Weekend Update 10-26-2008

[Ed Kapuscinski]

I sat in the cab of a CR Blue SD80mac and SD40-2, got a tour inside Juniata Diesel Shop, shot night photography at Gallitzen and the Altoona Railroaders Museum and hung out with a bunch of awesome guys at the CRHS Altoona convention.



I'd post photos, but I shot them all on Russ's camera and he's on his way to Richmond VA. Hopefully I'll be seeing them soon.

[Dave V]

Just to prove to all that I haven't gone completely Conrail, I did a little Pennsy this weekend.  First up, I defiled a pair of Micro Trains N scale collectables...  I started with this great PRR Merchandise Service X29, trying to simulate the rust along the sills so common to the prototype (along with door scrapes):



I also attacked a PRR MoW hopper.  I haven't found a proto photo of one of these; I've seen H21s converted to ballast service, but not the GLa class.  I'm sure they existed.  I didn't bother to modify the hoppers for ballast spreading, but I did decide to paint the molded coal load gray (perhaps the MT car was supposed to be company coal service?  I dunno...) and added some WS gray blend ballast to it.



Then I weathered the "running gear" on my new Kato GG1.  Here she pulls into Lewisport station under the invisible catenary...:







Local residents are complaining about the giant bookcase:



Here's where I keep my Conrail alter-ego when not on the layout (note the 70's autos too):

[wm3798]

I worked on getting the stone train ready for service on the Maryland & Ohio.  I followed the prototype by painting the interior of the cars oxide red, then went back over the plastic Atlas loads, and painted them to look more like limestone.

Here's the empties.


Here's a shot with the loads...


Have a pleasant week at work, everyone!

Lee

[daniel_leavitt2000]

Here are a few projects on my workbench:

Conrail Quality GP10 based on a LL-Canada GP9R using GP18 parts


Front view. The cab is a modified SD26 cab.


SW1500


Front view.

[Dave V]

Sorry about the red X's....  I got it fixed now.  Picasa changes daily it seems.

[Craig Martyn]

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhh Mann!   

Workin' on this brass bridge...someone called it a collector's item so I had to ruin it...

[Day One]

I finished scratch building my retaining wall and tunnel portal slash snow shed.
It's loosely modeled on what I'm guessing is Philemon Tunnel on MRL's 4th Sub. I say guessing because I haven't yet found any concrete details on this tunnel and I built it from some screen caps I took from the Pentrex MRL DVD. Not a lot to go on but it fits the location on the layout pretty well.
I've still got to weather it and then of course finish the scenery around it. What's there was just a quick cover so I didn't have to look at a white styrofoam mountain while I finished building this.



I also stripped the paint from a Kato SD45 and added some silfor tufts around the layout. I love that stuff! Easy and quick to use and looks fantastic.

Tomm that bridge looks great!
Traincat I'll be ordering a woodchip loader as soon as they're ready!

[soo]

Wow,,, ritchie's car, Tom's bridge, David's T work,, am I worthy to post???

 As for me, I have been busy working with cd55 and trying to come up with a ground throw for the ATL turnouts. I just laying my track directly on homasote, because this is a industrial area,, I was thinking of maybe making it like Duluth Mn, so I could do some pilings and bulkhead retaining walls for the port area,, but back to the subject.

  Here are some pics,,, I used a radio shack sub-miniture slide switch. and just worked at different ideas, what you see in the pics is staged,, I worked with just one switch and see what worked best,, then I will apply to rest of the turnouts.





  I also used a #71 drill bit on the second slide swicth I used and some .025 wire. I do have some .030 wire I am going to try that also. These pics are the result of two attempts to get it right. The first one I used  a larger drill bit for the wire in the slide switch,, no bueno. I also thought about maybe coating with a adheisvie of some sort.

  Adios for now. Wyatt

[chuck geiger]

We need Z scale or more proto N manual turnout controls from Craig or someone.

[ednadolski]

Built a bridge in T scale.

Fantastic work David! 

The way my vision is going, I don't think I could see it even with my glasses....

[ednadolski]

Workin' on this brass bridge...someone called it a collector's item so I had to ruin it...

When I grow up I wanna be just like Tom!

BTW Tom, how goes the book?

Thanks,
Ed