Surgeon General's Warning

Minitrains Fiddletown & Copperopolis Locomotive

About a year ago, the deep dark caverns of web geekdom where most dare not go were beside themselves with joy and anticipation when Minitrains announced that it would be making an "American" locomotive in HOn30.  Leaked photos confirmed that unlike their European releases, Minitrains was diving headlong into the American market. At that time, I was just beginning to entertain the idea of getting involved in HOn30, and I was intrigued by this little teakettle, but I decided to wait until I had heard more about it before I sank the money into something I had no experience in.

Fast forward to this afternoon, when the mailman dropped a small box packed with foam peanuts protecting an even smaller box. I opened it up, and was immediately impressed with the quality.  I raced into the basement to put it on the track, and see how it ran.  I couldn't believe how nicely it ran on my horrendously awful track. Almost as nice as a modern N scale diesel. There was no need to push start it, and it ran at scale speeds very nicely. It didn't crawl along the track, but it started fairly well, and moved about Buzzard's Cove effortlessly, and without sounding like a milk jug in a blender to boot!

I'm going to need a handful more of these little guys.  Seriously.  In fact, I'm so thrilled by this little bugger that I'm considering liquidating all of my On30 gear that will never get run to finance more Minitrains locos.  I'm hooked, and it's bad.

Surgeon General's Warning: Minitrains are highly habit forming, and could lead to foaming at the mouth.

Go build something awesome!

Changing plans

Last week I discovered that the Five79 Forney rolling chassis wouldn't navigate the north end of Buzzard's Cove. Forneys have problems with tight radius turns, and can have a large lateral movement of the rear of the locomotive when modified to take tighter turns. Long story short, it's butt was too big for the bridge. Insert your favorite Sir Mixalot or LL Cool J song about generous posteriors.

The only solution available for me was to rip out everything north of the creek (I need to name that I guess huh?) and modify the bridge, and change the track plan slightly.

The north end

You can see where the spur track originally went, next to the seawall. The divergent radius was too tight, and the locomotive was hopping the rails. I have also decided that the RDA Johnson's Loft and Boathouse was too big, and not aesthetically interesting enough for the front of the layout, so it was replaced with Bar Mills' Staton Marine. I have found that building laser cut wood kits is actually too much fun. I've been scratchbuilding quite a bit of stuff, and these little kits fly together at ludicrous speed. Now that Bar Mills is including injection molded windows with their kits, I'm hooked. My one complaint about laser kits has always been the windows. In my opinion, the wooden windows don't look as nice as plastic, because the mullions are far to thick, and the layering of parts is too easy to screw up, so your windows look crooked.

 

Demolition Man

 

While I had the track ripped up, I decided that I didn't like the long straight sea wall, so it came out as well. A new section of dock will have to be built to replace it, so that the boats have a place to tie off to and get their fuel and repairs from old man Staton.

 

 

Under new lights

The north end is still functionally the same as before, with the "exit stage right" track, and the spur, but now I think the scene is better looking, with the tracks going behind the structure. I carved a boat hull out of some balsa, and it will fit nicely along the dock. I think I could even squeeze another 10 feet out of the hull. We'll see.


Off to a train show to find some goodies....

Go build something awesome.