Got my loop of Kato Unitrak today, so I took all the old Atlas Snap track off the layout and replaced it with the Kato stuff. I will be getting some turnouts here shortly so I have sidings for industries again. Running fast to see how well the Berk would behave, ie not climb the rail in the curves. Ran flawlessly, smooth and quiet. Not bad for an early Overland import. Only 2 plastic cars in the whole train, the Beagle Beer and the caboose(wood kit). The EJ&E is a brass sided wood kit, the gon and bulkhead flat are old IMP brass cars. With such a small layout. I plan to have every piece of rolling stock be brass. I do not need a lot of cars, and with the expense of brass, keeps me from buying a whole bunch that I dont need. If you have never owned brass, I do not expect for you to understand the desire to have everything in brass. Its a personal taste and desire. One that has to be aquired over time. When plastic with brass level detailing(but a whole lot more fragile) is going well north of $50 a car for brand new, then I would rather spend $150-350 for a brass car that while still fragile, its much more robust than its equil in super detailed plastic. Enjoy!
Silly NT's, I have Asperger's Syndrome
It runs nice and smooth
One source of brass freight cars you might not know about. When Bowser revived the old Varney line of stamped metal refrigerator cars (which assembled with a sort of tab-in-slot) they issued them in unpainted brass. When Varney sold them they were steel or tin and beautifully lithographed, some of the nicest lettering ever done on factory lettered rolling stock. Those Bowser cars would be worth seeking out because while the detail is a bit blunt they'd give you some nice variety versus the imported brass rolling stock.
Dave Nelson
Looks like it is running great.
-Kevin
Living the dream.
Runs great. What radius is that you're using?
That is Kato's basic oval set for a 4x8 layout(mine is 4x7), has a 21 5/8 radius. So for all purposes its 22". But Kato track is metric in dimension so when the converion to inches is done, its just a tad under. The big Berk does just fine, as does my brass RSD5 and PFM WP 2-8-2 heavy Mikado.