Weekend Update 4/26/15

[up1950s]

Info here http://interfacejournal.com/archives/1008

[Kisatchie]

A couple or three months ago, I was trying to sell 20-odd Intermountain 40 reefer kits. They didn't sell, so I gradually worked my way through them, assembling them (with much wailing and gnashing of teeth). I'm down to the last 4 kits, and they're half finished. Maybe I'll finish them this weekend.

God, I hate putting those kits together, but it wasn't always like that. I think my coordination and patience are declining.


Hmm... did I mention Kiz
is bald, too...?

[skytop35]

Rapid City, Pierre and Eastern Railroad SD40-3 in fresh paint.

[Philip H]

Bill,
That's pretty awesome! I have @randgust CF-7 I want to do in the same paint for the Louisiana and Delta. Mind sharing your paint choices?

[skytop35]

Bill,
That's pretty awesome! I have @randgust CF-7 I want to do in the same paint for the Louisiana and Delta. Mind sharing your paint choices?

It's Tru-Color G&W Yellow and G&W Orange. I wasn't a fan at first but the color scheme kinda grew on me after a while.

[davefoxx]

I took two days off of work to recover from some dental work yesterday.  Today, I was feeling up to getting into the train room to tackle some small projects.  I had been running trains a lot over the last few months, and a number of locomotives in the fleet were showing signs of needing a good cleaning and lubing.  I was able to tackle three locomotives this afternoon with a full tear-down, cleaning out the old lube, polishing the electrical pickups, Beardenizing, lubing, reassembly, and cleaning the wheel sets.  All three are running like new again.  I have a couple of more that I hope to also tackle this weekend.

I also worked a little bit on the road between Aberdeen and Hamlet.  The two bridges are roughed into place, and I fit the roads on the approaches to each.  Next will be building up the landforms and road shoulders around the road sections.





Have a great weekend,
DFF

[Santa Fe Guy]

Bill that Loco looks a treat. Very neat paint and decal work.
How's the leg?
Rod.

[skytop35]

Bill that Loco looks a treat. Very neat paint and decal work.
How's the leg?
Rod.

Thanks Rod. I still have a walking boot for 2 more weeks but it gets better every day.

[bbussey]

Made some mods to my EP3 frame, and it's just about there.  I need to make some minor tweaks to compensate for the building process where small details don't render fully as designed, such as the pressure bumps to hold the copper pickup strips in place.  The tabs that hold the front truck need to extend another .2mm, as the front truck snaps in and out too easily.  The rear truck tabs are fine.







The extensions that hold the copper strips will be visible below the carbody, but I think painting them black will hide them sufficiently.  I also need to get the new side frames and pilot decks cast so I can make sure the is proper clearance between the frame and all the moving parts.  But so far, so good.

Also got the headlights from Shapeways in the new FXD format.  They look good, but I have to increase the diameter of the "tunnels" for the SMLED magnet wires.  The LED easily fits inside the headlight housing, and I want to feed the wires through the inside of the headlight casing and into the body to keep them hidden.  Currently, the tunnels are too narrow to feed the coated magnet wire through.

Baby steps.
 

[wazzou]

Rapid City, Pierre and Eastern Railroad SD40-3 in fresh paint.

Bill -
I'm shocked by the diameter of the handrails.        Excellent job on the painting and clean lines though.

[milw156]

I finally got around to painting and putting diaphragms on my superliners. They look pretty good on straight track, not so much so on 11" radius!

Now, those couplers...

[craigolio1]

The paint on your Superliners looks sick. Alclad II?

Craig

[mark dance]

Heavy Electrics!  Cool...that EP3 is going to be sweet.

The experiment with sound continues.  5 more locos added...just waiting for the 3xS2s which Mr. Hinshaw is kindly retrieving for me and the 2xGMD-1s to return from Rapido. This will allow all trains that "visitors" to the layout run to have at least one sound-equipped unit.

Most of the road switching jobs on the C&W have been handled by H16-44s in the past.  Unfortunately they have no room inside them for sound.  My solution for the Slocan and Kaslo jobs, which use single H Liners, is a radio equipped headset.  This worked quite well in a test two weeks ago with a horde of visiting 'mericans. (thx Al!)  For the other trains I wish to try pairing an H Liner with a sound-equipped Lifelike C Liner which have lots of room and mass to spare.  They proto locos shared the same prime mover and ESU's has just released a C Liner sound file suitable for both locos.

In this video I briefly test a C Liner/ H Liner combo in the Kraft switcher job .  I think for up coming sessions I will stick with the a pair H Liners which have done an admirable job on the Kraft switcher over the years and this set will run the Cascade turn which sees less back and forth work through complicated trackage and is a more straight forward over-the-road wayfreight. Let me know your thoughts.

have a great weekend!

md

[Chris333]

Worked on the tower for the busy side of my layout.

[Dave V]

$5 train show score! It's a Campbell Idaho Springs mine. Needs a little work but still a great deal!



I also sat in on a lecture by Mel McFerland going mile-by-mile along the Midland RoW.  He hopes to have a new edition of his Midland book out this fall.