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Stuff you find at train shows

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Stuff you find at train shows
Posted by narrow gauge nuclear on Monday, April 16, 2012 1:42 PM

I went to the big train show this past weekend at Timonium MD.  I got a lot of neat stuff for my continuing work on my layout. 

I wandered by a table that had a 32" x 32" diorama of a 10 stall roundhouse and turntable complex done in HOn3. ( which is my gauge)

It was fabulously executed and must have taken over 100 hours to complete.  The round house walls were brick style cast from hydrocal plaster and painted brick red.

The tar paper roof was really well done..  It was fully lighted inside and out with 20 tiny incandescent lamps.  The interior of the roundhouse is super detailed with a full complement of machine tools, work tables, oxy-acetylene torch cart, water hoses, steam pipes, lathe, rolling mill, drill press, buckets and many other fine castings.

There are offices, power sheds and scrap pipe and rail storage sheds outside.

All track was hand laid and spiked code 55.

This love's labor was made by a Mr. A. Moos and complete in June of 1983! 

The tag on the table said $350.00 or best offer.  I told its current owner that HOn3 was certainly my gauge, but that any offer I might make would be an embarrassment.  I returned twice to look at this fabulous item.  The second time, he blurted out it is yours for $100.00 and I will haul it to your car for you.  I instantly snapped it up. 

I attached some first pass images that are just a sampling of what I got for my money.  The engine is mine, of course.

 

My small pike, Paradox Uravan and Placerville can't effectively and realistically support a 10 stall roundhouse!  What to do now?  One of those too good to be true, but I can't immediately use it, kinda' deals.

Richard

Richard

If I can't fix it, I can fix it so it can't be fixed

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Posted by carknocker1 on Monday, April 16, 2012 1:52 PM

What a great find, I have occassionaly found things that changed the direction of my layout , not as dramaticly as your find . Good catch and good luck !!!!!

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Posted by dstarr on Monday, April 16, 2012 2:18 PM

That's a gorgeous model at a wonderful price.   Ten stalls/steam engines doesn't seem excessive.  If you dispatch ten trains a day, that's ten engines.   If they don't make it back to the barn until just quitting time,  you need that many engines, especially as I figure one engine is always taken apart for heavy maintenance and thus unavailable.

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Posted by mlehman on Monday, April 16, 2012 3:26 PM

Richard,

That's a heck of a find and a deal! You're living large -- in narrowgauge.Big Smile

I think that the roundhouse is built from the Cibolo Crossing Durango roundhouse castings. These are not a stock item, but Al Boos has produced them regularly over the years. I got mine from him at either the 96 or 98 NNGC convention. I didn't get around to building mine until recently. Here's a pic of mine under construction:


I can't see enough of the sidewalls in your pics, but you can compare and confirm one way or the other.

It also appears that the builder used the Cibolo Crossing vents and Grandt Line smokejacks, as I did on mine. These also duplicate Durango roundhouse features.

Not sure about the origins of the TT. Does it have a drive or is it strictly manual? One option if you need a TT, but not that big of a roundhouse, would be to keep the TT and sell the roundhouse. But you may need to add or subtract finger tracks to suit you needs, so how easy this is to do depends on the drive and/or indexing the TT has.

Anyway, I'd say that was a well-spent Franklin.

Mike Lehman

Urbana, IL

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Posted by narrow gauge nuclear on Monday, April 16, 2012 4:12 PM

Mike,

I thought you might know more and I was waiting for your commentary.  Thanks so much for the rather full ID on the castings and other info.  The turntable was frozen from many years of neglect and sitting idle.  Do you think Al Boos could have made this?  It has hand writing inside, inscribed, "ABoos, June 1983.  The A Boos is connected as in ABoos with the "A" formed at the top of and above the "B" in Boos with the back of the B forming one leg of the A.  It looks like a stylized signature peculiar to a person's personal preference.

  the TT is not motorized nor indexed and has a manual hand wheel underneath.  It took about 4 hours of careful work to effectively hammer out the entire bearing assembly which was home made.  I did some minor repairs on the bridge railings and installed a completely new bearing assembly after machining down the shaft to fit another bearing I had here.  I remounted the bridge and now it is as smooth as silk and lithium geased with jut enough drag to hold the table in place when aligned without any drifting as the engine enters the table bridge.  As this was assembled in 1983, I do not know if the TT was a store bought item, though the bridge looks made of TT use.  I think someone might have kit bashed the TT.

The PUP has only three scheduled trains a day and owns two engines and one leased from the D&RGW.  By agreement, and at no charge, one of the RGS Geese makes a once daily mail, passenger and light freight run from Placerville to Paradox and back on the PUP.  The goose collects 100% of the revenues for the RGS only.  The center point on the PUP is the small Naturita/Nucla yard where there is a two stall engine house/repair and car maintenance facility.  Oddly, this key and rather important railroad junction is the hub of PUP activity, yet has no representation in the road name!  It is merely known as NatNuc junction as it enters neither township both of which are about 1.5 miles away, both north and south of this important point on the road.  Thus, a big round house is out of the question.

Richard

Richard

If I can't fix it, I can fix it so it can't be fixed

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Posted by NittanyLion on Monday, April 16, 2012 5:50 PM

If you're on the East Coast and you can't find one of those big cyrogenic reefers Walthers offered in the mid-90s, its because of me.

My fleet size is classified.  But I'm pretty sure I have a significant fraction of the existing unassembled undecorated ones.

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Posted by mlehman on Monday, April 16, 2012 6:08 PM

Richard,

That's interesting. Signed by Al Boos? My guess is that it was constructed as a display model to take to shows, although it's possible that he had it on a layout?

I'm pretty sure that Al is still with us, but it's been years since I've been to a NNGC due to my academic calendar. Certainly Cibolo Crossing is still in business and is carried in Walthers catalog. I've ordered several items recently. The address is listed as:

Cibolo Crossing

PO Box 2640

Universal City, TX 78148

Don't know if you have any plans to attend a NNGC, but that would be the ideal place to find a home for it. Certainly would  be of interest to some. Heck, if I hadn't finally put my castings to work six months ago, we'd be making a deal right now...Wink

Another possibility is that there are several foundations now seeking to preserve model railroad items. They might have an interest in a donation. It deserves a good home.

The TT sounds homemade and robust, but it could be any one of several different small manufacturers that have come and gone. It doesn't look like a Diamond Scale one, which I'm most familiar with. Manual drive is fine if your eyes can line it. The key is how track power is passed through it. Most likely through the pivot, as the Durango TT did not have an overhead power arrangement and it seems to be designed to represent that, doesn't it.

Mike Lehman

Urbana, IL

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Posted by CTValleyRR on Monday, April 16, 2012 9:49 PM

Great find!  I really love the interior detail.

Connecticut Valley Railroad A Branch of the New York, New Haven, and Hartford

"If you think you can do a thing or think you can't do a thing, you're right." -- Henry Ford

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Posted by dknelson on Tuesday, April 17, 2012 8:11 AM

Al Boos is an MMR and is shown on the NMRA website for the Achievement program with contact information

Since this is public information I assume there is no objection to posting how he can be reached

Lone Star Region AP Manager

Al Boos, MMR
Email AandVBoos3@aol.com

Dave Nelson

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Posted by narrow gauge nuclear on Tuesday, April 17, 2012 10:20 AM

Thanks for the info Dave and Mike.  I have e-mailed Al about this item, sent images and asked many questions.  Stay tuned, I will relay any history on this piece if Al did, indeed, build this stunning little HOn3 diorama in a future posting in this thread.

Richard

Richard

If I can't fix it, I can fix it so it can't be fixed

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Posted by BRAKIE on Tuesday, April 17, 2012 10:36 AM

Great find on a fantastic looking diorama.Thumbs Up

Larry

Conductor.

Summerset Ry.


"Stay Alert, Don't get hurt  Safety First!"

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Posted by 304live on Tuesday, April 17, 2012 12:42 PM

this looks like an amazing piece...

 

 

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Posted by steamage on Tuesday, April 17, 2012 12:48 PM

I found this Helium tank car lasts year at a train show.  Only go to a train show once a year, have my want list handy.

 

 

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Posted by narrow gauge nuclear on Tuesday, April 17, 2012 3:38 PM

Al Moos was kind enough to e-mail me a rather full history of this Durango Roundhouse diorama.  Rather than paraphrase, he has kindly allowed me to share the bulk of his response.

........................................

Richard,
I made the Durango Roundhouse on commission for a fellow here in San Antonio in early 1983 and spent about a month on it.  He intended to fill a large two car garage (at first) with an HOn3 layout of Alamosa to Silverton post the dual gauge period Durango to Farmington reverting to all narrow gauge.  His plan was to concentrate on Antonito - Durango - Silverton.  He had virtually all of the locomotives used on that section including a number of Westside's compounds.  He morphed even further collecting many of the standard guage cars and motive power and decided to build a separate building to hold a layout that would incorporate the line west from Denver through Minturn.  He actually just kept collecting all kinds of items for this proposed layout.  I scratch built  many of the NG structures for him including all of the Chama facilities - depot, oil loading dock, coaling tower, sand house, water tank, oil service house, stock yard in the "Y", and round house.  Also scratch built the Silverton depot, the Antonito coaling trestle and a number of other structures for him from about '78 thru '83.  Long story, short he never got around to starting any HO layout.   Eventually he decided to swap to "O" and On3, D&RGW equipment and began a major collection of stuff in O.  I did not do any work for him after the Durango Roundhouse.  He later sold off everything - around '00 or '01 I think.  Often wondered what happend to all of those models.
 
 I made up styrene masters for the roundhouse walls and cast them of Molding #1 plaster rather than Hydrocal (too flinty).  We had visited Durango in '66 and I had taken a number of photos but did not take any of the full back of the roundhouse.  I used a flock of books on research before I started the model.  I am sending the listing to you in case it might be of use in your modeling.  A number of modelers bought castings but I know of only three that have built the full building.  There are a few errors in the model.  It wasn't until Dick Dorman published his book "Durango, always a Railroad Town" in 1987 that I got a full look at the rear of the building.  Sometime early on, Stalls 1, 2, and 3 end walls had the rotting lower sash of the windows removed and the walls bricked up.  I used the same castings for stalls 7 - 10.  They should have had the full double hung window openings - some boarded up though.  Also, the rear of the boiler room had a window and door.  I've made a full ten stall house for my own layout and have modeled Durango.  I used the bricked up walls for the masonary ends but later, after the roundhouse was on the layout, did the contorsionist bit and carefully opened up the eight windows and fixed the boiler house as in Dorman's book, page 37.  Just this year I made a new end wall master and mold with the full doube hung opening.
 
The turntable is a Model Masterpiece Durango 65 footer.  You might check the ring rail and table.  I'm not sure, but think the ring rail is split and the table has wipers so that as it passes the 180 degree points perpendicular to the tracks into the roundhouse the polarity of the table rails change to match the tracks into the table.   Don't remember if the roof has rafters.  On my own, built around '86, I dapped the rafters as in the prototype so the doghouse on the K-36 & 37s would clear.
...................................
I also talked with Al on the phone for a bit and he is a very nice fellow and, like most MRs, was more than willing to offer advice and give freely of his vast knowledge base.
So, it appears that Al made it on commission and sold it to a fellow modeler in his town who never used it.  This original commissioner sold it to an unknown person and ultimately it wound up in the hands of a model rail in Pennsylvania who sold it to me last Saturday at the train show in Timonium Maryland and it now resides in Virginia.  I do note that this item has never been installed in any layout of all the previous owners!
 
Thanks to Al for filling in all those wonderful details.  I intend to keep this wonderful piece even if it can't be shoe-horned into my layout.
Richard

Richard

If I can't fix it, I can fix it so it can't be fixed

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Posted by mlehman on Tuesday, April 17, 2012 7:46 PM

Richard,

Absolutely fascinating! Thanks to you and Al, both. He's a great guy from the few brief conversations I remember from NNGCs years ago. Very glad to hear he's still at it.

And nothing like how I guessed it came about...Zip it!

Nothing ventured, nothing gained.Embarrassed

But we now know how these castings came into existence in the first place. I'd heard none of that, but it also shows you how this hobby and the products available are so dependent on both circumstances and the gumption of those like Al who jump in and produce something that becomes a legacy far beyond their immediate surroundings and an asset to the hobby as a whole.

This also gives me some ideas of how to finish my roundhouse. There wasn't really room for 10 stalls to look good, although I could have made it work, which is why mine's got fewer stalls. I want to build the powerhouse and stack at some point (another destination for coal loads), but it will end up at the opposite end than the prototype. I've got Grandt roundhouse doors back-ordered, so hope that's eventually filled. I don't relish building six of them. Got the wood along the rails in each stall installed just last week. I make more progress, then there will be pics.

Mike Lehman

Urbana, IL

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Posted by dknelson on Tuesday, April 17, 2012 9:42 PM

That's just great that you got the complete history of this structure from Al Boos.  I am sure you were going to treasure it anyway, but now it becomes extra special I am sure.

Dave Nelson

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