Weekend Update 1/25/15

[LIRR]

Great job on the bridge Chris, the piers look great. I'm just starting on a bridge project.....this has give me a bit of motivation

[nkalanaga]

With the pictures of ballasted deck bridges this week, I have a question for the B&B crew.

On a curved bridge, the individual spans are straight,  Was the "ballast pan" always straight, to match the spans, or could it be curved, to match the track?  Obviously it had to be separate sections for each span, two allow for expansion and movement, but that wouldn't require straight sections.

[wazzou]

There should be plenty of images available online of the many Milwaukee bridges of this type over both Snoqualmie and St. Paul Passes.

[Scottl]

The ballast structure on the Cisco bridge was concrete cross pieces, topped with concrete side pieces, but I can't say if they were tapered for the curvature or not.  If I were doing it again, I would taper them so ballast wouldn't leak.

[Loren Perry]

A huge "Bravo" to Arbomambo/Bruce for his far above average craftsmanship on the ATSF head end cars. Masterful work and a real inspiration.

[Dave V]

Sorry about the grainy photo...  I finished lettering and weathering Colorado Midland #34, so mocked up a photo on my son's old layout to get a feel for things to come.

[tehachapifan]

Modeling season is definitely here with all the great projects and photos posted!

Inspired by J Reising in earlier threads, I've been playing around with improving the lighting brightness on a few DC locos including a LL SP GP60 and A FVM GP60M, which both have 0603 warm white SMD mounted inside (GP60M) or behind (GP60) the ditchlight housings. The SP unit uses housings from SRE. I also changed out the stock headlight in the SP unit with a 3014 warm white SMD mounted right behind the light guide in the cab and added a 3014 warm white SMD and mounted behind the nose headlight in the GP60M after removing the stock light tube. This is definitely a do-at-your-own-risk project as I don't know if adding LED's to existing stock boards might cause damage or an eventual problem.

[Rich_S]

No real modeling done this week, but I did pickup a copy of the latest Morning Sun book on the Pittsburg & Shawmut.



Good thing Atlas is not releasing any P&S SW9's or my wallet would really be in trouble 

[draskouasshat]

Nice gs-1 Jason! Looks great!

[jmarley76]

I'm still moving buildings around on the layout and added a mountain...

[thomasjmdavis]

Bruce- Very, very nice work on your Fast Mail/head end cars.  I am about 2 years behind you with some catching up to do, but have M&R sides for many of those cars.  On most, the "Santa Fe sill" is included, but I have noted that it is not so with the 70' baggage cars.  Wondering on your materials/method for creating the sill for those cars, and for upgrading the sills on the Rivarossis (or it looks to me like you did from your pics).  Anything you are willing to share will be appreciated.

Tom D

[Cajonpassfan]

Southern Pacific GS-1 Painted in Southern Pacific Lines Passenger Colors.

Jason, that is purrdy! Nice!
Otto

[TVRR]

Finished detailing and touching up on a MP 4-4-0 that got DCC and a new tender last week.  Finally got my courage up and disassembled my 2-8-0 1st run B'mann and installed DCC in the tender. To my surprise the tender was easy to open, just not how you'd normally do it. Since it's in Crescent Green I really didn't want to have to swap out the original tender and paint/decal it. All is well that ends well. Now what to do the rest of the weekend?

[CodyO]

Thanks to John at MVS I started decaling 6 N5`s
Started off as Yellow for some road then painted and now freshly decaled and letting them set
 

[nkalanaga]

Bryan:  Never thought of that!  Most of the MILW bridges I remember seeing from the highway were in Montana, and most of them were straight.  There are a lot I haven't seen, though, and they should have some curved ones.  The GN and NP seemed to favor open decks, so that's what I'm familiar with.

Actually, most pictures I've seen, from any road, show straight sections.  A quick look on Google Maps seems to show that the MILW used straight segments.   I was just curious as to whether anyone had used curved ballast pans.