New Products of Interest

In today's world of model railroading with limited runs and time sensitive pre-ordering, it can be easy to miss out on items made for your favorite railroad. I know I've done my fair share of trying to hunt down a old release that I missed out on.

So every now and then I'll bring to attention a new release that may hold interest to HO Scale Nickel Plate Road modelers or that which may be included in my layout.

As a disclaimer, nobody so far is paying me for this, although they are welcome to! :P


Walthers has announced a few new items in HO Scale that are of interest to Nickel Plate Road modelers as well as Appalachian railroad modelers.

Walthers Fallen Flags Passenger Series

For the NKP passenger modeler we have new runs of the Pullman-Standard 10-6 Sleeper and 52 Seat Coaches, and completely new in NKP paint, a 70' ACF Baggage car and a P-S 5 Bedroom-Lounge car representing a very loose version of the "City of Chicago" and "City of Cleveland".

NKP Pullman-Standard 52 Seat Coach

NKP Pullman-Standard 10-6 Sleeper

NKP ACF 70' Baggage

NKP Pullman-Standard 5 Bedroom-Lounge

Also finally a long awaited re-release of the old Proto 2000 ALCO PA-1 in the NKP's beautiful Bluebird paint. Now part of their Walthers Mainline brand, these can be ordered with a Soundtraxx sound DCC decoder or as a DC/DCC ready version.

NKP ALCO PA-1

I've always read that the original Proto 2000 PA-1's were a challenge adapting to DCC operation due to their motors pulling way more amps than what was typical for a HO scale engine. I never did a DCC conversion on mine, but the Bluebirds I still have could pull the paint off a wall, so I'm not surprised at this difficulty.

Yes I still have NKP Bluebirds, even though I'm modeling the 1950's Wheeling district where there were no passenger trains on the timetable. I just couldn't bear to sell off all my passenger equipment when I changed focus from modeling Bellevue or Cleveland's E. 55th St. yard areas.

However, I did find evidence of 1950's NKP passenger action in the Adena area in the form of a special business trip to Hanna Coal Co.'s new Georgetown Preparation Plant, so I'm glad I did hang on to some of my passenger equipment.


As for Appalachian modelers, Walthers has a new Truck Dump model in their Cornerstone Series.

Walthers Cornerstone Truck Dump

Walthers Cornerstone Truck Dump

Many of the coal mines in the Wheeling District were actually truck dumps and not your traditional mine tipple where the coal comes from a nearby drift or shaft mine. In the areas surrounding Adena and Dillonvale, these truck dumps tended to support nearby stripping operations, where the coal was trucked a short distance to the truck dump and loaded into rail cars.

I know I can definitely use this kit as a starting point for a few of the mines I'll be representing on the Adena layout. As for the passenger cars it's tempting to get one of the P-S 5 Bedroom-Lounge cars as the "City of Cleveland" even though it's miss in terms of prototype accuracy.