Weekend Update 7/26/20

[keeper]

Inspired by MTL's Santa Fe mail train, I bought some NP cars to start my own one.
No idea if such a train existed on the NP. 



Thomas

[mplsjct]

Inspired by MTL's Santa Fe mail train, I bought some NP cars to start my own one.
No idea if such a train existed on the NP. 



Thomas

The Mainstreeter carried mostly head end cars, until the late sixties, when it started to look like a short, dome less NCL.

[fcnrwy23]

I finished the yard office and made another big pile of junk -

-Mark

Great Work! 
Now That's what "I have to" 
Add "Big piles of junk" to the FCN's Maintenance areas.. Mine are a BIT TOO Clean!

Jerry G.

[fcnrwy23]

A couple hours here and there throughout the week I got the PR43C to a good point of doing a first run of printing.

(Attachment Link)

Reese,  Will this fit on a,  Atlas SD' mech.  OR a Kato SD' mech.?

Jerry G.

[spookshow]

Great Work! 
Now That's what "I have to" 
Add "Big piles of junk" to the FCN's Maintenance areas.. Mine are a BIT TOO Clean!

Thanks, Jerry. It's pretty much a lifetime project over here 



-Mark

[C855B]

Love the pile of dead bicycles. 

[thomasjmdavis]

Inspired by MTL's Santa Fe mail train, I bought some NP cars to start my own one.
No idea if such a train existed on the NP. 


Thomas

Your idea is certainly plausible.  Sometimes mail and express trains were not listed in public time tables (although they carried a rider car and usually you could get a ticket if you really wanted to ride that train), or traveled as a separate section of a listed train.  A quick search brought up the following-

GN's Fast Mail is better known, but there is 60 seconds of film of an NP "Fast Mail" (see below about the name, and it has some coaches), and the Library of Congress has provided the footage of the train circa 1897.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDkXGm9ozgs

It appears from time tables that the trains were actually named Atlantic Mail and Pacific Mail.  I suspect they were gone by the era you are modeling, but I'm not an expert on NP.
http://www.nprha.org/NP%20Timetables/NP%2018980501%20TT%20007.pdf

A quick search for "Mail Train" at the NP Historical Society site (which is, BTW, GREAT and has TONS of info available online) yields over 300 results, so have at...
http://www.nprha.org/_layouts/15/osssearchresults.aspx?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Enprha%2Eorg&k=mail%20train#k=mail%20train

[spookshow]

Love the pile of dead bicycles. 

Thank goodness for Gold Medal Models 

-Mark

[bnsfdash8]

bnsfdash8 what drive are you useing and that looks nice I want one. please please

Reese,  Will this fit on a,  Atlas SD' mech.  OR a Kato SD' mech.?

Jerry G.

I am using an Atlas SD50/60 mech.

[keeper]

Your idea is certainly plausible.  Sometimes mail and express trains were not listed in public time tables (although they carried a rider car and usually you could get a ticket if you really wanted to ride that train), or traveled as a separate section of a listed train.  A quick search brought up the following-

GN's Fast Mail is better known, but there is 60 seconds of film of an NP "Fast Mail" (see below about the name, and it has some coaches), and the Library of Congress has provided the footage of the train circa 1897.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PDkXGm9ozgs

It appears from time tables that the trains were actually named Atlantic Mail and Pacific Mail.  I suspect they were gone by the era you are modeling, but I'm not an expert on NP.
http://www.nprha.org/NP%20Timetables/NP%2018980501%20TT%20007.pdf

A quick search for "Mail Train" at the NP Historical Society site (which is, BTW, GREAT and has TONS of info available online) yields over 300 results, so have at...
http://www.nprha.org/_layouts/15/osssearchresults.aspx?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww%2Enprha%2Eorg&k=mail%20train#k=mail%20train

Thanks for the info Tom.

I will definitively look into this.

As I have some of the cars from GN and CB&Q as well, I thought to combine them.

Thomas

[Steveruger45]

Made some pipe and scrap loads for some gondolas.
The left one is a Trainworks gondola filled with scrap (anything I could find in my scrap box)
The middle one is an old atlas 42’ gondola I repainted to CSX and filled with cut down micro brush stems.
The right one is a microtrains one filled with brass tube.
All painted with cheap craft acrylics and dull coated. [ Guests cannot view attachments ]

[brokemoto]

As I have some of the cars from GN and CB&Q as well, I thought to combine them.

Many roads' passenger trains carried foreign road baggage and express cars, whether they were mail trains or not.  It is funny, but most of the photographs that I have seen on New York Central baggage cars were taken in Texas; this is even outside the Colour Guide.  The closest that the New York Central ever got to Texas was probably about five hundred miles (it is about seven hundred fifty from St. Louis to Amarillo).  More rare were foreign road RPOs, although there were some exceptions.  The Interstate Express was a mail train run jointly by Reading Company, CNJ and DL&W.  Each road was assigned contributions by car type and number of cars.  CNJ was supposed to provide the baggage/mail.  Thus, if often ran from Philadelphia (on the Reading), then onto the CNJ lines in Pennsylvania, then onto the Lackawanna lines in Pennsylvania and New York.  If the assigned RPO/baggage was out of service, CNJ could notify its partners, substitute a baggage car and one of the partner roads could put up a baggage/RPO.

The railroads liked mail trains because they were profitable.  In fact, some of the passenger trains stayed on the timetable long past the time when they were carrying significant numbers of passengers solely because of the profits made from the mail and express.  Other well known named passenger trains became  little more than a mail train with a coach or two and first class car or two toward the end of their operation.  In once case, I seem to recall that it was a T&NO train, at the very end, the passengers were riding in the caboose of a mail train.  SP did not even bother with a rider coach for it.

[mu26aeh]

I spent my evenings this weekend working on the Showcase Miniatures Aerial Fire Truck.  This will represent Gettysburg Fire Department Truck 1.  Im hoping a friend of mine agrees to do the decals for it.  Ill post a link for the actual truck below.





https://www.capitalcityfirephotos.com/PennsylvaniaApparatus/Central-Pennsylvania-Apparatus/Adams-County/i-n9Xn9pp

[freedj]

My first and second hand laid #6 turnouts.  I still have some cleanup to do on them but they work well!

[ Guests cannot view attachments ]

[ns737]

that fire truck looks great and even better when you get decals for it.