Daniels Cars on eBay

Ok, I know you are wondering why I haven't been posting lately. Top of the list is that it has been so dang hard to get into the Blogger dashboard to type anything! I don't know what's going on, I think as the numbers of bloggers exponentially increase, so to does the traffic to the authored blogs/websites. Ergo, authoring these things slowwwwssss down dramatically.

The above pic/auction caught my eye on eBay. I am kind of a JAD/Daniels nut. I like their stuff. It's some nice standard gauge. I have never seen the above heavyweights as Black Diamond cars. I have the same flavor as the above in the set Daniels sold with the GG1.

Eventhough I am heavily space constrained, I'd still like to get my hands on more Daniels. It takes some tweaking to get the stuff to run right but when it does, it really is something. I have one standard gauge GG1 from him that really goes fast around wide curves and is just a joy to watch. I recently picked up a few Williams O gauge pieces (one is a GG1) and it runs the same way, smooth as glass.

I have a Daniels Standard Gauge City of Denver and man, that thing has got to be one of the crankiest trains I own. It makes my prewar Lionel stuff look like an oily can of WD40. It takes a ton of work to get it to work right. It is mighty nice when it does work though. I seem to remember buying it from John Daniels himself.

As I recall (and this has got to be around 8 years ago or so), he said that he had 3 or 4 sets in his attic he was looking to get rid of. If I remember correctly (it was almost a decade ago), he was an extremely nice person. Very interesting to speak with. I could kick myself, I just didn't have the bucks to buy anymore. A guy who was supposed to be a friend of mine bought two Hiawatha sets. Wierd thing about greed though, it really impedes any kind of friendship. Later on, when I asked if I could buy one of his Hiawatha sets, he wanted to charge me double for what he bought it for. I hope he enjoys both of his sets!

I have heard (matter of fact) that Daniels made a standard gauge set with a GG1 in Tuscan and matching cars. Supposedly the set kind of looked like Congressional Set. If anyone has one of those floating around out there, I'd sure love to see a pic of that!

Back to the above set out on eBay.... I'd really like to know what engine was paired up with those cars. Supposedly the cars came from an estate auction. They look like they've seen some milage although that just might be the photography. If anyone has seen a Daniels Black Diamond Engine, let me know.

M