coming to California! *** The Great Train Expo (GTE) has announced two model train shows for California during July. There will be one show at Fairplex in Pomona, CA on July 10-11 and another in San Jose at the Fairgrounds on July 17-18. Public attendance levels at summer train shows, including the National Train Show sponsored by the National Model Railroad Association (NMRA) are sometimes disappointing and for this reason, they are getting scarce. So we urge those of you who live in those areas to consider visiting the show in your area. We try to never miss them! _______________________________________________ "...runs as good as it looks..." ! The new Bowser PCC Car was reviewed in Model Railroader (MR) magazine, May 2010 issue and the title comments were the conclusion. the entire sentence was "...With its reliable drivetrain, the Bowser PCC car runs as good as it looks...". This was the major reason for using the drive train first made available in 1999 and thoroughly tested and improved over the past seven years. The Southern California Traction Club, the East Penn Traction Club and Custom Traxx have been running so many of these units and they consider the drive almost "bulletproof". MR basically substantiated earlier Trolleyville findings as they found the drive to be "quiet" and "accelerated smoothly". There is one statement that is misleading. To install a DCC decoder, you removed the NMRA plug that is under the circuit board NOT the circuit board. Recently, a traction supplier, obviously not sufficiently familiar with the concept behind the new Bowser PCC, stated on one of the traction related yahoo groups that he "...was a little surprised at this approach (designing an improved shell over a proven drive)... The bottom line here is the Bowser PCC has a smoother and more durable drive and any other HO scale trolley on the market or soon to be on the market and the car is less expensive than any of them. Seems like Bowser took the correct path. The Bowser team also read the entire review, so more improvements are coming. Stay tuned. For the remainder of the MR review, click here! _______________________________________________ Plans are Being Made! The personnel involved in the selection and development of the next Bowser Ready-To-Run streetcars (there are more than one) met in Montoursville, Pennsylvania on April 21st to consider several concepts in advance of their next trip to China in May. Shown in the next photo, l to r, are Lee English, Bowser Manufacturing; Earl Johnston, Transquip Company and George Huckaby, Custom Traxx along with some of the cars being considered.
This team has been very open to ideas, suggestions and comments from all relevant interested sources. Lee English has to be the most open minded of all current model train manufacturers as he always listens intently to all proposals. Many concepts were on the table and they were not limited to HO scale.
Every single response to the January 2010 Trolleyville Times query about your opinions for the next Bowser PCC car were also considered and most of them are in line with some of the semi-finalists. So, please always remember that Bowser listens to reasonable suggestions. We can not stress the importance of the contributions of the East Penn Traction Club and the Southern California Traction Club to the F-line PCC project. Lee English commented during the meeting that getting knowledgeable modelers involved was the "only way" to do a streetcar model project. The team also considered the entire review of the F-line streetcar published in the May 2010 issue of Model Railroader so don't be surprised if there are several product improvements to that car also and some of these may be available for retroactive installation. We were also notified on April 26th that the pre-production samples for the next six cars, 1051 (San Francisco Muni-1960s), 1053 (Brooklyn-NYCTA), 1054 (Philadelphia PRT 1938), 1056 (Kansas City), 1060 (Newark - PSCT) and 1062 (Louisville Railway) would be sent for approval within days. They arrived at Bowser an April 27th and were at Custom Traxx by April 28th. Although there were minor issues to be corrected prior to production, these cars look very good. See them on the Bowser web site. look for these cars this summer. Also remember that they are produced in limited numbers so do not delay in getting your reservations to your dealer, Bowser or Custom Traxx. _______________________________________________ We Goofed! All of the Bowser F-line PCC cars replicate the little signs that San Francisco Municipal Railway placed in the standee windows of the F-line PCC cars. These little signs indicated the specific city that the car represented. Unfortunately, the Baltimore models, 12563 (powered) and 12763 (souvenir), erroneously show Los Angeles in the windows instead of Baltimore.
Retail purchasers of these cars need only provide a copy of the receipt of purchase to Custom Traxx, P.O. Box 641175, West Los Angeles, CA 90064-1175 to get two 'Baltimore' decals that can be used to cover the Los Angeles. There is no charge. These will be available from Custom Traxx this summer! _______________________________________________ The Bowser PCC's International Appeal!
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