Weekend Update 2/15/26

[PGE_Modeller]

Didn’t they have a couple ex-interurban sleeping cars as well? Super rare to begin with, but found a second home on the PGE. Greg Kennelly, are you out there?

Indeed they did!  Oregon Electric sleepers "Santiam" (# 1010) and "Calapooia" (# 1011) became Pacific Great Eastern "Quesnel" and "Lillooet" (2nd).  In addition, Oregon Electric parlour-observation "Champoeg" (# 1001) became PGE business car "Bridge River".

Cheers,
Greg

[btrain]

I’m not sure if there’s such a thing as billboard foamers, but I’m thankful for this individual’s effort on this website to capture the everyday mundane: https://www.vintag.es/2022/11/1980s-burkhart-billboards.html?m=1

These work well for my Lake Shore Free-mon modules set in the early 1980s. The first one is a gentle reminder to not spend all of my money on model trains, and the Cincinnati Reds comes from an old radio guide they published. It felt pretty goofy getting down into the weeds of research, trying to find out what ball club around the Lima, Ohio area was popular at the time, but it really helps solidify a sense of place.

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[ATSF_Ron]

Resurrecting this old girl!

Quite a while back (a year or more?) I posted a thread about shorting issues with this beauty.  I finally seem to have arrived at a fix for her.  I hard wired the motor to the tender and replaced the factory metal drawbar with a plastic one made from an expired plastic credit card.  The hardwired motor improved things by at least 50%, but the plastic drawbar seemed to have been the final piece.  Below are pics of the original drawbar and then my first unsuccessful attempt at a replacement.  The second pic is a closeup of the unpainted plastic drawbar.





I also replaced the horribly oversized wire to the motor, as it was much too thick for reliable operation and was just fugly.  This beauty glides along the rails smoothly without hesitation.  The only issue now is fine tuning the drawbar.  And possibly the Kato unitrack #6 switches.  It glides through my Atlas #7 code 55s on the upper line just fine.  The Kato #6s on the lower line?  Not so much.  It's either a sharper radius entering/exiting the diverging track, or needing to enlarge the hole in the drawbar at the tender end.  The tender derails on most of them (Katos).  It looks like there is binding or inability to move freely on the tender end as it moves through the turnouts.  The new drawbar does not have the 90 degree bends like the original, so that may be an issue as well.  Anyway, experimenting with that will be fun.  I'm just glad to have her running like she should once again.

[Ed Kapuscinski]

I’m not sure if there’s such a thing as billboard foamers, but I’m thankful for this individual’s effort on this website to capture the everyday mundane: https://www.vintag.es/2022/11/1980s-burkhart-billboards.html?m=1

These work well for my Lake Shore Free-mon modules set in the early 1980s. The first one is a gentle reminder to not spend all of my money on model trains, and the Cincinnati Reds comes from an old radio guide they published. It felt pretty goofy getting down into the weeds of research, trying to find out what ball club around the Lima, Ohio area was popular at the time, but it really helps solidify a sense of place.

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I love everything about this.

[Iain]

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Made a Dover and Southbound coach.

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First print had some flaws, namely, by having the bottom be separate, it was very thin and warped, so now the bottom is part of the body and the roof is separate.  I've now also included most of an N-Possible box at each end.  Other improvements include dimples in the roof to locate the vents for gas lights and the stack for the stove, and I've lowered it a bit as I originally designed it to use Roundhouse trucks but I don't have enough to go around and the MT trucks are significantly taller.

[wm3798]

No progress on the layout, but every day working on the new kitchen is one day closer to moving the layout.

Thanks to @mu26aeh there was a couple of nice additions to the Retro fleet.


This is a unicorn I've been chasing for some time, a Rivarossi Challenger in factory WM paint by ConCor.  It runs silky smooth, and even navigates my 9.75" radius turns with ease.


And this nicely customized AB set of Minitrix F units are a perfect fit for the fleet.  Unlike your fancy, expensive limited production wonders, I'll never want for parts to keep these running!  Made by the tens of thousands for 35 years, they are EVERYWHERE!

Thanks also go to @btrain and @bman for their timely Trading Post purchases that subsidized the transactions.  Enjoy those Conrail blues, guys!
Lee

[InterurbanModels]

Indeed they did! 

And perhaps this one (ex Interstate) too?

[Philip H]

@BCR 570 are you sure your name isn’t really Dave? That track is DKS worthy.

@bman - that billboard website is very useful. Great catch.

[BCR 570]

And perhaps this one (ex Interstate) too?

Yes!  They had three of those and there was usually at least one on each passenger train the PGE ran during the steam and early diesel era.  One of them (CLINTON) still exists at the museum in Squamish.


Tim

[Sumner]

Been spending 2-3 hours in the afternoon wiring the sawmill scene track. Will probably be done with that this week and then will have to wire the control panel. 2-3 hours of stepping up and down on a platform to work in that area is about all I can do at this point (glad I can do that). To fill in the rest of the day lately I've been working on designing/making an U.P. nscale snow plow....the following.

Recently Norm on nscale.net post a build of a rotary snow plow that he had done ( HERE ) . The blade spins and he is using a sound decoder for sound. I thought this would make an interesting project so ordered the Tichy Trains N scale rotary snow plow that he had used.

He used the stock frame and mounted an electric motor on it. I designed a frame with fusion where the motor sits a bit lower to align with the shaft going to the blade and has a bearing block that holds two 2mm ID ball bearings. I got that working but then decided to see if I could design a rotary snow plow around one that U.P. had. It was build in 1922 and retired in 1969. It also had been converted from coal fired to oil fired in '49-50'.

The following is Part 1 of the build.

 

I found a drawing of the snow plow on utahrails.net. A great site if you are into Union Pacific. I used it to try and get the model somewhat accurate, maybe 80%-90%. I inserted the drawing as a 'canvas' into Fusion and re-calibrated it to N scale size.

 

Above is the first print. It came out pretty good but there are some problem areas that need to be addressed. Not much and I think I know what I need to do (check back or see if the next page has the corrections).

   

The ladder was only attached to the body at the top and bottom. The print was done at 45 degrees and it sagged while printing. I believe a couple more attach points between the bottom and top on the back side of the ladder will fix that.

 
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Above the blade is sticking out a bit as it was a little oversize in diameter. The one, bottom right, should fix that.
 
 

The new model looks smaller above but was further from the camera. They are almost exactly as long (the new one is a touch longer actually). More to follow in a couple days hopefully.

There are more pictures on railwire here.....

https://www.therailwire.net/forum/index.php?topic=58208.msg836778#new


Sumner

[PGE_Modeller]

And perhaps this one (ex Interstate) too?

To add to what Tim said, the three Interstate cars became Pacific Great Eastern "Clinton", "Barkerville". and "Pavilion".  "Clinton" and "Barkerville" each had one of the sleeping sections removed and one converted to a private compartment together with a rearrangement of the men's washroom.  There was no change in the exterior appearance of the cars.  I will look forward to the acquisition of at least one of these cars when they are available.
Cheers,
Greg

[Jesse6669]

New train work bench in the new house is finally done!

Things will still get shifted around a bit over time but it's nice to finally have a dedicated area with great storage and space to work on trains.

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I appreciate this effort.. I spent some time organizing the work area this week to clear up some of the clutter in my laundry/model room.  I bought some clear storage containers and loaded my Z rolling stock into them.  I have a bunch of T scale stuff taking up shelf space as well, that'll go into "long term" storage (either crawl space or storage unit). 

I also kept plugging away at Zumbiel Packaging and got to some ballast work on the McCullough Yard lead/ex PRR CL&N branch.  There're separate threads in the Layout Engineering and 3D printing subs on that.

[Cory Rothlisberger]

Been doing a lot of playing around with randomizing operations using OpsBuddy 1.0. I also watched a great presentation the the URHS did on the Rahway Valley RR freight operations and it gave me some insight on how a small railroad "operated". The biggest takeaway was how they switched out Monsanto, their biggest customer. The crew never really knew their work until they rolled up and the plant manager handed them a note for which cars were needed to be spotted where. Adds another cool area of rolling the dice and keeping a handful of hopper cars around waiting to be unloaded from my Thermoplastics plant.
Here's a link to the presentation. https://youtu.be/WKdZP_Uw6g4?si=auFU4c9kX1hr1laX

Also had to stop and admire a boxcarless local freight on my layout. Doesn't happen very often...

[davefoxx]

Hey, Lee!

The next time you want to tease me about passenger cars and 89’ flats on my layout, I want you to think about what you wrote here. 🤣

DFF

This is a unicorn I've been chasing for some time, a Rivarossi Challenger in factory WM paint by ConCor.  It runs silky smooth, and even navigates my 9.75" radius turns with ease.

[jpwisc]

I had an old Railway Express compressor sitting around.
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I stripped it down and added some styrene on top to increase the height and let me install an exhaust stack more easily.
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Then I saw this pic
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And I decided to decorate it that direction. The casting is rough, but I’m happy with the work I put into it. Oh yeah, and I built the tank truck this weekend too.
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