Six years ago, I was asked by the publisher of one of the toy train hobby magazines to write an essay on why the use of lamp oil as a smoke fluid in toy train locomotives is dangerous. That essay appeared in an issue of the magazine that year. Over the course of time, sadly, facts are replaced by urban myths and I see in various online venues that the myth of lamp oil is alive and well. In what's probably a forlorn hope of putting this particular urban myth to rest, I've published the essay, in slightly updated form, on my web site. You can read the facts about lamp oil and why it's a very, very bad idea to use it as a smoke fluid HERE.
Archive for March, 2009
The Myth of Lamp Oil
Monday, March 30th, 2009New, New, New! Locomotive, Video, and Reefers!
Tuesday, March 3rd, 2009I have three new things to talk about in this, my first entry for the new year. I got the new MTH Premier CNJ Camelback steam locomotive. Those who have never seen a camelback will probably find it an odd looking beast, with the cab athwart the boiler, but they were pretty common on the anthracite roads. The locomotive had an extra-wide firebox to burn the anthracite and, in fact, had two firebox doors as a result. This new MTH model is a superb reproduction of the original as it appeared during fan trips toward the end of its life. Here's a teaser photo.
Needless to say, I shot a video of this nifty new locomotive pulling a string of just as new Atlas reefers. It's on the Multimedia page of my web site in your choice of video formats and, in lower resolution and quality, on YouTube. Here's the YouTube version:
The Atlas reefers in the video are the eight new ones that I recently received. They're all quite attractive as usual; this one stands out however. They're all on the Atlas Reefers page on my web site.
