I've always heard that during the steam age, trains typically traveled about 100 miles between engine & crew changes. That kind of makes sense for locals or perhaps mountain segments, but what about long distance passenger and freight trains on the prairie? That seems a little short to me: If you are moving at an average of 30 miles an hour with no setouts/pickups, you change engines and crews every 3 hours? Or is it more of a case that the engine needs to re-coal every 100 miles but it can keep going if the crew hasn't hour-lawed out?

Just wondering, has anyone tried making a 24" radius curved rerailer out of those multiple commercial 18" inchers,....maybe cut little slits in the inner curve of the plastic and spread it apart just a bit. Then replace the rail itself with good quality nickle silver if necessary.

I may give this a try as I have 2 spots at the entrance to my staging yards where I would like to have such an item,...and I have a number of those old 18" inchers to experiment with.

Hi There

I have a question which may seem slightly silly to some.

Here’s the background...
My husband has Bachmann Plus GP35 locomotive that has NEVER worked (right out of the box). He bought it for his Dad (a railroader) who loved it and didn’t care if it ran.

My husband would love to see it run, but if he sends it in to Bachman, he may not get the same locomotive back.

If I were to buy another GP35 locomotive that works, could I just put the PRR shell on the working locomotive?