Sunday Photo Fun - September 16, 2018 Edition

[Great-Northern-Willmar Div]

Begun to build the HEP radiator section on Burlington Northern EMD E9Au #9908. First step is to cut a hole in the non-dynamic brake panel.





BN 9905, 9906, 9907 and 9908 differed from the other units as they were not part of the original rebuilding by Morrison Knudsen in 1973. Their HEP radiator fan box sat high on the panel while the other units were flush in the center. The 9905, 9906, 9907 and 9908 quartet were units which had been sitting in storage at West Burlington shops. The units were still original with steam heat and silver Q paint. In May 1978 M-K rebuilt the units to E9Au's. The HEP cooling section in the non-dynamic brake area was done by M-K at time of the rebuilding. The other units were a retrofit done by Burlington Northern. 


My so-so model of BN #9925 in its 1978 appearance. 9925 was one of the original units done by M-K in 1973. BN made many changes to the HEP over the years.

[dti406]

Nothing new modeling, but I got a some new motive power this last week.



New Scaletrain GE C39-8 units, as the only set of cars I have available right now, they are hauling a string of PRR Ore Gons on the Strongsville Model Railroad Club layout.

Rick Jesionowski

[fr8kar]

I also picked up some of those Scale Trains C39-8s, and they have me making serious actual progress on the locomotives and cars that I intend to run with them. The end game is a coal train, namely the one I'd see at Plant Yates in west Georgia a couple times a week. Typical power was two SD50/SD60/C36-7/C39-8 on the head end and two near the rear of the train with a radio receiver car. The outbound empty was two motors, radio car, two motors then all the empty hoppers.

Since the train always came in with slave power and a radio car, only certain locomotives at the time were able to lead the train. Fortunately Athearn made an SD50 painted for one of the Locotrol equipped master locomotives. Unfortunately Athearn did not install any of the antennas or conduits. So here I have bent some wire, cut up some styrene sheet, bent and soldered some brass and glued it all down to the roof to begin the detail process on this model:










Of course I still have all the regular detailing to do to this model, and I need to rebuild the radio car, but it's a start. I'm hoping the rainy weather will stop for awhile on my days off so I can get some painting done to move other projects along. But if it doesn't, at least it's good weather for drilling and installing little parts.

[TBird1958]

Not new as I'm pretty involved with the F60KH project, here's a couple of detailed Atlas cars.....

Plano Model Products end ladders and walkway, Genesis 100 ton .088 tread trucks.


Plano cut bars and Moloco USRE vents and Kato trucks on this Evans 52' lumber car.

[fr8kar]

Very nice, Mark! The Atlas tank car is nice out of the box, but what an improvement with those changes. I've used those Moloco vents on a couple Georgia Pacific cars. Delicate little details that really stand out even when painted the body color.

This is out of left field, but did you make a CO₂ car using a Walthers LPG tank and an Athearn frame at one time? I could use a few CO₂ cars for a bottling plant.

[simulatortrain]

Things that happened for me this week:

1. Moved the retainer and cut off the extra on that Tangent UP flat

2. Bought and fell in love with the NWSL Chopper II, and used it to build a TV tower flatcar load

3. Made good progress towards printing WM 50' flat/pulpwood cars. The WM depressed car is on hold until I meet up with the WMRHS archivist

4. Finished up details on some Reading flatcars, including this converted gondola:

[TBird1958]

Sept 16, 2018 9:10:52 GMT -8 fr8kar said:

Very nice, Mark! The Atlas tank car is nice out of the box, but what an improvement with those changes. I've used those Moloco vents on a couple Georgia Pacific cars. Delicate little details that really stand out even when painted the body color.

This is out of left field, but did you make a CO₂ car using a Walthers LPG tank and an Athearn frame at one time? I could use a few CO₂ cars for a bottling plant.

Thanks Ryan,

You have a good memory, I wrote a couple articles for Mainline Modeler in the '90s using Walthers, Athearn and MDC parts. The Liquid Carbonic car was amongst them and was an early attempt at kitbashing, I was working part time at Express Station Hobbies in addition to teaching at The Art Institute of Seattle so I had access to everything I wanted to make models - good times!

Long time friend Rick Selby took all the pics, photography was such a PITA back then, I do love the digital age!

     

Here's the Carbonic car as I built it

 

Coming forward 20 odd years I dug the car out of storage and thought it pretty dated so it was rebuilt with Plano stock, new trucks, platforms, railings and a cut bar - had to add some weathering around the new walkway and platform. I posted it on Facebook and got a reply from Bob Rivard, he had built two cars using my article back in the day! 

  

[fr8kar]

Excellent, Mark! Thank you.

I have a couple Walthers cars that are useless to me as-is. I think I'll use them as fodder to build a couple of these CO₂ cars following your instructions.

[jbilbrey]

Great job on the SD50, F8kar. Like you, u got one of the ScaleTrains C39-8 and am detailing something to go with it. In my case, I got one of the Mainline SD60's and am waiting on the grab-iron set before starting back on it.

[fr8kar]

Thanks, James. The Locotrol equipped SD60s had a different setup for the antennas and conduits, so if you're planning on doing yours setup for Locotrol be sure to check out prototype photos. Years ago I photoshopped a photo of my SD50 to illustrate the differences but I've lost track of those images. I'll see if I can locate them later tonight.

[grahamline]

Mainline Modeler is one of the magazines I hang on to, instead of recycling. Lots of articles like Mark's, and most of Thornton Waite's UP output.

[packer]

I went and ran at a trainshow in Dothan, Alabama. Unfortunately between running a pair of trains, watching a table of sale stuff (mostly older Athearn, MDC, or Walthers cars), and kinda browsing around, I forgot to take pictures of what I ran.

I went in with $100, came out with this:

Actually broke even between selling older equipment and buying newer equipment. Well once I get paid back for some things I picked up for an out of town friend.

I'm tinkering with the idea of maybe not selling this car, and just beating (weathering)it to crap based on a picture of a 40' box I found in the same paint scheme a few months before my timeframe. I'm not an MKT expert and don't have an ORER, so I don't know the plausibility of this car running like this in 1982:


TBird1958, I happen to have a Walthers LPG tank and an Athearn 62'tank in my junk drawer. I might be able to make something out of two junk cars. Thanks for the article scans.

[ChessieFan1978]

20180707_215716_wm by Matthew Fisher, on Flickr

[slowfreight]

I haven't posted anything lately because I've been in a mad sprint to reassemble the layout. Trains aren't quite running yet. I've made the change to DCC with an ESU Cab Control system, and it has some teething pains.







Fairly quickly, I'm getting back to where it used to be before it went into storage.

[fr8kar]

Adam, I love what you have going on with that gondola to flatcar conversion. Feel free to share more photos. Did you use rivet decals or harvest the rivets off another model?

slowfreight, your layout looks like it held up quite well in storage. Looks like a lot of action in a small space.

James, the groups of NS SD60s setup as Locotrol master units are 6554-6563 and 6641-6665. I couldn't find my photo, but I was able to find some roof shots in my collection of downloaded images of an NS SD60 showing the antennas and conduits in pretty good detail. Unfortunately, I don't own the images and after a Google image search they don't appear to be online anymore. If you'd like I could email the photos to you. Shoot me a PM with your email address if you're interested.

[Deleted]

For those interested in roofshots, Craig Zeni's website is here :
www.trainweb.org/zeniphotos/roofer/roofermadness.html

Pierre BARBE

[simulatortrain]

Sept 17, 2018 10:54:57 GMT -8 fr8kar said:

Adam, I love what you have going on with that gondola to flatcar conversion. Feel free to share more photos. Did you use rivet decals or harvest the rivets off another model?

slowfreight, your layout looks like it held up quite well in storage. Looks like a lot of action in a small space.

James, the groups of NS SD60s setup as Locotrol master units are 6554-6563 and 6641-6665. I couldn't find my photo, but I was able to find some roof shots in my collection of downloaded images of an NS SD60 showing the antennas and conduits in pretty good detail. Unfortunately, I don't own the images and after a Google image search they don't appear to be online anymore. If you'd like I could email the photos to you. Shoot me a PM with your email address if you're interested.

Thanks Ryan!  I'll grab some more shots later before painting it (didn't get there last night like I had planned.)

It's a Proto gon underframe/floor that I built everything else onto, using Micromark rivet decals.  The crossmembers don't line up with the ribs, but I'm not planning on flipping the car over to check.

[cemr5396]

Sept 16, 2018 7:06:32 GMT -8 fr8kar said:

I also picked up some of those Scale Trains C39-8s, and they have me making serious actual progress on the locomotives and cars that I intend to run with them. The end game is a coal train, namely the one I'd see at Plant Yates in west Georgia a couple times a week. Typical power was two SD50/SD60/C36-7/C39-8 on the head end and two near the rear of the train with a radio receiver car. The outbound empty was two motors, radio car, two motors then all the empty hoppers.

Since the train always came in with slave power and a radio car, only certain locomotives at the time were able to lead the train. Fortunately Athearn made an SD50 painted for one of the Locotrol equipped master locomotives. Unfortunately Athearn did not install any of the antennas or conduits. So here I have bent some wire, cut up some styrene sheet, bent and soldered some brass and glued it all down to the roof to begin the detail process on this model:










Of course I still have all the regular detailing to do to this model, and I need to rebuild the radio car, but it's a start. I'm hoping the rainy weather will stop for awhile on my days off so I can get some painting done to move other projects along. But if it doesn't, at least it's good weather for drilling and installing little parts.

That's a nice locomotive you've got there!

[fr8kar]

Sept 18, 2018 15:26:15 GMT -8 cemr5396 said:

That's a nice locomotive you've got there!

Thank you! The Athearn NS SD60 I have squirreled away is also one of the Locotrol master units, so when the firecracker antennas get here I'll be detailing that one up to match. Then I'll have a choice of which one will lead the coal train.

[simulatortrain]

As promised, some more flatcar shots:

[jbilbrey]

Sept 17, 2018 10:54:57 GMT -8 fr8kar said:

Adam, I love what you have going on with that gondola to flatcar conversion. Feel free to share more photos. Did you use rivet decals or harvest the rivets off another model?

slowfreight, your layout looks like it held up quite well in storage. Looks like a lot of action in a small space.

James, the groups of NS SD60s setup as Locotrol master units are 6554-6563 and 6641-6665. I couldn't find my photo, but I was able to find some roof shots in my collection of downloaded images of an NS SD60 showing the antennas and conduits in pretty good detail. Unfortunately, I don't own the images and after a Google image search they don't appear to be online anymore. If you'd like I could email the photos to you. Shoot me a PM with your email address if you're interested.

Sorry, it has been one of those weeks for me which delayed my response.

The Mainline SD60 comes numbered as 6678, so I should be okay for a non-Locotrol master SD60.  I couldn't find an overhead photo of NS 6678, but a near-overhead photo of NS 6677 showed a small Sinclair antenna over the number-board and two more firecracker antennas on the cab roof.

In a way, ScaleTrains screwed up my plans.  I also purchased a Fox Valley GP60 around two years ago and got some decals to add the frame striping.  But now with the release of the C39-8, the frame striping on the SD60 really needs to go.  I do that and everything will match a kitbashed/superdetailed P2K GP38-2 and GP49.  And looking back a decade or so, I would never have thought that I would be owning more NS locomotives than CSX.  Funny how things work out...

[sp8299]

Sept 16, 2018 7:06:32 GMT -8 fr8kar said:

I also picked up some of those Scale Trains C39-8s, and they have me making serious actual progress on the locomotives and cars that I intend to run with them. The end game is a coal train, namely the one I'd see at Plant Yates in west Georgia a couple times a week. Typical power was two SD50/SD60/C36-7/C39-8 on the head end and two near the rear of the train with a radio receiver car. The outbound empty was two motors, radio car, two motors then all the empty hoppers.

Since the train always came in with slave power and a radio car, only certain locomotives at the time were able to lead the train. Fortunately Athearn made an SD50 painted for one of the Locotrol equipped master locomotives. Unfortunately Athearn did not install any of the antennas or conduits. So here I have bent some wire, cut up some styrene sheet, bent and soldered some brass and glued it all down to the roof to begin the detail process on this model:










Of course I still have all the regular detailing to do to this model, and I need to rebuild the radio car, but it's a start. I'm hoping the rainy weather will stop for awhile on my days off so I can get some painting done to move other projects along. But if it doesn't, at least it's good weather for drilling and installing little parts.

Beautiful modeling, and hey, I've got one of those too!  I started adding Locotrol conduits and antennas to mine around, wow, probably 15 or so years ago.  Recently got bitten by the serious modeling bug, cleaned off and revamped my work table, and have been working on new and resurrected projects, like the NS 6525.  Shots of it below; it was recently dug out of the closet, and this is the first time I've had it out of the box in basically forever.  I want to replace the coupler buffers, and add underbody detail and plumbing.  Got a couple of other projects ahead of it though.

[fr8kar]

Great minds think alike, huh? I spy some printed parts back there, too!