Today I headed over to Reynauld’s Euro Imports in Elburn IL. This was the third time I tried to visit the store, and I’ll admit I’ve been getting a little frustrated with them. The last two times I went to the store during their posted business hours and they were closed. I’ve been watching their site for the Kato/Lemke Plasser & Theurer Gleisstopfmaschine. It’s a modern MOW gravel tamper – with DCC….
Reynauld’s has it listed on their website, so I was hoping to be able to pick one up while I was at the store… The trouble with Reynauld’s website is that just because an item is listed on their website doesn’t actually mean they have it – and in the case of the Plasser, I discovered when I got to the store that they don’t have it. They’re on order, they just don’t know when they’ll be in.
As their name implies Reynauld’s Euro Imports carries almost exclusively European prototype models. The exception being a few North American prototypes in Z scale, given that Z scale models all come from Europe anyway that makes sense.
What caught my eye though was the Kato/Hobbytrain CIWL Simplon sets, in specific the Calais – Venice set…
I’m not going to lie, they were expensive… Likely the most expense set I’ve ever purchased for the layout, more expensive than the N scale Turbotrain… But they’re amazingly detailed….
Detailed, and lighted…
And of course, these passenger carriages needed something to pull them… This is where I had to take a little creative license for the Centreville Rail Road Museum because these should be pulled by a steam engine, but Reynauld’s didn’t have one in stock. They also didn’t have an electric engine with DCC from the early 20th Century… So I settled for a Minitrix Swiss Federal Railways Re 4/4, and a fairly modern variant at that.
It may not be completely prototypical, but I think it looks good. This is my first Minitrix engine, and this one has both DCC and sound. What really impressed me though was that it has cab lights, cab lights that are directional like the rest of the lighting. Cab lighting doesn’t seem to be that common in N Scale anymore so I was impressed to see it.
