Dear friends, this is the first part of my model train roster about Pennsylvania Railroad (primarily) and others railroads.
In this topic I present the major common types of PRR boxcar (from top to bottom: X48 PS-1, X29, X26c USRA rebuilt, X26). The Pullman Standard -1 (X48 class for PRR) were used by Pennsylvania Railroad in only 20 units in the fifty years (my modeling era) but this boxcar type was very common among all other companies.

I picked up this motor on ebay. it says it's DCC ready.  I believe that means it has the plug for a dcc module.  My question is, will this run on my dc layout the way it is, without the dcc module installed?

If you've ever tried to mount a Kadee coupler on the front of a steam locomotive, or on the rear of an F-unit, or in any of a number of other tight spots, you know it's sometimes impossible to fit the coupler and box in there and keep something close to a prototypical coupling distance.  Usually, that means the coupler sticks out too far, or you have to resort to drastic measures like cutting off the rear of the coupler shank and drilling a new hole in the remaining shank stub.

But maybe there's a better way?

Hello all. My first post here.

I'm planning on eventually building a layout based on the Western Pacific. In the interest of getting rolling stock done, I've started building a couple of cabooses. They are old Roundhouse kits of the exterior braced ones rebuilt from box cars. But the kits come with straight ladders, not the prototypical ones that included the curved connection to the roof at the top. They look like this: