The Carolina Sandhills Lines in HO Scale

[davefoxx]

I received a few boxes of HO goodies on long-term loan from @Ed Kapuscinski.  Despite being rolling stock and motive power built in the mid- to late-1990s, I really like several of the pieces, which include a painted but unlettered 4-4-0, which is based on Ma & Pa No. 6, but we decided to letter it as Central of Georgia No. 349 (it matches reasonably close and there are decals available).  There's also a few wood boxcars and this gem: a Seaboard Air Line round roof boxcar (I think it's a Bowser product).  This little bugger will add some serious variety to the fleet.  I added Kadee 33" metal wheels and Sergent Engineering couplers before placing this boxcar back into service.  This might be the most time that it has spent on a layout already, as my understanding from Ed is that he collected and prepared a lot of this rolling stock for an HO layout that never was built.



Another find is a bunch of Florida East Coast rolling stock and motive power.  I've already eyed one of Ed's FEC E8s for DCC/sound/LEDs.  It's a Life-Like locomotive, and I just rebuilt one of these decorated for the ACL a few months ago.  If this engine runs okay, it shouldn't be too much of a problem.  Pray for no cracked gears.

Stay tuned,
DFF

[Ed Kapuscinski]

That car is indeed a Bowser product.
I'm so glad that this stuff is getting some enjoyment!

It was all purchased for use with an HO modular group.

[davefoxx]

While taking a break from some other locomotive projects that I temporarily inherited from Ed K., I dug out this Atlas C40-8W and started working on LED lighting.  I’ve never done ditch lighting before, so this was a challenge.  However, it was a success!  At some point, I’ll upgrade the dim headlight.  In the meantime, I consisted it with a SBD SD50.  JFRTM!

DFF

[Chris333]

I wanna see the 4-4-0 doubleheaded with the SD50. Ain't no Ed's law mofo.

[wazzou]

Newest train I’ve seen.    

[davefoxx]

JFBM!  I’m slow at it, but I started ballasting the yard in Aberdeen this afternoon:



DFF

[davefoxx]

I wanna see the 4-4-0 doubleheaded with the SD50. Ain't no Ed's law mofo.

@Chris333,

I tried.  Matching the speed on two separate throttles wasn’t difficult, but the coupler swing of the short tender versus the long SD50 was just a little bit too much on my curves.  I could do a Geep, though!

DFF

[davefoxx]

@Chris333,

My next question is do you like freight . . .

or passenger?

DFF

[Chris333]

Sweet!  Now paint the 4-4-0 Conrail blue 

[davefoxx]

Sweet!  Now paint the 4-4-0 Conrail blue 

Nah.  Ed would like that too much.   

DFF

[Ed Kapuscinski]

Sweet!  Now paint the 4-4-0 Conrail blue 

There's a guy who has one of those AHM 0-4-0s for $99 on eBay. I offered him $10.

[ Guests cannot view attachments ]

I guess this would be the next best thing.

[davefoxx]

I downloaded the CameraPixels app to do focus stacking on my iPhone 7+ and the thirty-day free trial of Helicon Focus into my MacBook.  I need to figure out how to set the minimum and maximum distance, so I don’t have to throw out a number of individual pictures before stacking.  I’d say the experiment worked well for my first attempt, though.

I normally resize the photos to 600 x 450, but I’ll leave this full size for viewing.  Another reason I want to figure out the distance settings are because there’s a bush at front left that didn’t get focused.

This was originally ten stacked pictures, but I threw out two.  Minimum distance at 50% and maximum distance at 75% (whatever that means).  I just know that if I went zero to infinity, I would have had to throw out half of the pictures before stacking.



DFF

[Bendtracker1]

That looks real sweet Dave!
As for the offending bush in the foreground, you could always shoot wider, then stack and crop the final image.

[wazzou]

I’d almost always recommend shaving.

[Ian MacMillan]

Hot damn that's a nice shot.