Weekend Update - 10/03/2010

[Puddington]

With the wife away the 7 year old felt an overwhelming desire to awaken me at 0600 hrs so I guess (yawn) I'll start us off......

Throughout a 1940's 50' and 60's Canadian summer in the west, one had a chance to see a vast array of North Amercian railroad liveries as their sleepers were often found on the trains that plyed the mountains.

Tour groups would lease cars and they would be added to scheduled trains for passage. Often they would be set out at places like Banff on what were known as "garden tracks" for a few days acting as if they were hotels.

The fact that these cars were common gives me an opportunity to model foreign road sleepers and add them to my CP and CN consists.

I have really stretched it this time, however; but I couldn't resist adding this to my ever growing collection of sleepers....



The Milwaukee Road changed to the UP Armour Yellow livery in 1958 so the likelyhood that a classic sleeper like this would have made it to 1974, my era is remote at best. That said; "it's my world".....

Waterford was a 12-1 sleeper that the Milwaukee Road got from Pullman in the 1948 divestiture. It was repainted into a Hiawatha simple livery before being retired in the late 1950's. I saw a picture of it in the Morning Sun volume covering the Mil Rd and just had to see what a new MT sleeper would look like....

I've painted her in the last orange and maroon scheme and weathered her to indicate her years of service; my assumption being she was pressed back into one last season bacause of the huge up swing in tourist rail trips....(in my world)

Here she is at Samuel Ridge........



I just love that livery......something tells me she's going to get plenty of work !

Wat ya got ?

[Guilford Guy]

Did a couple of patched cars for the WRS. If all is well I should have some video of the WRS GP15s running on that railroad later today.

[mark dance]

As expected, with work ramped up post summer, MRR progress has ramped down.  I did manage to get the ground cover in place between Coykendahl and Bulldog tunnel and make more snowed conifers...I estimate I am going to need about ~1000-1200 trees between Coykendahl and McRae canyon tunnel.  The nice thing is the snowed trees seem to take up more "visual real estate".  If this area were all like the rest of the layout, it would probably require 2x that many.

The ground cover is a combination foam, real dirt, and ground up leaves with a variety of static grasses along the layout edge.  Not sure this comes through in the photos but here goes...scenery work still to be done in this area includes adding trees, foliage and ballasting, pouring and detailing the creeks, adding the dirt road and detailing the backdrop. 

#81 meets a pusher extra coming down hill.


#81 makings its way up Pup creek to Bulldog tunnel.





West portal of Bulldog tunnel at dusk.


The transition scene.  Still need to bring the "snow level" down at the East portal.


Next week I will try and get the backdrop painting finished in this area and the track ballasting started. 

md

[DKS]

Q: How many Z scale storm drains will fit on the head of a pin?

A: None. But a few will fit on your fingertip.

I made nearly a dozen of these for the streets of the town:



I also took advantage of a beautiful day yesterday to exercise a new lens (20mm ultra-wide-angle) in the sunlight.









More images here: http://jamesriverbranch.net/gallery.htm

Clinic on making the storm drains here: http://jamesriverbranch.net/part_20c.htm

[wm3798]

David,
That layout should be bottled as an aphrodisiac.

Wired up an SW1001 for Mark Gunderson.  It's a Randy Gustavsonized Kato drive under Mark's shell with a TCS Z-2 decoder stepped down to 3 volts.



Also cleaned up the gawdawful mess around the workbench, and sorted through the record library... Man, I have enough music to listen to everything one time, and finish when I'm about 90.

Lee

[Puddington]

Very nice work gents !

[conrail98]

I"ve been attending the MER Princeton Junction 2010 convention. Learned a lot, operated on a layout, got to visit a whole bunch of layouts where I took video and pictures of the layouts. Going to go see a whole bunch more, like 10, today. I will upload them somewhere on the web and post a link somewhere on the forum,

Phil

[up1950s]

Work continues on turning an Arnold Rapido 0-6-0 into a UP 4703 .
 

 

[up1950s]

Wow David , are the grates sections of Farr grills ?

[John]

Some more work on the container facility

[Puddington]

Work continues on turning an Arnold Rapido 0-6-0 into a UP 4703 .
 

 

Just don't paint it Richie and you've got it nailed...LOL ! Nice work !

[atsf_arizona]

Great photos, all, as usual.

For me, I'm happy to report that the roving X2011 West reporters have worked hard together to
bring you this report from the just-completed 2010 Southern Pacific Historical & Technical Society convention. 
The full set of pictures (so far) is at the X2011 West NMRA 2011 Convention Facebook page:

http://www.facebook.com/x2011west

And below, see some samples. Enjoy, and thx for the contributions.

Here's the direct URL to the album:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=31777&id=104852949549706&ref=mf

Enjoy.

Here are the N scale models from the display / contest area:









Here are some other wonderful models (all HO):











There's lots more to see in the Facebook album, about 70+ photos.

Feel free to let others who are interested in SP to know about the X2011 West
Facebook picture album on the SP Historical & Technical Society Convention
which is going on right now. Anyone can see the photos,
you / they don't have to be a Facebook member.

http://www.facebook.com/x2011west

The reporters say more from the layout tours will be coming, and will be added to the above album.

Presented in the spirit of model railroad sharing by the X2011 West Convention Committee.

Hope you enjoy!

[DKS]

Wow David , are the grates sections of Farr grills ?

Nope, oddly they're leftover parts from a European porta-potty kit by 1zu220-Modelle (#15002, Dixi-Klo).

[BCRail_FSJ]

I continued work on another SD40-2.  This one is being painted in a different version of the BC Rail colour scheme.  I took a Kato snoot nosed unit and chopped the nose length, added a new angular blower duct, nose and tail lights, over cab bell and 5 chime horn cluster.  

Next step is to touch up the paint job, add a few more detail parts then decals and weathering.

[central.vermont]

Did some painting of the big G for Mec_Fan. Just need to install a decoder now.
Jon