I have the TM Books & Video AF Price Guide, but where can I find further details of the construction of various items? Background in less than 1000 words: I've had many scales over the years. I am going to settle on AF for my main layout - 22 x 28 modeling a bit of the city I live in - and then host operating sessions to promote family activities and less TV watching! As for AF, I started out by being given oh maybe 15 year ago an 300AC and the cars that matched it - link couplers - from a dealer friend of ours who was getting out of the antique toy business. They had just thrown all of their track away... so I had to go searching for some. I didn't get much more than that... and due to not seeing it much was headed for building the above layout in O scale, except my wife did a bit of looking around and suggested I stick to my convictions of S / AF as she thought there is enough around yet to build my layout... and so the collecting has started!
The 300AC never worked really well, even after having our high quality local train store rebuild it. Reverse unit probs, link couplers, etc... But that was all I had to go on for AF performance. Recently from the same store I acquired a 343 and 332AC converted to knuckle along with a nice set of rolling stock. After cleaning both E units, I am absolutely shocked at how well the perform. The 332 doesn't even have a pull-mor power drive, and it can pull every knuckle coupler car I have! Reverse units work very well - 343 gets a bit magnatized so I need to work on that a bit. Quality wise, I'm thinking these two engins represent some of AF's best engineering... where the 300AC was the low end model. The tenders are cast vs plastic or stamped tin. Everything about them is well done. The 343 with working coupler on both ends - will be great in the switch yard. So where I can find out more about all of the models that exist? How can I tell what steam engins have cast tenders vs plastic or stamped tin? How I can tell which are pull-mor? What about the smoke in tender, which ones have whistles, and if they do what unit makes the whistle work? Lots to learn to put together a shopping list. For example right now I have my eye on a good looking 322, but then I'm thinking I might like to go a model or so newer, get a pull-mor moter like the 326 has, but I don't know if I loose the cast tender. Anyway, at the prices things go for these days 1) it will take me a while to save up for each piece and 2) I best get the pieces I really want. I think gone are the days of finding the circus set for $25 like is mentioned in the second TM video of AF. Lucky to find a pair of 720's for that price! Oh, I'm thinking of modeling the layout with the RRTrack.com software. Looks to be the best one out there for designing stick track layouts. Anyone have a better one to suggest? TIA for help researching! Michael Lueck S-Trains list sponsor: http://www.americanflyertrains.com All the Flyer you desire...books and accessories too! To UNSUBSCRIBE from this list send a note to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
