Colorado Midland Railway Engineering Report

[Dave V]

Here's my growing Midland roster posed at Spruce Creek on the JD.  The front row all need to have their Crappy-doh couplers replaced with proper knuckles and the two D&RGW cars are completely anachronistic for my era, but they look great and scream "Colorado railroading."



Noticeably absent is the locomotive...  I'm still working that!  I laid out a pretty hefty sum in a short period, so I probably should wait a bit on the loco.

[wazzou]

Hopefully you can find a way to close up that spacing between cars.  It's much more noticeable on the shorter length cars.

[Dave V]

Hopefully you can find a way to close up that spacing between cars.  It's much more noticeable on the shorter length cars.

Well, I'm gonna start by ditching the Rapidos for short-shank MTs...

[Chris333]

Think you have coupler problems now, wait till you see the front of the 2-8-0 

[Dave V]

Think you have coupler problems now, wait till you see the front of the 2-8-0 

Hah!  True dat!  But...  I want to actually try to operate this bee-otch.  That requires an operating front coupler, no matter how far outstretched the overscale boxing glove is!

[John]

a bachman 4-6-0 is running around 130-150

[reinhardtjh]

a bachman 4-6-0 is running around 130-150

Trainworld has a NYC version on sale for $113.99

Others are $125.99.

Of course, the Athearn 2-8-0 is only $64.99 there.

The biggest problem with Trainworld is fairly high shipping prices.  Around $12.95 IIRC but it covers a fair amount so if you can add other things it lowers the per unit cost a bit.

[Chris333]

4-6-0's are $105.00 all day long. Favorite Spot.

[delamaize]

+1 for the New bachman 4-6-0, Awesome locomotive.

[John]

4-6-0's are $105.00 all day long. Favorite Spot.

I did a quick look on ebay --- those were the numbers I saw

[Chris333]

http://www.thefavoritespot.com/casearch.aspx?SearchTerm=4-6-0

[Dave V]

http://s123.photobucket.com/user/MilesWestern/media/Steam%20Photos/4-6-0CM.jpg.html

Can anyone vouch for pulling power on grades for the Bachmann 4-6-0?  I imagine no more than 4 freight cars and a "way car" (caboose) on a 3%.  I'm building mine to 3% mainly because I'll be using the Woodland Scenics incline sets.  I also want the option for the bridges to have less grade.

Actually, the more I look at the 4-6-0, the more I like it.  It has quite a bit more detail than the 2-8-0 and...to be honest...I can hand-letter that big-a$$ tender much more easily than I can the 2-8-0.  I'll be spelling out "COLORADO MIDLAND" along the upper portion of the tender with a giant road number below.  Road number on the cab too.

Early on I think the 4-6-0s were primarily passenger engines but by my era, the railroad was a bit worn out and using anything with wheels and a fire to move freight over the Continental Divide.

EDIT:  A good look through my Midland book shows that not only were the 4-6-0s used in freight service, in the later years some were even used for switching!

[delamaize]

http://s123.photobucket.com/user/MilesWestern/media/Steam%20Photos/4-6-0CM.jpg.html

Can anyone vouch for pulling power on grades for the Bachmann 4-6-0?  I imagine no more than 4 freight cars and a "way car" (caboose) on a 3%.  I'm building mine to 3% mainly because I'll be using the Woodland Scenics incline sets.  I also want the option for the bridges to have less grade.

Actually, the more I look at the 4-6-0, the more I like it.  It has quite a bit more detail than the 2-8-0 and...to be honest...I can hand-letter that big-a$$ tender much more easily than I can the 2-8-0.  I'll be spelling out "COLORADO MIDLAND" along the upper portion of the tender with a giant road number below.  Road number on the cab too.

Early on I think the 4-6-0s were primarily passenger engines but by my era, the railroad was a bit worn out and using anything with wheels and a fire to move freight over the Continental Divide.

EDIT:  A good look through my Midland book shows that not only were the 4-6-0s used in freight service, in the later years some were even used for switching!

I'll get mine out later today sometime and do some testing. Although I swapped mine out with a shorter Bachman tender.

[Dave V]

A taste of things to come... Here's the Colorado Midland's Basalt, CO depot with the trackage arrangement that will go in front of it.



It was a nice little kit.  Didn't much care for the roof design (difficult to line up without seams) or the wackadoodle chimney, but everything else went together very nicely.

It still needs signs.

This is the prototype:



So clearly this isn't an exact match, but it captures the feel.  That's what I'm going for with this whole project...the feel.

Probably the next structure in the queue would be the Tichy water tank (which will be mineral red), but tomorrow it's off to Loveland for more skiing!

[SSW7771]

The depot looks great!