Have a super 4th of July!

To all my readers and wonderful customers - hope you will have a super 4th of July!

Announcing Pacific Car & Foundry Ex Post RBL & XLI in N!

Wheels of Time is happy to announce a brand new tool -  Pacific Car & Foundry 50-ft* Exterior Post Insulated Boxcar in N-scale! These 50-ft Exterior Post Insulated boxcars have never been made before. Featured highly detailed car body including Landis or Keystone Plug Doors as on the real thing, Keystone cushioning details for boxcars so equipped, proper ride height, body-mounted couplers, smooth rolling metal wheels. These cars carry what you find in your non-refrigerated section of your grocery story. Pre-orders are due on August 9, 2017. See PDF brochure; see PNG brochure page 1, page 2, and web site for more details!

*Nominally 50-ft. It's 50'-6" to 50'-7" in inside carbody dimension.

Wood grain

We added wood grain to our HO scale lumber load and color to the plastic.  All you need to do is some weathering. We are currently in production. Check it out.

Photo break for your day!

I took this shot of an EMD SD-45T-2 for your photo break for your day. For those who remember seeing these locomotives like myself, enjoy!  Some of you have asked for the latest at Wheels of Time. We are in the midst of working on the next set of products, and am personally juggling end of school year activities with my family. *  HO scale Lumber Loads is in production. Looks like production will be completed by mid-June. They will have snap-together parts for ease of your assembly - and after hearing request for adding some color to it - they will be in a yellow-brown color. All you need to do is weather them. *  Our N scale 60-ft Arched / Harriman baggage-express cars are also at the factory level. In the meantime, hope you have a great day and be sure to ride some real trains.

Just for fun!

Making things realistic like the real historic prototype is in our DNA at Wheels of Time. Here was a fun project that kept my creative juices flowing. I modified and repainted an Intermountain N-scale dining car. This car no. 10205 represents S.P. Class 83-D-1 which was originally assigned to the City of San Francisco and S.F. Overland trains. During the early 1960's, this car and sister car no. 10203 substituted for the expensive-to-maintain triple-unit dining car on the S.P. Coast Daylight during off-season. At this point in history S.P. was famously looking for ways to cut cost on their passenger trains - and before the introducing the automat (automatic buffet car).

The model - (click on the photos for larger images)

Some of my modifications to make it more prototypical: center skirts were shorten; added stove top roof vents (originally designed to work with the many tunnels on S.P.); new scale width diaphragms which I fabricated; all new underframe details including new bolster to fit the GSC 41-N-11 trucks (from Rapido). Noticed how the A/C, battery boxes, and propane lockers hung below the underframe. I made a proper width housing for the pressurized water tanks. After stripping the original paint and lettering, I painted the yellow color first before masking and applying the gray. Decaling the red stripes takes much patience! Window shades of varying positions was made from paper to add to realism. In the future, modification of the car interior lighting is in-order -  to receive track power by using wheel wipers for electrical pickup instead of the on-board batteries. Enjoy!