I was running some projects for Mrs Hades the other day and saw some Christmas display buildings at the dollar tree store. They look to be roughly HO scale, and I thought it might be nice to have some larger trains to go around the tree, complete with some of these buildings.
I have some HO from my wife's family, since I am "the train nut" I get everything railroad related that they come up with (such as a box of VHS tapes that are being donated to a local club). The motive power from that hand-me-down set was, and is, an ancient Mehano GP7 that has a distinct growl in the gears, but what I wanted was steam.
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| Hand me down trains from my wife's family, an ancient Mehano GP7 and its consist imported by AHM. The accompanying buildings all appear to be O scale. |
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| Also this craptastic set with a rubber band drive switcher loco and huge flanges that won't run on normal track. Yeah, I get it all. The motor on this one runs but I haven't been able to find suitable rubber bands for the drive. |
So, off to the online auction site I went, where lo to my wondering eyes should appear but a set of three steam locos, two Consolidations and one Mikado. A bid was placed and the auction won, and when they arrived I quickly unpacked them.
From what I've been able to find they are also Mehano locos, released sometime between 1992 and 2006 as part of train sets sold in a Canadian grocery store called Loblaws. They ran surprisingly well, especially after being lubricated and run in about 30 minutes in each direction.
Now I just have to buy some of those buildings and build a platform for them that can be taken apart and stored with the rest of the Christmas stuff.
