Another Acquisition

Unfortunately the form 5 coupler mentioned in the previous post will not be ready in time for the O scale meet. There are still some aspects of the design that need to be resolved before I am able to print them. Given the amount of time before the O scale meet and associated open houses, even if the design was finished this very instant, the prototype still wouldn’t arrive in time.

There is, however, some good news to report. I attended a swap meet held at the DuPage County Fair Grounds in Wheaton earlier today. Generally these things don’t yield much (if anything) for O scale traction and I came expecting this. Ten minutes into the show I came across a Clouser North Shore Line coach body and you better believe I didn’t pass it up!

I also came across a pair of Yellow Book MTH 3200 series "L" cars. I’m not a 3-rail collector, although I do have several sets of the MTH 3200 series cars (excluding the pair that I intend to 2-rail). The Yellow Book cars are signed for Midway and this matches my four-car set. I figured that if I’m able to get my hands on a pair of the 3200 “silver” bodies, I wouldn’t need to cut up my current pair and if I got these I’d have the option to run an eight car Midway train with car numbers that aren’t duplicates. So I got these too.

The main victory of the day, though, was that Clouser body. The car represents one of the early steel coaches, either the 150-164 series or the nearly identical 165-169 series. (I haven’t yet decided which series this car will fall into.) Unlike the combine I got from eBay, the coach did not come with any detail parts. Also of not is that the car is one of the later castings of the kit. The roof of the combine is removable via a pair of small nuts that are tightened beneath the floor. The coach has a removable floor which is held in place by eight 2-56 screws. These are much harder to lose and far easier to replace than the tiny nuts on the combine!

Looks like projects are beginning to stack up on the Dunsel Line!