Ken - Your Hallmark Frisco cab looks great! I have three of the Overlands, which also look good, but I don't think they are as dimensionally correct as are the Hallmarks. I've never measured them - need to do that sometime. I do have the Hallmark side-door cab, but it is still unpainted. K
Judging by the location of that whistle, I was wondering that had to be loud for the person pulling that lever! Whaaaatduesay! John
To complete the tour of the North Birmingham section of the layout, which is territory serviced by the Seaboard Air Line Railway, here are a few shots of the SAL engine house and industrial switching area. Enjoy. Ken McElreath
Ken - Fascinating stuff, as usual. Unless one's modeling a very small slide of Friscoland, I always enjoy seeing interchange power - the SBD switcher and caboose go a long way towards establishing a sense of place. In this case, "we're definitely in the SE of Friscoland, not SW or elsewhere." Best Regards,
Something that I tried that was very different from our old Birmingham Terminal Division layout was to use "hidden storage" or staging tracks that were actually visible, but partially obscured in the background. For this project I chose the Southern Railway's 37th Street Yard in East Birmingham. My yard has six staging tracks, and it sits behind the Birmingham Southern's scene in the foreground, separated by scenic elements to set it apart and not call attention to itself. This part of the layout is on a long peninsula, and the staging yard has a scenic double-sided backdrop separating it from the Seaboard Air Line and Vulcan Pipe and Foundry scene on the back side. I am so pleased with the results, much more so than the actual hidden storage/staging trackage that I have at the west end of the layout. Here are some photos that I hope will enable you to visualize the setting and encourage you to try this "non-hidden" approach to "hidden staging" tracks on your layout. The two tracks with light colored ballast that pass beneath the signal bridge are nominally the eastbound and westbound main lines. The last photo shows the end of track of these mainline tracks at the edge of the layout, with the Birmingham Southern's industrial track to Vulcan Pipe crossing. Enjoy. Ken McElreath
My most humble apologies; I took several of the photos in a portrait format and had them rotated correctly in my computer folder, but for some reason I don't understand, they reverted to the sideways format when I loaded them to this post. I don't know how to fix them here now. Ken McElreath
