HO cache

(Photo by BobbaLew.)

An old friend has scored a massive cache of HO-scale model-railroad equipment.
HO gauge is 16.5 millimeters between the rails, and has been around for years. 3.5 mm equals a foot.
A neighbor and I built a large HO layout as teenagers in the late ‘50s.
It was two 4x8 sheets of plywood butted together in an “L.”
The track was on two levels, and had two yards.
Each yard was within a loop of track, and a third loop climbed to the higher level.
One yard was at the higher level.
More was in our layout than rolling stock.
My neighbor even constructed some plaster scenery.
And I constructed a steel truss bridge for it out of balsa wood.
I submitted it as a high-school Geometry project; got an “A.”
It looked great.
Spray-painted flat black.
It looked like the real thing.
Like me, my friend is a retired transit bus driver from Regional Transit Service in Rochester.
He drove bus way longer than me.
My career driving bus ended suddenly at 16&1/2 years because of a stroke.
He was a mentor of sorts, since my approach to the job ended up being his; which was “go with the flow.”
My attitude became that only three things mattered to Transit managers: -1) show up, -2) don’t hit anything, and -3) keep your hands outta the till (farebox).
A fourth thing that only mattered to us bus drivers was -4) don’t get shot.
Our clientele was difficult and could go ballistic. Dealing with them meant “don’t rock the boat.”
We soon learned to not dispute fares. It wasn’t worth it.
Whatever backup we could call on was -a) far away, or -b) glomming donuts at Mickey-D’s.
Sadly, my friend has fairly severe Parkinson’s Disease.
Not debilitating, but somewhat an impediment.
Like me, he’s ornery, as bus drivers tended to be.
Although my wife suggests that orneriness may be why we succeeded as bus drivers.
One snowy morning last week he was perusing the want-ads — he usually never reads the newspaper.
There amidst the puppies and sundry junk was this large cache of HO equipment the seller wanted to part with.
“I don’t drive, so whaddya got?” my friend asked.
“I’ll call ya back,” the seller said.
“I lost count,” the seller said, when he called back. “Perhaps 30 engines, and a slew of freightcars.”
HO is half-O; O-gauge being 1&1⁄4 inches (32 mm) between the rails; most commonly 1:48 scale. HO scale is about 1:87.086.
O-gauge was common to Lionel Trains, but to model to O-scale would have made rolling-stock so large it would overwhelm everything.
O-scale was the track scale used by Lionel Trains, but their equipment was to a much smaller scale.
Lionel was a toy train;. not very realistic, but rugged and operable by children.
But to scale it to real size woulda made it HUGE.
Lionel also used three-rail tinplate track — hardly very real looking. I preferred American Flyer, because it was at least two-rail track; more realistic.
HO track was more realistic yet; two-rail on plastic ties.
And it was small enough to allow equipment scaled to size.
I had a Lionel trainset myself, and an uncle had a massive collection.
There was joy in operating model trains, no matter how unrealistic they were.
When I was a child I visited a friend who had a massive Lionel layout.
He was a spoiled-rotten only child, and had everything.
His layout was HUGE and intricate.
And he had Lionel’s premier engines, the Santa Fe warbonnet F-units, red and silver, pulling a train of model streamlined fluted stainless steel passenger-cars.
Lighted passenger silhouettes in the windows; the Santa Fe “Super-Chief,” the railroad’s most glamorous train.
He also had most of Lionel’s trackside doodads; like the barrel hurler, and the flashing highway signals with crossing-gates that slammed down at the speed of light. (Look out!)
My friend called the seller back the next day, and told him he was waiting; 300 smackaroos in hand. (The ad offered everything for $300. —Perhaps $2,000 worth of equipment.)
The seller showed up with five large cardboard cartons. The huge cache was unloaded onto my friend’s train-table — which is in his cellar.
Except for one carton; the one with bundled track.
His layout is rather basic; just a 4x8 sheet of plywood with reversed ceiling drywall on top. A single loop of running track is laid out on it.
89 bazilyun HO engines were unloaded onto the tabletop, and the slew of freight cars.
Much of it is rather trashy; cheap shiny plastic.
But quite a bit isn’t.
So here we are like little kids, instead of the old geezers we are, running anything and everything.
—I lost interest in model railroading for two reasons: -a) it’s not very realistic, and -b) a layout collects dust.
HO is way more realistic than Lionel, but the rail is nothing like reality. It’s way too heavy.
It has to be that way to accommodate wheel-flanges about 20 times as deep as reality.
The flanges in the real world are maybe two inches deep.
To keep an HO train on the track, the flanges are much deeper — compared to reality.
—Another consideration is that the curvature of the track is much sharper than reality.
Curvature that sharp is only found on industrial sidings. A heavy-duty mainline railroad never went that sharp.
Railroads tried to avoid curves. The wheels don’t differentiate, so one wheel slides on curves — the squealing you hear.
Curvature also slows down trains. Flanges are dragging against the railhead.
My friend’s track loops at each end of that 4x8 sheet of plywood — that’s less than a 24-inch radius.
A Wikipedia article says 24-inch curvature is too tight for a six-axle engine. Sounds right; but we were operating quite a few six-axle units without problem.
And all the wheels were flanged. On steam-engines with six or more driving wheels, the center wheels are unflanged, so the locomotive can negotiate the curvature.
We had a black and white six-axle Lehigh Valley Alco Century unit, plus a gigantic Baltimore & Ohio freight-cab, what EMD marketed as its SDP40F.
The SDP40F was originally for Amtrak, but derailed at speed so much it was removed from service, and sold to freight railroads as freight power.
I’m not even sure Baltimore & Ohio had such a unit.
They are after 1973, and Baltimore & Ohio was merged into Chessie in the ‘60s.
No matter, the SDP40F uses three-axle trucks; all wheels powered.
Only the outside wheels on an E-unit were powered. —Three-axle trucks, but the center axle unpowered.
We ran that model SDP40F without problem.
And there were other six-axle freight-engines we also ran. Supposedly, the curvature has to be at least 27 inch radius to run a six-axle unit.
But a 4x8 sheet of plywood won’t accommodate a loop of 27-inch radius.
Of course, there’s a lotta side-play when the wheels are on the track. Way more than reality.
—A third problem is the speed of trains.
My neighbor and I once figured out the scale speed of a beautiful Baltimore & Ohio Athearn Budd RDC he got, and it was 250 mph!
Even more incredible is that it stopped in about 300 scale feet. —From 250 mph!
That’s enough to throw the passengers on the floor.
My friend and I were operating his many locomotives at 100 scale mph and up.
100+ mph into curves that would tumble a real train off the track.
Railroad equipment is far more top heavy than highway equipment.
Slam it into a curve, and it falls over.
Ya can’t operate HO at normal train speeds.
I access the Roanoke rail-cam, and a train is rumbling by at about 5 mph.
The speed-limit on the old Pennsy grade over the Allegheny mountains is 30 mph.
HO won’t go that slow. 100+ mph requires a lotta horsepower. 60 mph is about as fast as freight-trains go; perhaps 70.
A heavy drag-freight might do 10.

“These are GP7s, or GP9s; I don’t know which,” I said.
“Supposedly the way to differentiate a GP7 from a GP9 is to count louvers.
And these are GP38s. You can tell, because they’re not turbocharged,” I said.
“A turbocharged unit has only one exhaust stack; the turbocharger. And an unturbocharged unit has two small exhaust stacks directly over the engine.
An unturbocharged engine has two Roots superchargers geared directly to the engine. A turbocharged engine has a single turbocharger (exhaust turbine powered supercharger) at one end of the engine — so only one exhaust outlet.
And it’s a big rectangle,” I said. “You could tell a model of a turbocharged EMD engine.”
The GP38 was a special model made by EMD at the request of the railroads. They were stymied by turbocharger maintenance. The things are flaky. You’re blasting hot exhaust gases through a turbine rotating at incredible speed.
The railroads requested an unturbocharged engine they could use to operate local freights. —And thereby avoid turbo maintenance.
So the GP38, and later the GP38-2. —Anything Dash-2 (“-2”) was updated solid-state electronics, replacing the relays used in early diesels.
Dash-2 technology was applied to all EMD offerings. It started in 1972.
—Beyond that was the number of freightcars an HO locomotive would pull — maybe 10 if you were lucky.
Throw a grade at it and the train stalled.
A typical real freight-train might be pulling 100 or more cars. That’s two or three units pulling a 100 or more cars.
Throw a grade at it, and that train might need help; perhaps two extra units on the front, and two units pushing on the back.
The old Pennsy westbound grade over the Alleghenies is 1.8%; 1.8 feet up for every 100 feet forward.
Not too bad, but steep enough to often require helpers.
The limit for an adhesion (non-cog) railroad is about 4%; and ya rarely see anything over 2.5%.
Yet the tightly looping grade up to the higher level on my neighbor’s layout was about 10%.
Put only five cars behind a single locomotive, and the train would stall. We had to shove it up the grade.
My friend’s running track operated the old way: current delivered by the track, and varied to change train-speed.
There is a newer way. Constant current delivered by the track, and tiny computers in the engines to vary the amount used; sometimes by radio control.
That way two trains can operate at different speeds on the same track.
With the old way, both trains operate at the same speed — and start and stop together.
“I think we ran everything, Hughsey,” my friend said.
Some engines ran, and some didn’t.
Only a couple steam-engines ran. On two the worm gear inside was jumping off the drive-sprocket.
Everything else was bound up — and in some diesel-locomotives only the headlight lit.
And some of the freightcars were unbelievable.
Giant paintings of oilcans and ice-cream cones filled the sides of boxcars top-to-bottom. They looked like -a) billboards, or -b) the candy-trains that run over the bulk-food department at Weggers.
Ya never see anything like that in the real world.
I remember how popular the “State of Maine” freightcars were in the ‘50s. Here at last was a colorful freightcar; red, white and blue.
But that’s how they were in the real world.
Ya never saw anything with a top-to-bottom oilcan on it.
And, of course, there was no graffiti. Graffiti-artists use railroad cars as a canvas. —Same with bridge abutments.

• For 16&1/2 years (1977-1993) I drove transit bus for Regional Transit Service, the transit-bus operator in Rochester, NY. My stroke October 26, 1993 ended that.
• “Mickey-D’s” is McDonald’s.
• RE: “Santa Fe warbonnet F-units......” —Santa Fe (“Santa Fay”) is the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad. Their “warbonnet” paint scheme was a red nose and front-end, shaped like a warbonnet, ahead of a silver car-body. “F-units” were the earliest freight-units made by EMD. Unlike what you see nowadays, the car-bodies were full-width, which made backing difficult due to poor visibility. Examples are the FT (1939 on), the F2, F3, F7 and F9. Santa Fe used their F-units in passenger service; despite their being freight-units. —Many of my friend’s locomotives were F-units, but other railroads.
• “Lehigh Valley” is Lehigh Valley Railroad, originally based in the Lehigh Valley of PA. It eventually built all the way to Buffalo — one of the finest railroads ever built; but since abandoned.
• “Amtrak” is a government corporation promulgated in 1970 to take over rail passenger service. It mainly runs passenger trains over the independent railroads with its own equipment, but it also owns and operates its own railroads; e.g. the old Pennsy (Pennsylvania Railroad) electrified line from New York City to Washington D.C., the so-called “Northeast Corridor;” although the Corridor has been extended to Boston over the old New York, New Haven & Hartford line.
• “Chessie” is Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad.
• “EMD” is ElectroMotive Division of General Motors, GM’s manufacturer of diesel railroad-locomotives. Most railroads used EMD when they dieselized; although many now use General-Electric diesel railroad-locomotives.
• “Alco” is American Locomotive Company of Schenectady, NY. For years, American Locomotive Company was a primary manufacturer of railroad steam locomotives. (It was originally a merger of many steam locomotive manufacturers.) —With the changeover by railroads to diesel-locomotives, American Locomotive Company brought out a line of diesel-electric railroad locomotives much like the railroads were switching to, and changed its name to “Alco.” Alco tanked a while ago; they never competed as well as EMD. —The “Century” series was a series of locomotives of varying sizes marketed by Alco in the ‘60s.
• The “E-unit” was EMD’s original passenger diesel locomotive. E.g. the E6, E7, E8 and E9.
• RE: “Athearn Budd RDC......” —Athearn (“AH-thurn”) was a manufacturer of great-looking, yet inexpensive, plastic HO model railroad equipment. Most of my neighbor’s rolling-stock was Athearn. The Budd RDC (Rail-Diesel-Car) was a self-powered passenger car built by Budd Company of Philadelphia in the late ‘40s and early ‘50s. It used two diesel tank engines driving Hydra-Matic tank transmissions to directly power the trucks. —The RDC made it possible to fulfill charter obligations without running a hyper-expensive locomotive and train-car.
• “GP” equals General-Purpose, the four-axle version of EMD’s road-switcher, a freight-engine with a car-body only the width of the motor. It also had a short hood ahead of the cab to protect the crew in collisions. Walkways are atop the locomotive frame next to the narrow car-body. This design allowed improved visibility, since the locomotive cab is full width. —EMD’s six-axle road-switcher is the “SD” series; Special-Duty.
• “Pennsy” is the Pennsylvania Railroad, no longer in existence. It merged with New York Central Railroad in 1968 as Penn-Central, and that tanked in about eight years. “Pennsy” was once the largest railroad in the world. Most of the ex-Pennsy lines are now operated by Norfolk Southern Railroad.
• A “Roots supercharger” is a supercharger following the Roots design. Two large rotating steel impellers compress the intake charge, which in a diesel is not charged with fuel. Most GM bus and truck diesels use a Roots supercharger. —As did their early railroad locomotives.
• “Hughsey” is of course ME, Robert Hughes aka “BobbaLew.”
• “Weggers” is Wegmans, a large supermarket-chain based in Rochester we often buy groceries at. They have a store in Canandaigua. (“Canandaigua” [“cannon-DAY-gwuh”] is a small city nearby where we live in Western NY. The city is also within a rural town called “Canandaigua.” The name is Indian, and means “Chosen Spot.” —It’s about 15 miles away.) —They run a model railroad — hung from the ceiling — over what used to be the bulk food department. Most every Wegmans has this, usually over its bulk food department. And the overly colorful freightcars are marked with candy monikers.