Weekend Update 1/6/13

[rogergperkins]

/>More B&O passenger trains with MTL heavy weight cars; Kato GS-4 and BLI E6 locomotives.

[Ian MacMillan]

A whole bunch of weeds sprouted up! More in the LE thread.

[John]

Transplanting WM Lines 84 Lumber to the M&O

[Ian MacMillan]

Transplanting WM Lines 84 Lumber to the M&O

I was starting to wonder if your layout still existed! Nice to see it work its way over from Lee's.

[davefoxx]

Installed my first (and second) mini-switch ground throw:



More information can be found over on the Seaboard Central 2.0 thread in the Layout Engineering Reports.

DFF

[tehachapifan]

Great stuff as always!

I started my SP MP15AC kitbash using the Atlas MP15DC as a starting point. All the long hood doors and/or louvers have been corrected to more closely reflect the arrangement on the AC unit. An extra roof section has been added as was a brakewheel....





Now I just need the online store at Atlas to come back online so I can order more parts.

[wazzou]

@Daryl K.
Those pictures show some of the nicest portrayals of prototype railroading shown photographed here in my recent memory.  Great job.

[delamaize]

So this project has affectionally been titled "Frankendiner."

I needed an NP heavyweight dining car for my Mainsteeter project so with inspiration from Gregg Scott at GHQ and a Rivarossi coach I got started.  It is a model of  #1695 which had end skirts applied.  This thing has parts from a coach and a 12-1, part of a resin roof from Joe Valerio, Micro-Trains, AMB, Palace Car Co., M&R, Plastruct, Detail Assoc. K&S, Kato, Tamiya, and Des Plains Hobbies.  It needs some cleaning up before paint. but here ya go.  Oh,  and a link to the prototype.

http://archive.nmra.org/Portals/NMRA//images/l_E%20Stephens%20Bx2%20Pass%20012.jpg

 

Love it, you're making me want to do more prototype aimed modeling, the A-4 was actually pretty fun.

Today I ran trains on my Unitrack & folding table Northern, and discovered something, My A-4 will outpull 2 atlas GP7, But it will throw a traction tire, and it will not stay on afterwards.  and my stock GS4 will do the same.  So now I need 3 sets of new traction tires. On the plus side, this is the first time I have EVER had any issue with the traction tires on the GS4, guess I am luckier than most.

Over the last few weeks I have picked up some cheap, older freight from a local hobby shop. Mostly older Atlas and Bachmann stuff, but it looks decent. I changed out trucks, Lowered them all, and body mounted some 1015s. Pretty happy with them, and at $7 a pop, I can't complain too much.

[bbussey]

Those vents are from a Kato detail set.  I can't remember which one off the top of my head.  I got them off the Kato website.

They look like the Budd details, which are available in silver and black.  Excellent detail parts to stock up on, as that vent style also applies to many heavyweight diners.

[kelticsylk]

Finished routing the new helix...

[mark dance]

Waaayyyyyy too much of my hobby time this week was spent trying to get a new laptop computer up and running with JMRI/PanelPro to control the train order signals on the C&W.  The XP machine I have used for the last couple of years has developed a hw problem and isn't reliable.  JMRI and Windows 8 don't play well on my new laptop so I wasted nearly 2 days of hobby time and it doesn't look like it is going to work out in the end if I continue down this path.  Brutal.  I hate computer problems: you never expect them, they cost time and money to fix, and when they are fixed, if you are lucky, you are back to the same functionality you started with!.

Other than that, I spent some time preparing for the first Ops session in 6 months (I've got to look into one of those Atlas vacuum cars!), finished an AMB Barn kit for the Slocan Valley and took a few over view shots of the layout for an article submission.





Overview shots:
1) Main ailse looking towards Nelson


2) Main aisle looking towards Castlegar


3) West aisle looking towards Shields


4) East aisle looking towards Farron


Have a great weekend everyone.

md

[nkalanaga]

LIRR:  Those buildings bring back memories for me.  My first train was a Lone Star 000 set in 1967, and as a broke pre-teen, supplies were scarce.  Scrap lumber and cardboard boxes made some fine industries!

From me:
Something old, something new,
Which is which is up to you.

Central Montana, 1974.
MILW 54243 is a new FVM ribbed side box with a Micro-Trains door added, to model an old car.
MILW 5038 is an ancient Con-Cor model of a newer car.  As I've never found any mention of a MILW 5000 series, I have no idea if they actually had such a car.


http://img259.imageshack.us/img259/6628/milw54243and5038nearfou.jpg

[wazzou]

Mark, your layout is also extraordinarily realistic.  The pace with which turn out that quality is amazing.

[C855B]

With the partial work week, a fair amount of progress on the GC&W layout building.

Unburied some of the last six months' accumulation of rolling stock and supplies piled up on a work table, with the intent of getting some actual N scale work done for next weekend's train show. Challenge is getting two Con-Cor U50's up on DCC, one already mostly done but needing debugging, the other also needing couplers.

Spent entirely too much time on amtrak.com wrestling with train schedules trying to arrange an upcoming cross-country trip, only to have the finely-tuned plan dashed when I was informed I had to be in town the day after the planned departure. Revised the itinerary only to be told that I screwed it up so badly I need to talk to Customer Relations on Monday to untangle it. 

[flight2000]

As others mentioned, lots of spare time this week with the limited work schedule.  I converted an SD70ACe with the Trainworx kit to this SD70M-2.  The gent I did this one for picked the road number, that's why it's in a different series of numbers.  The headlight is in the wrong place, but I didn't want to fiddle around with moving them to the nose.

Brian