I found this little gem while going through an old box of HO cars and buildings that have been in storage for 20 years.

Does anyone have an idea as who manufactured this shuffle/back hoe (HO)? It was given to me by Paul Jansen when I was around 17 years old, now 60. 

I have a question concerning the headlight of a Bachman Spectrum 2-8-0.

Truth be told, I was relaxing, and had a couple of beers this afternoon,, but I got frustrated with this loco (I had installed a Tsunami light steam decoder in over a year ago using the plug) as it would stop and start, like it was shorting out some how. It's stock sister runs fine over the same track, so I am pretty certain it was the loco and the wiring.

So I ripped out everything (yea beer!), and hard wired the Tsunami into the loco. It now runs great.

I have just added a Proto 2000 SD45 to my roster but can't figure out a detail issue.

Below the engine room air intake just behind the cab on the engineers side there are two holes already drilled in the body one below the other. The holes are too big to be for a grabiron, and despite looking at many prototype photos none show anything on the hood side in this location. There are two large shiny black plastic bits in the add on detail parts pack but I cannot relate these to anything, Can anyone help with a solution....and a reason for the holes?

Thank You in advance

OK, this isn't going to be anything groundbreaking.  I'm not a rivet counter, nor do I pretend to know every detail and what should be where.  I see detail and I'm good with it, so this isn't going to be a critique of anything they've missed or didn't do correctly according to prototype.  This is just my first impressions of what will be the basis of my passenger fleet on my future N scale railroad.