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While I was in Denver last week, I made a visit to Caboose Hobbies purported to be the largest model train store in the world. Maybe in North American trains. I suspect there are larger stores in Germany. Anyways, it was still nice to check out the store's offering. I came across a Kato oval track set, which I had my eye on for quite some time. It was discounted down by $50. I couldn't resist and picked it up along with some additional straight tracks to extend the kit. I figure it will be nice to have a kit to play with from time to time as it can be assembled and packed away fairly easily and quickly. And it is expandable, which makes it appealing. There's a store in town that also carries Kato products. It doesn't have the same extensive inventory, but I figure they could probably order most of what I need when I'm ready to expand the track. By the way, I decided to keep the class 110.

Smokes

Surprisingly, smoking a pack of cigarettes a day is considerably cheaper on the pocket book than taking up model trains. Not that I smoke. I was very bad this week-end and picked up an additional two trains. I really liked the Rheingold set offered by Minitrix. I figured I could do a sort of Tom Thompson (Group of Seven) mountain landscape scene and incorporate it into the layout. The other train was a discontinued set that was a follow up to the Rheingold. The passenger trains have two color schemes though. The four 1st class coaches are cream and burgundy. The six 2nd class coaches are cream and green. I'm not particularly sure why the Federal Railways did this. I've noticed this inconsistency in much of the earlier era coaches. I had the option to pick up the cream/burgundy locomotive. I decided on a class 110 locomotive because I liked the styling better. It seemed to be a better match in terms of the roundness of the coaches and it matches the cream/green color scheme. However, I did a bit more reading and discovered that locomotive was in fact used as an airport express between Frankfurt and Cologne. So now I'm conflicted because of the historical inaccuracy of my matching. Trix does offer another locomotive that has a more rounded look and matches up well with the coaches. It's cream/burgundy in color, which matches the 1st class coaches. The only drawback is that it's priced higher. What to do?

12805-1 (1/1) Apmz 123 IC open seating 1st class car
12805-2 (1/1) Avmz 207 IC compartment 1st class car
12805-3 (1/1) Avmz 207 IC compartment 1st class car
12805-4 (1/1) WRmz 135.0 IC dining 1st class car
12805-5 (1/1) Bpmz 291.2 IC open seating 2nd class car
12805-6 (1/1) Bpmz 291.2 IC open seating 2nd class car
12805-7 (1/1) Bpmz 291.2 IC open seating 2nd class car
12805-8 (1/1) Bm 235.0 IC compartment 2nd class car
12805-9 (1/1) Bm 235.0 IC compartment 2nd class car
12805-10 (1/1) Bm 235.0 IC compartment 2nd class car
12568 (1/1) DB Class 110 locomotive
12443 (1/1) DB Class E10 locomotive
15785 (1/1) DB Rheingold vista dome car
15786 (1/1) DB Rheingold compartment car
15787 (1/1) DB Rheingold dining car
15788 (1/1) DB Rheingold open seating car
15789 (1/1) DB Rheingold compartment car