I have a set of the Wabash Valley units, and they have no hump. I understood the late Mr. Sandersfeld reworked the molds or did whatever it took to eliminate the humps, but he did nothing to correct the sloped ends I cited earlier, which irritated me at the time. His drive system would not sync with the A-M units that had started to come at the same time. .
Dave Engle --- On Tue, 5/7/13, Ed <[email protected]> wrote: From: Ed <[email protected]> Subject: {S-Scale List} Re: Enhorning To: [email protected] Date: Tuesday, May 7, 2013, 10:49 PM Stan...I ain't no Enhorning expert, but will try to bring some perspective to the Enhorning Story. It is a long time ago and was confusing even then. > Was the plastic used in the hump models the problem? I think the humped-roof problem was caused not by the plastic itself, but by the design of the sprues which carried the molten plastic into the mold proper. The sprues were, I think, inadequate (not sure how) and the hump happened during the cooling period after the shot was made. > Did Enhorning try to correct hump problem before putting models for sale? I have no idea. The hump was an Enhorning feature for sure and everyone knew it. I believe that, years later, Wabash Valley reworked the tooling to resolve the hump issue. But, as usual, I could be wrong. > Did the Wabash shells have the same hump? I think some did and some did not. Depends on whether they were shot before or after the tooling was modified. > Did Enhorning/Wabash models come with power? Enhorning had several different versions of power over the years. They also had aluminum wheels on the diesel engines which was another major problem all by itself since aluminum oxide pitted very easily and was a poor conductor (if I remember correctly). Later, I believe they had brass wheels, but they never had really decent wheels ever. > Hirail or scale? Scale for sure. Don't remember about high-rail since I never paid much attention to high-rail. > Lots of ?s. You didn't ask about the motor. Or the rubber band (O-ring) connections between axles. Or the cast metal version (like weight?). Lots of changes and revisions over the years. None of them really great. > Thanks. Stan Houghton You are welcome. Some of my comments could be in error since I am going totally from an ancient memory stretching back about 40+ years. But it is an interesting story to be sure. Tom Hawley visited the Enhornings (brothers?) in their later years. He can probably add a bit to this story. Cheers....Ed Loizeaux
