Hi Bob -- I am well aware of the Sn3.5 heritage. I still remember the Tomalco/PFM(?) Sn3.5 C-16 at Bart Austin’s “Trains nothing but Trains” in San Mateo. At that time I was heavily into HO/HOn3, so other than asking the question about scale, I had no interest. I got a few things from Avery “Swede” Norlin a few years later when Bill Peter came out with truly magnificent Sn3 models, the K-37 being the first. That started the trade off of HO/HOn3 for like models in S at about a 2:1 HO to S ratio until I ran out of HO.
Anyhow, I got several of the Tomalco kits for my personal use, then more for the store when I started that in 1981. I had an interesting postal conversation with Swede when the passenger car kit I got from him turned out to have all the strip wood cut too short and the instructions calling for a particular piece to be made two at a time in four different places in the instructions, when making eight all at once would have been far simpler and more consistent. Rusty R. of San Jose took over a painting project for me that was supposed to go to someone else at the 2013 OSW+S when that other person did not show up. (Thank you Rusty!) It turned out that there were all kinds of “fixes” the passenger cars had done to them that Rusty needed to repair. He asked if I had done those, and as long as I had the cars, (30+ years) I could not remember. However, I found a piece of correspondence from Swede which showed I had gotten the cars from him and that he was the guilty party. I am looking forward to picking up the cars from Rusty in a couple of weeks when I am in his area for a railroad party – an annual event put on by long time friends who are mostly real railroad people (SP/UP). I am sure he has done an extraordinary job of bringing the cars back from the near dead... All I can say is that S and all its narrow gauge variations sure have come a long way! Have fun! Bill Winans -------------------------------------------- Bill... These models really do represent another era and are collector pieces. Back in the late 50's and early 60's there were no standards for S narrow gauge. The New Mexico S scale ng club had an outstanding group of modelers and layout, all running S scale narrow gauge models on HO track. These are some of those models. I remember a four car D&RGW San Juan passenger train that was sold through The Village Depot in Cottage Grove, along with a number of freight cars. All were from the NM club and long before Dale at V&T or Bill at P-B-L ever thought of producing them. That San Juan set was really well done...AND made from the old Strathmore paper construction method perfected by Jack Work. Swede's first Tomalco D&RGW C-16 2-8-0's came as both Sn42 and Sn3 versions, as I recall. The same idea was later carried into the 2000's. Sn2 models were initially intended to operate on N scale track. Later, Sn2 pretty much standardized on using HOn3 track. I hope someone purchases these models for posterity. They deserve to be saved, much like those early HO and On3 models Bob Brown at the Narrow gauge gazette has collected. The new NMRA museum display at the California State RR museum in Sacramento would be a perfect place for them. Bob Hogan
