The culmination of an effort spanning more than a decade, this video marks the first, and to date, only deliberate attempt to re-create Amtrak's Auto-Train in O-Gauge, on KZitem. I should throw that word "EXCLUSIVE" up there, but I'm not that immodest. Please read on though, there is much to relate.
I started accumulating the 75' Auto-Train autoracks when MTH first catalogued them in 2002, buying all the available 5-stripe road numbers as they came out over the years, culminating in a Web search about three years ago for the remaining road numbers I missed out on. This 'fill-in-the-gaps" search yielded results from Nicholas Smith Trains, Amherst Depot, and The Train Loft.
Around about 2010, I started the hunt for five-stripe (Phase IV) Superliners. Locating at first a four-car set from Willis Hobby, I followed up with a two-car add-on from Jim's Train Shop of Homer City, PA (just before his retirement), and by complete luck scored a complete 6-car set of the first run 5-stripe cars from a fellow in Kansas who spotted a comment by me on a set of the three-stripe cars listed in O Gauge Railroading's "For-Sale" sub-forum by another member. I topped off that find with a matching transition sleeper at the TCA York meet that year.
The train as depicted in the video includes all of the above save for the first four-car set. On momentum alone, I managed to acquire a total of 12 additional Superliners that were not used in this train, but I'll find a use for them in other trains. I didn't use all the Superliners I acquired in this train, as I wanted the autorack consist to be longer than the passenger section.
After discovering the horrendous amperage requirements of the incandescent lighting in the nine MTH Superliners I selected for this train (literally a half-amp for each car) I endeavored to upgrade them to LED lighting. With the help of electronics-savvy members of the O Gauge Railroading forum (ogrforum.ogauge...) and a lengthy thread on 300-LED strips, I learned how to make my own constant-current circuit packs that I installed in the cars, greatly reducing their power requirements, and modernizing their lighting to boot. Even so, the whole train still draws from 4.5 to about 5.8 amps while running as seen in the video.
In the January 2015 issue of TRAINS magazine, it was reported that Amtrak has also upgraded the Superliners used on its Auto-Train to LED lighting in order to reduce demand on the train's head-end-power generators. This will allow the passenger portion of the consist to be extended beyond it's current 16-car limit. So this model train mimics the prototype Auto Train in yet one more (albeit unexpected) fashion, though my LED upgrade possibly came first, having begun in 2013.
There is more to tell, but I'll save that for Part Two, which ends with some interesting physical stats on this particular train.
Негізгі бет Test Track: O-Gauge Amtrak Auto Train (1 of 2)
Пікірлер: 7