Weekend Update 12/21/25

[mu26aeh]

Waiting on a train at the West Penn

[arx nakanishi]

I have a feeling that about '69 I70 was maybe finished from the Colorado state line to the east to possibly Green Riiver and that left Cisco cutoff from the traffic heading east-west a mile or more to the north with no exit right there to Cisco.

I have several timetables of the Continental Trailways. According to them, Cisco had scheduled stops until Sep. 1971 when it became "Goes into town to discharge passengers only" status. It may indicate the completion of the section of I-70 bypassing Cisco. The shortcut made a three to six-minute reduction of travel time between Thompson and Fruita.



Hiroshi Nakanishi/Boxcar Red Collection
https://riogrande.blog.jp/

[arx nakanishi]

Hiroshi, you continue to amaze with your ability to capture the look and mood of a desolate desert area.

I'm afraid you are bored with all these similar pics and videos. I want to show the structures with Rio Grande trains running by. That makes it difficult to make a variety in photo angles. I'll try another, though.



Hiroshi Nakanishi/Boxcar Red Collection
https://riogrande.blog.jp/

[crrcoal]

Are those GP30's Rapido?

Waiting on a train at the West Penn

[Sumner]

Working on a control panel (Fusion designed -- Bambu A1 printed) and two solder pad panels for the track drops.  Here are a couple pictures and....













.... more images/info on Railwire up the post a little ways ( HERE ).

Sumner

[gi-depp]

Working on a Atlas SD60

[Ed Kapuscinski]

6210 is starting to look like a real Conrail unit.

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Now if only the USPS would remove its thumb from its bum and get that decoder to me she'll start to sound like one too.

These Atlas SD45s aren't perfect out of the box, but I actually really like doing the little bit of work to get them there.

[craigolio1]

I have been working on trees off and on for  about a year.

Today I took stock. 573 of them. These are all bottle brush style like Grant Eastman makes for his SAR, but with trunks and more elevated level of detail like @grove den makes.

Not done yet!

I’m modelling a pacific coast rainforest which has a whole other forest under the canopy. So about half of these have trunks tall enough to accommodate that. They will get washes, dry brushing, moss and ferns on their trunks. And then of course flocking. Soooooo much flocking.









Some of them will be standing but dead.

Still need to prepare all of the understory…. Dead falls covered in moss, logs, smaller trees growing out of logs. And Racoons.

Hoping to have my forest largely complete for a show in late January. We’ll see.

For celebrating a holiday season right now, enjoy!!! And all the best to your families and friends.

Craig

[Bob]

The trains are finally running again on the CSX Cumberland Subdivision.  One of the two helices was just a never-ending source of trouble.  Then, I had to disconnect and move the darn thing so the plumber could replace a shut-off valve in the ceiling.  Well, this knocked it completely out of whack and I decided enough was enough.  I decided to construct a new helix with a larger radius and more space between levels and at the same time add two additional staging tracks on the lower level as well as lengthening all staging tracks by splicing in a new 4-foot section.  I ordered a helix from The Model Railroad Benchwork Store.  James McGowan was great – the helix arrived in neatly cut-pieces which I assembled atop new benchwork.  Because I extended the staging tracks, I had to move the helix off to the side so I had to build a new connecting-section.  In any event, this was my first experience laying a significant amount of track and installing new turnouts and switch machines.  This is something you certainly get better at with some practice – it is quite satisfying when it goes well and frustrating when it doesn’t!  The trackwork is now complete and I’ve started running trains which identified half a dozen flaws – these have now all been fixed and I think I have everything running trouble-free.  Now I can get back to scenery!
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[delamaize]

 I actually have the rare Friday Saturday Sunday off from work, which means I can actually get my weekend update posted during the weekend! Oh and! I actually have some stuff to contribute this weekend!

So the first thing I did was perform some blasphemy, I got in on the Rapido Christmas mystery box like I always do, and this year I ended up with two flexi-flo hoppers, and 4 other freight cars. One was decorated for the original New York Central as delivered, the other one was patched for the Penn central. The Penn Central One was begging to be changed. I haven't yet come up with the story on why the Skookumchuck Beltline has a flexi-flo hopper, but we do!
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The next thing I did was start to decal up a 50 ft Box Car in my railroad. I don't have any letters in white decals, but I did have some numbers from a previous project. I decided I wanted to do two different paint schemes on the box cars, one is going to be the colored Harold with a yellow black round and black text, the other one is going to be just simply White, once I actually get those decals made. The white decal Heralds will also be larger. Pretty happy with this box car so far but it's still a way from being done
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Next thing I did was finally got off my butt and laid down some ground color on the one module that I've actually got some terrain done on. Again I'm pretty happy with it, I need to actually put down some ground phone/foliage, get some more trees made, and plant the ones I have, and then do fences, driveway/road, and other details.
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Finally, I built the mock-up to test the idea for a animated Center pivot irrigation system. I'm happy to report it's a success and it works, and I'm pretty happy with the basic shape of the mock-up, so I think the next big step for this is going to be to add details to and get to work on the rest of the scenery. As I had mentioned before I believe the animation is about as simple as you can get, I tied the sprinkler system into the minute hand of a basic AA battery powered clock mechanism, so it makes one rotation in an hour, just slow enough that you can't easily sit and physically watch it go around, but fast enough that if somebody was to see it walk away and come back later the sprinkler would be in a different position.
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[altohorn25]

My latest passenger train project - Soo Line train #17 - The Laker - northbound - circa 1958.

I've completed the cars based on a Youtube video I found:

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While they are not 100% prototypical, this consist gives a good representation of the train.  The cars are a combination of Micro Trains,  Wheels of Time, Walthers, Model Power, and Intermountain/CCS.  The sleepers are in their factory paint jobs as well as the WOT and Walthers baggage cars (the Walthers baggage car I swapped out the lightweight trucks for 6 wheel trucks as per the prototype).  All other cars are painted and decaled (Modelflex paint and Circus City Decals).  Low profile metal wheels have been added to all the heavyweight cars.

I finished up cutting the foam in the storage boxes this morning.  I'll need one more box for the motive power.


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I also worked on some of the decals on the 3rd GP9TT (the other two are factory decorated Atlas units).  I'm waiting on one decal set and the new mechanism to arrive in the mail.


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A fun project over the past couple of weeks.

[craigolio1]

My latest passenger train project - Soo Line train #17 - The Laker - northbound - circa 1958.

I've completed the cars based on a Youtube video I found:

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While they are not 100% prototypical, this consist gives a good representation of the train.  The cars are a combination of Micro Trains,  Wheels of Time, Walthers, Model Power, and Intermountain/CCS.  The sleepers are in their factory paint jobs as well as the WOT and Walthers baggage cars (the Walthers baggage car I swapped out the lightweight trucks for 6 wheel trucks as per the prototype).  All other cars are painted and decaled (Modelflex paint and Circus City Decals).  Low profile metal wheels have been added to all the heavyweight cars.

I finished up cutting the foam in the storage boxes this morning.  I'll need one more box for the motive power.


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I also worked on some of the decals on the 3rd GP9TT (the other two are factory decorated Atlas units).  I'm waiting on one decal set and the new mechanism to arrive in the mail.


(Attachment Link)


A fun project over the past couple of weeks.

What a great consist!!!  I love pool trains or trains made up of absorbed railroads’ equipment

Craig

[R L Smith]

I've been making progress on the bridge replacement project. In the last two weeks I 'poured' the river, added basic ground cover around and under the bridge abutments, and permanently installed the bridge deck.




Next step is to install the bridge track and connect it to the mainlines. After that, it will be "Clean Up in Aisle 5!" time as I prepare for an NMRA meeting in mid-January... 

The bridge superstructure will be another time-consuming challenge, but it's more important to get trains running again for op sessions.

Ron

[mu26aeh]

Are those GP30's Rapido?

Pretty sure they are Proto 2000 or similar.  Was on a operating session, not my layout

[Ed Kapuscinski]

I haven't yet come up with the story on why the Skookumchuck Beltline has a flexi-flo hopper, but we do!

Conrail made some of them into scale test cars (including the one the CRHS owns): https://www.thecrhs.org/80019