Weekend Update 9/21/25

[bbunge]

Ran my newly finished live overhead streetcar section at Altoona.  Considering I finished it Wednesday night and it ran at the show all day Saturday and some of Sunday morning before the lone car I have converted to live trolley poles decided to die, I was pretty happy.  It survived the transport and temperature changes without have to tweak the tension of the overhead.   Here is a video of it running at the house:

Also ran my spring/summer project of custom building a close enough Chessie Steam Special train to match the BLI T-1 that the kiddo picked up at the Spring Timonium show. 

Cheers,

Bob

[Sumner]

I'm beginning to wonder if he sleeps. Or eats, or does anything other than modeling. The speed and quality is quite impressive!

Yes I eat but the sleep seems to be optional to some degree and right now and for some time modeling has been it pretty much as far as what I'm doing.  Past building a house to live in, modifying sailboats, car and motorcycle stuff..... those are in the rear-view mirror .  I like big projects and enjoy the design/build part more that the 'use it' part.  Going on 82 need to keep working if I plan on getting to the 'use it' part.

Thanks for the input guys...

Sumner

[Dredgeboater]

Dear Sir,

At 74 I am a wee bit younger, but I do tip my model railroad cap to you, Sir !
Amazed of what you do accomplish, in all fields of the modelling world.
Followed you from the beginning of you explores in the 3D printing adventures and later in your electronic undertakings....
Having tinkered with model railroading since my 3rd year, still in awe over your work.

And yes, later never comes, later is NOW....

[Sumner]

The next scenes are the finished work.
 


.
 


.
 


Even though I was in a more comfortable painting position I was still standing the whole time and reaching in some. I would wear out after a few hours and need a break.

Clouds are up next for the last two backdrop scenes that were just painted.  More on Railwire ( HERE )

A link to this whole build ( HERE ) .

Sumner

[Ed Kapuscinski]

I believe that these friendships we make through model railroading and share here on TRW are truly what this hobby is all about.   

100%!

[brill27mcb]

Ran my newly finished live overhead streetcar section at Altoona.  Considering I finished it Wednesday night and it ran at the show all day Saturday and some of Sunday morning before the lone car I have converted to live trolley poles decided to die, I was pretty happy.  It survived the transport and temperature changes without have to tweak the tension of the overhead.   Here is a video of it running at the house:

[...]

Cheers,

Bob

Backing "against the pole" is pretty impressive operation, Bob! Tell us about the trolley and what drive it has, please.

Rich K.

[James Costello]

Yup.   

Excited to see this progress @jagged ben - in a fortuitous moment, I came across this photo over the weekend. I thought these were long gone in my era, but here's a 10 pack late in 1992:
https://flic.kr/p/YmRdGP

[samusi01]

@jagged ben a few more details about your model would always be interesting... might as well use the 3d design section for something. Eventually I may have to do that as well, except progress reports on anything is often erratic at best.

Back home last night from Altoona - a most enjoyable experience - through Deshler today, where I found some sorely needed detail parts - and Idaho tomorrow. A picture from @vermonter_railfan at the show:

[John]

@jagged ben a few more details about your model would always be interesting... might as well use the 3d design section for something. Eventually I may have to do that as well, except progress reports on anything is often erratic at best.

Back home last night from Altoona - a most enjoyable experience - through Deshler today, where I found some sorely needed detail parts - and Idaho tomorrow. A picture from @vermonter_railfan at the show:

Sam. Thats outstanding work,   

[SirTainly]

Congratulations!!!!!!!  You’re about to start the best part of your life!! 

Craig

Thanks - I hope so, been a tricky road to get here (2 rounds of IVF).

[SirTainly]

That's awesome - is that 3d printed or scratch built?

[samusi01]

@John thank you.

@SirTainly 3d printed by @vermonter_railfan on his Saturn 2.

[bman]

A littile late but I'm chipping away at catching up on hobby projects. I was able to set aside some time from some house projects(do they ever end???) for an attempt to polish a quartet of old roundhouse coal gondolas I picked up cheap at the LHS before leaving last Wednesday for Altoona. Returned early enough Sunday finish the decals and sprayed the flat yesterday. They'll are good enough for switching at the scrapyard at the club and running at shows. I found 3 photos of recently shopped DJJX cars around the time I model for my traveling trains(2018-2021) and thats why the one is a different shade. I guess I should paint the module green someday. We used leftover paint from when my now defunct favorite local shop remodel and they asked a couple of us to help with a TTrak module building class they did several years ago. Then again it does make finding my module easy.

[jagged ben]

Excited to see this progress @jagged ben - in a fortuitous moment, I came across this photo over the weekend. I thought these were long gone in my era, but here's a 10 pack late in 1992:
https://flic.kr/p/YmRdGP

Sweet!  Particularly interesting to see this photo with the 'Q' logo on the B-unit of the 10-pack.  Had not seen that before.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/129679309@N05/36962772272/in/photostream/

I'm going for an earlier era for now, basically as delivered 1980 for the FT-101, but if I get this project done the models could be easily modified for a later version (the main difference being that later on there were 'wings' added to the trailer platforms to accomodate 110" wide trailers).

Thanks for that link.

[Sokramiketes]

Well, I wasn't able to make it to the N Scale Weekend this year, but I was lucky enough to have some of the N Scale Weekend come to me.  Indeed, I had the distinct honour of hosting some of the dignitaries of the N scale world today for a day of running trains, breaking bread, and shooting the sh*t here in Vancouver:



From left to right: Harz Sondericker (Modutrak), Mike Skibbe (@Sokramiketes, Modutrak), Andrew Tyhurst (@turbowhiz, N-Possible), Dan Brewster (Grant's partner in crime and a 1:1 CP engineer), Grant Eastman (@southernalbertarail, SAR).  They had just spent the previous 4 days together riding the Canadian from Toronto to Vancouver and since they were still on speaking terms , they capped it off with a full day of torture testing the N-Possible couplers on Tehachapi, BC.  It was a day I will long remember!!

Thanks again for the hospitality, @GaryHinshaw !!  And for letting us muck around with other stuff on your great railroad. It’s as smoothly operating as it looks folks.

The business cars made the trip. And we even did some DPU testing with SAR spec units. Grant got a feel for the nPossible couplers against similar train dynamics to his pike. We had tested a couple nPossible pairs on the SAR but Gary has full trains worth converted. And that was awesome to experience in person.

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I can’t say enough impressive things about these couplers. @turbowhiz has really iterated an idea into a perfect product.

And Gary’s layout is a well engineered railroad in beautiful surroundings. I had a lot of fun in Canada, on train and off!

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