Weekend Update 7/2/23

[up1950s]

https://www.lifestyleasia.com/sg/travel/asia/sightseeing-train-in-japan-runs-on-leftover-ramen-broth/

https://www.skunktrain.com/

https://www.trains.com/trn/news-reviews/news-wire/more-union-pacific-steam-locomotives-undergoing-restoration/

https://steamengineresource.weebly.com/locomotives-being-restored.html

https://www.mchughlocomotive.com/huckleberry-railroad-center-cab-12/

https://mechanical.strasburgrailroad.com/historic-railroad-car-restoration/

https://13wham.com/news/local/historic-1930s-commuter-train-leaves-rochester-to-go-home-for-restoration

[mu26aeh]

I have finally cracked.  After months of staring at my basement with no layout and no track plan, I've gone and done it.   The dark side of HO has called my name and I answered Wednesday morning down at the local auction house.  There were 3 serious bidders for approx 15-20 HO locomotives.  All various Western Maryland power with 1 Bachmann 3 truck shay for McCloud river.  I missed out on the shay, but ended up with a Kato/Stewart F7 A/B set, 1 Atlas RS3 and 2 Proto 2000 GP9.  4 out of 5 ran when I came home to check them out.  1 GP9 however would only light up, no movement.  Some quick internet intel revealed these are prone to axle gears cracking and did I hit the jackpot.  All 4 gears are cracked end to end.  Off to the hobby shop today to get new replacements, along with some Kadee couplers to install on the GP9 s as they were missing.  Went to install them tonight and, well, I got some serious learning to do.  Original screws missing and Kadee doesn't  include screws in their coupler packs like MicroTrains does.  So guess I gotta head back to hobby shop at some point and get some screws too.  Any know which size screws I need ?  2-56 are too big





Also while at the hobby shop, FedEx showed up with a shipment from one of our distributors including my Atlas 3230 cement hoppers I pre-ordered.  I grabbed them too because I'm not switching to HO      I got these as consignment fodder at the hobby shop as WM equipment is highly sought after.  May end up keeping 1 or 2 for use during ops sessions I get invited to.  Time will tell. 

[craigolio1]

I had a good week in the paint shop.

I needed to shoot gloss black and metalizer for the Rocky Mountaineer Ultradome handrails….. but also had a few other projects awaiting the same.

So I also shot gloss black and metalizer on the Whistler Northwind tail end car, “Pavillion”, a Kato replacement for the Pacific Starlight Dinner Train dome “Stardust”, and a Rapido Budd baggage dormitory car to complete my Canadian.




I then masked and shot grey primer on all of the cars that needed stripes. Next came the VIA blue stripe on the baggage dorm.



And while I had the blue out I did the sides for VIA Rail Pullman dome “Columbia”.



Then I shot the tuscan red stripe for Stardust.



Previously I had painted some exCP 2200 coaches for my Royal Hudson consist, but had mistakenly painted part of the ends black. That had previously been removed but needed to be painted Tuscan. So while I had the red out they got finished.



Aaaand finally Pavillion got a stripe of burnt umber, which makes paint complete on the first car in my Whistler Northwind. You know… cause I need ANOTHER passenger train project.



Happy Canada Day!

Craig

Edit: oh yes and the Ultradome handrails DID get painted. They are buried somewhere in the first photo.

[Bill H]

Craig:
"had a good week in the paint shop", well that's an understatement for sure. Very nice!

Kind regards,
Bill

[BCR 570]

Excellent work Craig!  Will send you those truck pictures this weekend.

This past week saw the final preparations prior to my first operating session in the new apartment, which is scheduled for tomorrow afternoon.  I had hoped to get the permanent span for the Pine River bridge installed but have run out of time, so the temporary span went back in:




After completing the track and wiring connections, the first movement across the span was run to test everything there:




Work Extra 807 then continued on up the helix to reach the upper deck:




The last servo requiring attention was for the main track south ladder in Chetwynd Yard.  This one has been malfunctioning for a long time and I opted to remove and replace it.  This is a critical turnout in the yard and having it now operate well removes a major headache:




After a thorough cleaning and vacuuming of the track, I began staging freight cars for the first incoming Vancouver-Peace freight, which will bring the first revenue freight cars back onto the layout at the start of the session:




I also finished testing the locomotives and cleaning their wheels.  I have been running them back and forth between Chetwynd and Septimus and they are now running well.  Here are three sets of motive power at Septimus:




All of the ops paperwork has been printed and placed ready for the crews.  Now comes the big test - to see if everything works well with an operating crew present!


Happy Canada Day to all my fellow Canadians!

Tim

[spr1955]

I have been distracted and working on some open loads.  Here is my Ductile Iron Water Main pipe load, still waiting on some Chartpak 1/64 tape for the bundles of pipe.

[Ed Kapuscinski]

I got loaded this week.

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[PiperguyUMD]

Hi All! Haven’t been doing a ton on the modules lately- who knew trombone players where so busy! I’ve been lurking though and keeping up with all the fantastic work here. I wanted to pass along a discovery I made this weekend. I’ve been collecting items to build a DCC in a box system that fits my needs. While looking for a tool box to use as a starting point, I stumbled across this at Lowe’s:



It’s a two drawer set that’s part of a modular tool box system. Those drawers looked like they might be spot on for N scale rolling stock, so naturally I went home and came back with a few cars to try it out. Bingo!





So after digging around I found the “tool box” part of the stack, which looked like it would be perfect for my DCC in a box project.



So when all is said and done, this is what followed me home. The bottom section is a bit larger than I’d like, but I figure there room for extension cords, throttles, spare parts etc.



Looking forward to this project now!

[Dwight in Toronto]

Did a bit of LokProgrammer tweaking on my two N scale Rapido FP9A sound locomotives.  Shown here in an ABA configuration, with a LokPilot equipped Intermountain B unit in the middle, pulling Rapido’s 10-car “The Canadian” on my 16’ test oval.

Slight changes included:
- enabling of both roof-top spotlights to be operable in consist mode
- moving the toggle control from F13 (factory) to F6, for quicker/easier control of those rooftop spotlights, and so that toggle status would now be visible on the NCE throttle display
- enabling the locomotive rear lamps to automatically illuminate when reversing 
- modifying a randomly generated air compressor noise which, to me,  was an overly loud and annoying “clack-clack-clack-clack” racket that occurred much too often … I reconfigured it to be quieter, much less frequent (now roughly every 4 minutes or so), and of much shorter duration (3 - 8 seconds max)

[packers#1]

Nice work on display everyone! I’m just kicking cars around for now, might get to some modeling later this weekend though!

Switching out corn syrup cars at the food plant at the end of the line. Gotta get those tankers lined up with the hoses!



Dropping out the off spot cars; we’ll take the GATX tanker back with us, along with the three plastics hoppers from the plastic film plant that were switched on the way down (in reality just some cars to make rebuilding the train more fun).



I think my plan for this layout is going to be to be able to swap industries in and out on the modeled portion. I’ll have the food plant paired up with a plastics plant that I can swap around, and then a lumber yard and steel warehouse pair that I can use the concrete pad for the lumberyard or as the foundation for the steel warehouse.

[davefoxx]

Still perfecting my brick and mortar work on plastic structures.



More on the Carolina Sandhills Lines thread in the Layout Engineering forum.

DFF

[dnhouston]

Resurrecting a project I started almost 2 years ago.  Finally going to finish this small refinery.

[nscaler711]

Only thing I've done really worthy was hang a shelf for a beautiful turbine.
PRR fans don't @ me. Those cars are beautiful even if they may not have ran with it. 
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[peteski]

Only thing I've done really worthy was hang a shelf for a beautiful turbine.
PRR fans don't @ me. Those cars are beautiful even if they may not have ran with it. 

Looks very nice, but I would suggest adding some sort of clear enclosure around it. Unless your dwelling is a industrial grade clean-room, dust will accumulate on that beautiful model, and giving the model good cleaning periodically is not much fun (speaking from experience).

BTW, is that H0 scale model, or N scale brass?

[Ed Kapuscinski]

Hi All! Haven’t been doing a ton on the modules lately- who knew trombone players where so busy! I’ve been lurking though and keeping up with all the fantastic work here. I wanted to pass along a discovery I made this weekend. I’ve been collecting items to build a DCC in a box system that fits my needs. While looking for a tool box to use as a starting point, I stumbled across this at Lowe’s:



It’s a two drawer set that’s part of a modular tool box system. Those drawers looked like they might be spot on for N scale rolling stock, so naturally I went home and came back with a few cars to try it out. Bingo!





So after digging around I found the “tool box” part of the stack, which looked like it would be perfect for my DCC in a box project.



So when all is said and done, this is what followed me home. The bottom section is a bit larger than I’d like, but I figure there room for extension cords, throttles, spare parts etc.



Looking forward to this project now!

That big box is the exact one I used for my build

Go take a look at that thread to see what I did and don't hesitate to ask about anything I didn't cover.