Arizona & California RR

[Santa Fe Guy]

Doug.
Great work on the layout and still love those custom painted Locos.
I also had a turnout cause issues on the diverging route only to find that the gauge of the turnout was slightly off. This was an ME turnout that I had added a PCB throw bar to and the gap was too tight for the front wheel set on a six axle loco to pass through as the truck could not swivel quickly enough to get through. Might be worth a look.
Rod.

[coldriver]

Congratulations on the first session Doug!  It's great to see your all your progress too - don't be a stranger here.  I like the look of your waybills and can appreciate the flexibility of your operating system.  One pet peeve (yes, it's minor but still bugs me... ) is the frequent model railroad misuse use of the terms "Setout" and "Pickup" rather than "Spot" and "Pull".  I'm not 100% sure it's absolutely universal but in my 25 years as a real railroader on a big old class one the terminology is consistently "Spot" and "Pull" to/from industries or facilities like carshops, sand tracks, etc, and "Setout" and "Pickup" to/from yards or other non-industry tracks.  Typical usage would be, "Your spot cars are in train 197's setout on track 1" or "Set your industry pulls towards track 3 to complete 197's outbound pickup."  It looks like your bill boxes have some temporary lettering so would suggest changing to Spot and Pull whenever you make them more permanent. 

[dmidkiff]

Thanks Gary. I don’t doubt that couplers will need constant attention, especially with repeated ops. I agree that ops are the reason to build these monstrosities in our spare space and time.

Thanks Rod. I believe the issue is in the locomotive more than the track, I think the gauge on the loco is too wide because the actual flange is riding up and over the point. I’ve filed this point as thin as possible and made sure it’s tight to the stock rail. Nothing else has issues through here.

Congratulations on the first session Doug!  It's great to see your all your progress too - don't be a stranger here.  I like the look of your waybills and can appreciate the flexibility of your operating system.  One pet peeve (yes, it's minor but still bugs me... ) is the frequent model railroad misuse use of the terms "Setout" and "Pickup" rather than "Spot" and "Pull".  I'm not 100% sure it's absolutely universal but in my 25 years as a real railroader on a big old class one the terminology is consistently "Spot" and "Pull" to/from industries or facilities like carshops, sand tracks, etc, and "Setout" and "Pickup" to/from yards or other non-industry tracks.  Typical usage would be, "Your spot cars are in train 197's setout on track 1" or "Set your industry pulls towards track 3 to complete 197's outbound pickup."  It looks like your bill boxes have some temporary lettering so would suggest changing to Spot and Pull whenever you make them more permanent.

I really appreciate this feedback and will change the text. I do need to post here more, and one thing I hope to happen is that others point things like this out. I don’t know a whole lot about prototype practices, and especially prototype variations on cars and locos, but hopefully by posting models, folks here will correct things they may know that I don’t.

Doug

[jagged ben]

Hey I've got to follow this thread.       You've got something coming together here for those great looking GP35s.

I mean ... since your last post you actually went ahead and built it!   Congrats.

[LIRR]

I like the paint scheme.....very railroady looking. Is it freelanced?

[mcjaco]

I like the paint scheme.....very railroady looking. Is it freelanced?

Nope.  Owned originally by Park Sierra.  Same paint scheme was used on the California Northern as well.  One of the AZRC old Geeps managed to get all the way up to Napa for service time up there at one point. 

[dmidkiff]

Yup, it’s a real railroad, now owned by Gennesse & Wyoming. I know of one of their locomotives being repainted in the orange, yellow, and black, but the rest are still in green and white. I’m modeling 1995, so the real railroad had GP20’s, GP30’s, GP35’s and GP38’s all painted for them. THey also had a pair of blue MP15 leasers. I’m stretching my modeling a bit and I’m going to build their SD40M-2 which didn’t really come along until 2001 I believe.

Doug