Quote:
Originally Posted by HardDrive
I've got a closet full of HO and much older Lionel.
No to high jack the thread, but I've always wanted to get into live steam. That would so bloody cool.
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No hijack. I've been toying with the idea of buying an alcohol fired tabletop steam engine for some time now. Larger scale is beyond my scope.
When I was a kid my dad bought me one with a red Bakelite, electrical boiler that you could take apart and reassemble in two configurations: horizontal piston and vertical piston walking beam. I actually found one for sale on the web, but in the process of looking I looked at a ton of.German models, shiny brass, highly detailed and got hooked on getting one of them. Of course, you can never have enough small scale steam power and I got hooked on the old popcorn steam engines, but they're a bit big and beaucoup bucks.
My uncle had a large basement with 80% of it filled with a Lionel layout. For my first train set I asked for American Flyer. I hated Lionel's third rail
and thought American Flyer made a better scale model.
I hated diesels too. Who would want a diesel? They looked wimpy beside a steam loco and had no valve gear. Nothing moved! Hated them (the full size ones too - two of the three railroads running through my town were still running glorious, steam belching monsters).
I really, really hated the sound of diesel horns (actually still do). They have absolutely no soul whatsoever! Any one who's heard a steam whistle knows exactly what I mean. You could identify the different engineers by their individual display of virtuosity when they blew their two longs, a short and a long. Diesel horns were/are just annoying.
