"The Train now arriving......"

There's been little or no progress at Whistlestop since the last post, for various reasons unfortunately, as other demands are attended to.  The cottage is progressing, but at an agonisingly slow pace at the moment.


Rather than dwell on what's not happening, I'd much rather focus on positive things like, well............ new train arrivals!!  About two years ago Lionel introduced a 'new' line of trains in their catalogue, called Conventional Classics.  These are the extremely popular and well-loved trains of the 1950's, for which Lionel still have most of the original tooling.  Instead of incorporating all the latest electronic 'bells and whistles' they also have original motors and drive-train (read 'noisy'!!), except that the reversing unit is now electronic instead of mechanical.  Effectively they are a continuation of what was made in the 50's, rather than being reproductions.  And to Lionel's credit they have chosen to price them very realistically.



Here's a copy of the catalogue page showing the set, originally released in 1957.  The set that is now on it's way to the Trainbarn is the 3 car set, Lionel #2276W.  In Australia we called these trains 'Railmotors', and most States used them to upgrade passenger service on lightly patronised routes.


This set, and others in the Conventional Classics series, will be ideal for the layout planned for phase II of the Trainbarn, which will focus on what is called the Postwar era.  Initially though, I'll run it on the 0 gauge layout that I already have for phase 1, which was primarily intended to run the Prewar trains that are the main feature of this part of the Trainbarn.  My collection of Postwar Lionel trains is growing very nicely, and will certainly be a very exciting part of Whistlestop!!  The layout planned for this section will be enormous fun to build!


In the meantime though, I'm looking forward to getting back into the enjoyably hard work of constructing the Trainbarn building, which I guess will happen soon enough..............