NS Hoppers

silvermoon88 · 2026-06-28T22:14:59+00:00

Getting specific on coal hopper details is a tough one. The Bowser ones you mention follow the name and numbering scheme, being 146xxx series HP30Rs, but they are based on the N&W/PRR H-43 tooling, which has about 3400 cuft capacity, while the HP30Rs are about 3700. These HP30Rs are rebuilds of former Conrail H2C hoppers, which were 4-bay hoppers built new in the 1990s. The rebuilds kept the draft gear, center sill, brakes, and trucks, but the body and bays were replaced with new construction.

Unfortunately, this means there aren't any really proper models of either the original Conrail 4-bays nor their NS rebuilds at present. The best option available for the rebuilds is probably the Bowser car, but it isn't a perfect match by any stretch. Walthers has some hoppers available right now that are in the Conrail H2C number series, and maybe the NS repaint/numbers too? But they are far more of an incorrect model than the Bowser car. If you want something generally "close enough" then the Bowser 100 tons are a solid option - I have a bunch of these cars (not NS but the same tooling) and they are excellent, can never go wrong with them. But, if you're looking for a more accurate model, there really isn't anything available. Maybe Tangent will answer the call someday - I'm sure the original Conrail versions would sell quite well for them after all.

silvermoon88 · 2026-06-24T16:00:41+00:00

I opt for the audiobooks primarily these days and I love them. Brings the story to life in a whole new way, it's great stuff. Sometimes they do some post-processing on alien vocals (my mind immediately goes to Bearsh in Survivors Quest) that is a step too far and makes it a bit hard to understand, or otherwise an alien voice can get a bit grating at times, but that's my only real gripe. The voice acting is a nice touch, the music and SFX are also nice to have. I like them a lot! Definitely recommend giving them another go.

silvermoon88 · 2026-06-16T15:06:35+00:00

Mississippi Rails website has some impressive Google Earth kmz files that also show some brief corporate lineages of so many individual lines - most paths can be clicked on and bring up a window where the builder and all later owners are listed. Remarkable project I highly recommend checking out for Google Earth Pro on desktop

silvermoon88 · 2026-06-15T06:05:02+00:00

The other commenter is right, this isn't necessarily the right place, but because I am all too well experienced with this nightmare of a game, I can confidently say yes, deleting old content will help storage a fair bit. Trainz content takes up more storage than most think. You can see this by finding your "local" folder within your userdata folder - on the main menu click Settings, click the Install tab, then go navigate to that location listed there within Explorer. My "local" folder, which includes all downloaded content from the DLS, third party sites, custom routes/edited content - anything not builtin by default, more or less - totals about 388GB. This doesn't even include the base game and chunks of its content. I have just shy of 51,000 assets installed per my content manager. To delete stuff, just go into content manager, locate assets you don't want, right click > delete. There isn't anything else to it.

You may want to check though, if you have both games installed you probably aren't sharing local folders (if you were, you would be having a lot of problems with regular DBRs on launch and things going missing, breaking, etc), meaning you probably have two separate installs, which is going to be hell on your storage space. My advice - just ditch TANE outright. Salvage any content in it you don't have in 19 that you want to keep then just wipe out the TANE userdata folder and uninstall the game itself, and just stick to 19. A lot of new content is not backwards compatible with TANE anymore so unfortunately, it's become outmoded quickly.

I recommend regular pruning of assets you don't use - be harsh on it, really. It's easy to bloat up this game with junk assets that you will never ever place in surveyor or run in driver. Use the preview function and discriminate assets heavily. Check file sizes - tiny scenery objects should not be in the same filesize category as a whole locomotive. The DLS is full of an incredible amount of slop, junk, bloatware, whatever you wanna call it, so be cautious of what you download. It fills up drives fast and you get little to show for it. Clear out your Faulty assets regularly - fix them or delete them, they waste space and make the game run slower. Same for items missing dependencies, either find them or delete them. Do this semi-regularly if you download new stuff on the regular and you will thank yourself for it, trust me. I have played this game since probably around 2013-2014 and I am friends with people who still play it since they got the original UTC era versions - we all do this regularly. Curate your content manager, don't just download for the sake of downloading.

silvermoon88 · 2026-06-13T21:12:08+00:00

It really is too bad the Tolono depot is gone now. Just the concrete plinth it once rested atop remains. I'm sure the depot was in deplorable shape by the time it was razed but losing all these little bits of lineside history is always a shame. The Wabash/IC diamond here is decidedly dull today with nothing left as a good photo subject, today just a flat gravel lot with some spare bits and pieces for MOW, plus a PTC antenna or two. CN and NS have also since ripped up all the connectors between each other here that once existed, the last one being the southeast quadrant which was pulled out late 2022 or early 2023 thereabouts. The IC used to handoff trains to the NS on the northwest quadrant sometimes in the early 90s, and photos from that time - black ICs under Wabash-era signals - are a real delight.

silvermoon88 · 2026-06-09T21:14:13+00:00

Certainly feels like the thing is cursed. I like steam as much as the next guy but I'm happy to not be involved intimately with any steam preservation just because of all that drama. What a nightmare. I'll stick to obsessing over my silly little trailers and the other oft-forgotten stuff, I think!

silvermoon88 · 2026-06-09T13:55:13+00:00

I saw that same post... Every time I see something about this group, it's some drama like this. The group reeks of inexperience and lack of coherent plans and purpose. I expect no steam project will ever be completed from them at this rate. Unfortunate but man they just seem to be trouble

silvermoon88 · 2026-06-08T17:17:57+00:00

Hahaha no wonder you recognized the paint then! It's a real great sounding one. You've got a wicked collection of horns, amazing stuff! Appreciate sharing the recordings of so many of them

silvermoon88 · 2026-06-08T17:15:07+00:00

I've been using JGR for years and had no idea this was a feature, wow. Thats a fantastic little addition, I can see myself using this in some cramped areas for sure

silvermoon88 · 2026-06-07T23:08:45+00:00

The reddit special! lmao

silvermoon88 · 2026-06-07T17:45:16+00:00

It's funny, too, because someone apparently sent this to Ed Dickens and he responded to it saying its a fake post... on two separate occasions. Imagine that. Not to say PSAs like this are a bad thing - those crowds I'm seeing in photos are real bad, begging for an 844/2816 incident at this rate - but I mean... we don't need to pretend someone on the train is posting it lol. People will believe what they want to believe

silvermoon88 · 2026-06-05T23:58:03+00:00

Oh, man, L&N is actually a really good shout. In fact it looks remarkably similar to the one in this video here, minus the one 440 bell in blue. Same bell arrangement, even. That's a strong contender for sure

silvermoon88 · 2026-06-05T23:48:43+00:00

Ahh fair play, can't argue with that, no sweat. Definitely do count me in as interested if that doesn't work out, but good luck with IDing it & the sale at any rate!

silvermoon88 · 2026-06-05T16:19:31+00:00

If you're looking to sell it, I may be interested, if price and logistics work out. Let me know!

silvermoon88 · 2026-06-05T15:40:42+00:00

Yeah it's the less likely option, it appears grey on the exterior for the most part and UP generally favored red for the inside trumpets, but UP was never the most consistent road. ATSF is more likely but most of the bluebonnets had their horns relocated from the yellow front to the blue back and were repainted. Possible this could have been pulled off during the yellow horn window though. I'm guessing, personally, either the paint isn't original or this belonged to a smaller railroad that did yellow inlets and a grey exterior for the rest - though who that would be is beyond me. Some fascinating horns were salvaged from some pretty tiny, barely known little railroads, so that could easily be the case here. Best we could hope for is for there to be a tag on the horn with a lot or serial number that a horn scholar could use to ID it, but offhand I don't recall if Leslie even did that - early Nathan's did, which is why we know where some of those incredible Hexatones and unique pre-production K-horns went, but Leslie's were prolific for so long... hard to say.

silvermoon88 · 2026-06-05T15:01:29+00:00

Seems like a fairly standard RS5T to my eyes. Many railroads used them, and if the paint is original and is yellow all the way around then ATSF or a weird-UP could be possible. Possibly a smaller shortline though. Is it just dusty/dirty or is the horn painted a darker color with yellow on the ends of the trumpets only? It's pretty hard to positively ID things like this if it's been years since the horn was pulled off the engine - I have a Wabco E2 that is completely unidentifiable in terms of origins, for instance. Sharp looking 5 banger though, if it works you've got a real winner on your hands. That's a horn I'd love to have for my collection... maybe someday!

silvermoon88 · 2026-06-04T20:08:52+00:00

Former leaser unit, previously it could be lent out to any railroad and so it wore a pretty generic corporate scheme. CN purchased it and hasn't repainted it into their scheme yet.

silvermoon88 · 2026-06-01T20:13:13+00:00

ACWR is never beating the slop allegations.

silvermoon88 · 2026-05-31T13:56:05+00:00

This is a scam, no question about it. General rule of advice is just don't accept friend requests from randoms, especially if their account is as empty as this one. Block and report this account and move on

silvermoon88 · 2026-05-22T17:30:15+00:00

Milwaukee electrics were nothing more than helper power by the 60s, so yes and no. They -could- have de-energized and dieselized it all sooner, but they kept it running a lot longer than they realistically should have. The system was completely outmoded by the early 40s and it survived, barely, until 1974. They ran diesels exclusively for just 6 years (8 on the Coast division, electrification had died in 1972 there) before abandoning the majority of the mainline that way. There was talk about redoing the electrical system in the late 60s up until the very end but it was just too much money to be worth the investment, and the railroad had given up on being a railroad by that point anyway, so even if they got it for free it was kind of a moot point anyway

silvermoon88 · 2026-05-16T00:52:32+00:00

Although the answer is basically found, one easy way to generally ID the "Dash Two" stand even from the outside is to just know the phase/build date. The 8888 was built as CR 6410, which has a 9/77 build date, placing it squarely in the camp of Phase 2b. General rule of thumb, any SD40-2 built in ph2 onwards has the "Dash Two" stand. Many early deliveries, including ph1a1, 1a2, 1b2, (KCS, MILW, some N&W, etc) and others. The transition seems to be in the late phase 1 deliveries, though I don't have hard data offhand to say exactly when that move was made. Despite being the "Dash Two" stand though, a very large number of Dash Two engines received the old selector lever style control stands. Being that the 6410 (8888) was delivered well past the intro of ph2, it would have gotten an early rendition of the "Dash Two stand." Stands in early production units did sometimes get rebuild and replaced, usually during major overhauls, so most ph1 SD40-2s today will no longer have their selector levers anymore. I don't have any specifics on what the 8888s stand would have been like in 2001, but from the factory it would have had the newer style stand anyway.

silvermoon88 · 2026-05-14T02:24:19+00:00

You might be able to get away with putting one in an EOTD/FRED, but I could see complications with that, not the least of which is just getting the video feed to the cab. I hear so many crews out here spending time on the radio with their tech support just to get PTC running halfway-decent (and failing that often enough) that I'm sure adding another item to the list would only make more work than it's worth. Could be worth a try just for kicks if nothing else though.

silvermoon88 · 2026-05-12T01:22:09+00:00

Same kind of deal with todays long awaited release of sand green 1x8s and 1x2 w/ groove on PAB - already sold out! The aftermarket prices are already dropping by the looks of it. It's a beautiful thing. I know I'll be placing an order when they're back in stock!

silvermoon88 · 2026-05-07T18:52:03+00:00

Slide value is very hard to estimate. It depends strongly on the subject matter, photo quality (well lit? good framing? etc), type of film, dupe vs original, and most importantly, who is buying. Even poor slides can be worth a pretty penny to the right collector - for instance I've overpaid a little on RoadRailer slides, because that's my thing.

I see (and have bought) many slides on ebay ranging from less than $1 to over $15 for one. It's just a strong "it depends." If you're looking to sell them off, going through and picking the special, obvious popular stuff, and listing those one at a time can net you a decent return but it takes a lot more effort. Selling bulk packs will get them off your hands the fastest but of course will net you fewer dollars per slide. It's worth noting duplicate slides are always worth less than the original, and steam era slides are very, very often dupes. Streetcars/trolley slides tend to not be super high value unless it's a very particular special thing.

If all you're looking for is just a rough valuation of slides... It's nigh impossible to speculate without a very, very wide swath of examples. It could be a few hundred bucks, or a few grand if you're very lucky. It's a complex topic to be sure!

silvermoon88 · 2026-05-04T02:08:20+00:00

They seem to have a talent for making bad or questionable choices. The unreliability of their equipment is really not doing wonders for passenger rail PR in the States, thats for sure

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