Detail Associates makes a nice 24" wide one, #6603, but I need some that are approx. 30"-33" for a Santa Fe baggage-express car. The Walthers Heavyweight Chair Car, #932-10352, includes one (see photo). I need four so I will take them from four kits but would like to have more for other cars. I'm sacrificing the chair cars anyway to get the steam-ejector A/C units and other parts for Suydam brass car bodies. These are for my 1939 ATSF California Limited model -- details are posted elsewhere in this forum.

Everyone knows that turnouts are where most derailments happen.

The most frequent cause of derailments is operator carelessness - when they run a turnout set against them and the loco pops off the tracks (works this way only with dead/insulated frogs otherwise the locos short when they hit the wrong way turnouts).

But one of the most bizarre derailments comes from a completely different souce sometimes.

Hello.

Anybody have an idea how to make a FRED/end of train device.
Im not runnig with caboose and need a way to see if the last car are with the train.
I think about something to hang on the coupler.
Thanks in advance.

Regards

Hans Ole

I'm sure many of us who have been in this great hobby any length of time have heard a conversation similar to one I heard yesterday in a local hobby shop.  Dad and mom had gotten their son a train set for Christmas.  The family was in the hobby shop to get more track, and maybe some more rolling stock.  The employee was doing a pretty good job of explaining track questions, and steering them to nickel silver (they don't stock brass:  good for them).  But he couldn't answer questions about the differences in kits, having little or no experience.