Workshop Wednesday

Very impressive Bill. A great scene all the way around.

 

Joe, of the thousands of bridges I have worked on, the bridges on the Oregon Trunk are the most impressive, high canyon's and the rivers of the Dechutes. I still come back to the one in Mountainburg, Ar. This bridge is a scene that is repeated hundreds of times on rail lines through out railroads everywhere.

 

Bill that is impressive work. I might have to give my lift out bridge a make over.
Joe, I have lost count lol. I have an excel file that has my whole roster, plus decor settings incase I need to do a reset. I need to update it for some of my recent acquisitions... I'll have a number tomorrow

 

Ethan, I know what you mean about losing count, my N scale roster was 253 items with 135 being Frisco. Since then I have sold some and also bought a few. They are stored in two Apple boxes, one for Frisco which is full and the other is for other railroads which is about three quarters full. I need to buy railcars that were interchange with Frisco such as MP, MKT, KCS and RI, I'm good with SF. There are a few more that I need to sell to make extra money to buy the interchange railcars. Will make a list and post it soon.

Joe

 

After getting out of college I went a little nuts on flee bay. I found a lot of great deals though. My collection some how shot up to 80 locomotives. I brought in several units from interchanging roads. I've always had an underlying interest in the Santa Fe and now that I live in a Santa Fe town I had an excuse to expand upon that. I ended up buying some BNSF items that I grew up seeing right out front of my house.
I like to keep track of my roster on excel, and I keep notes on what decoders are installed and what CV's I have programmed in case it goes crazy and I need to do a reset.
And I figured out my issue with uploading pictures, the files were too big so I had to size them down on my laptop before I could post them.

 

I've been on vacation, so haven't done much modeling or posted in a while. Back in town, though.
Got some old time cars for a project. Installed metal wheels and McHenry couplers on a few:


Worked on some Con-Cor Texas Special cars. I bought these a few years ago, and discovered the truck bolsters were formed at an angle when I replaced the pins with 6-32 screws:



I emailed Con-Cor and they sent me new trucks, which have been sitting on a shelf for years. I installed McHenry's, 36" metal wheels, and installed them in my TS cars:



They seem to be seriously underweight, though, so I'll have to fix that.

I also took advantage of good weather to paint weights for some Accurail hoppers and glue them in:



I somehow managed to glue the door closing mechanism on one car:



5 more to go...

 

Grabbed these power strips with LED power indicator for modules on the Crawford and Cherokee (v2). Any experience with them? I am hoping the power indicator works with DCC.

Power Distribution by rjthomas909 posted Aug 1, 2018 at 10:13 PM

 

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Okay Gary... you've got my attention with those 19th century passenger cars. What do you intend to do with those?

Andre

 

Here is one of my latest. I am breaking my own rule of never working on more than one at a time but......
The prototype is something I spotted in the random media that pops up. Knew I had to have one.



Lots of good stuff going on again guys. Thanks for keeping me moving on stuff.

 

If I tell the truth, I'll probably get kicked out of this group...

OK, I'll spill. I bought this loco at a sale for $10:



I wasn't sure what to do with this train but one of my other projects has been fixing up a Harry Potter Hogwarts Express for my daughter. I thought I would make this into a companion train, the Ilvermorny Limited, for her. It doesn't have anything to pull, so I started prowling ebay for old time passenger cars.

My daughter also wants to build a Hogwarts castle on the layout, too...

 

Work night at my friend's layout tonight, so I brought my Frisco passenger cars and my E8, and ran them on his layout:



Had some trouble with trucks and couplers, but I was glad to see the E8 ran flawlessly.

 

"If I tell the truth, I'll probably get kicked out of this group..."

Nah, Gary... this batch of train nuts is an accommodating group... unless it deals with BN.

"OK, I'll spill..."

That's the spirit.

"I bought this loco at a sale for $10... one of my other projects has been fixing up a Harry Potter Hogwarts Express for my daughter... My daughter also wants to build a Hogwarts castle on the layout, too..."

Then build them, you shall. A better reason would not be found than enjoying an activity with your daughter.

Whereas I certainly enjoy the link n' pin time span... it ain't for everybody. Have a great time and build some memories with your daughter!

BTW, nice looking Frisco psgr train.

Andre

 

Man, that guy would be awesome to sit down with and hear the stories.

I've loved mountain railroading since my discovery of it aboard a quartet of Frisco GP7's doing battle with The Mountain back in Nov of '74. (My previous exposures to railroading were in KC, and all previous onboard learning experiences were always yard, industrial type switching.) Once I experienced mountain railroading, I tagged along with the Frisco guys working The Mountain as much as I could and learned as much as I could from them. Over the long haul, all my "non-paid on the job training time" paid off... 'cause I was able to end up with a RR retirement that started by using all of the basic skills they taught me!

Railroading was such a different world then. Really miss the last of the "classic era" railroading my original railroading skills/knowledge were brought up in.

Andre

 

It works Chris, makes me want to get something that shows as progress in a week.

Thanks too , I will check for those photos. We had a great time like usual. Besides Brad and Ray I had a friend from England and one from Australia both show up as well as others from all over. I talked til my throat was sore for sure. Goy home and had kidney stones right away to bring me back down to earth I guess.

 

I'm building Accurail kits, so not the same thing. I like the Tichy kits, but they take more time.

Finished up the hopper cars:


Got 3 Frisco cars out of the bunch. I'm running out of Kadees and metal wheelsets. I'll need to stock up for this winter. I've also been taking down buildings, in preparation to building Hogwarts....

I also made some lead ingots out of car balancing weights:



The garage at work gives me as many as I want. I usually just cut them up and glue 'em down, but one of my friends makes ingots. I heated them outside in an old pan on camp stove, and poured the molten lead into a box wrench.

 

A day late but I got this knocked out for my dad over the last few days.

This is the photo from the archives I used. The model is not exact, I did not have the MW letters and did not bother changing the number. Don't tell him!


The model: