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Saturday, July 2, 2022

A beautiful HO scale speeder

At the BAPM 2022 meet last weekend, there was a display, by Yelton Models of Canada, of two of their new 3-D printed speeders in HO scale. They showed several other products too. This is a fairly new company and they had a nice description of what they do.

(For more on the BAPM meet see: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2022/06/bapm-2022-part-2.html )

The model was produced by Yelton, located in Niagara Falls, Ontario. To see more of their line of products, see https://www.yeltonmodels.com/shop?page=2 and scroll down for more pages. You can purchase on-line too.

Here is view of the speeder as it was displayed. It’s identified as a TH&B and SP speeder. It’s Yelton item YO129, and sells for $15.

I immediately invested in a strip of raffle tickets, and put most of them into the cup for the speeder. Luckily ( I was not alone in putting tickets in that cup!), I did win. And here’s a view of the back of the speeder, to go with the front view above. Even the wheel spokes are open,

I decided to go ahead and paint the model. Most SP MOW equipment after World War II was painted a bright orange My experience riding aboard one of these speeders is that the seats were upholstered in a dark gray, almost black, material, and the wheels were entirely unpainted, thus a rusty brown color. On-line prototype photos are consistent with these impressions. 

Here is the model in a couple of locations, first on one of the speeder pull-outs (or, as SP called them, turnouts) near the Shumala engine terminal. I reported awhile back on my installation of these facilities, following SP standard practice (see that post at: https://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2019/01/track-car-turnouts-part-4-installation.html ).

Another view shows it on a track car turnout next to the depot at Santa Rosalia. Perhaps that’s its driver, talking to the operator through the depot window.

I really like this model, and am greatly impressed with it as a 3-D printing item. If you need a speeder like this for your layout, now you know where you can get one.

Tony Thompson

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