Greater Houston Area Train Show: Loot!

I was fortunate to make it out to the local train show this year.  However, it was only for about an hour.  I had my parents in town and I needed to help them with some random business but I am very happy to have had that hour.

This year the show was so much better than in the past!  There were more tables, more stuff, many more model contest entries, and some outstanding layout setups.  Last year I had just been laid off, so most of what I did involved dreaming, but this year for one brief hour I scurried all over drooling and conniving for what to do, see, purchase, etc!

I ran into several old friends from Bryan/College Station as well.  It was fun to hang out and see everything.  If you are ever near Houston, go to this show!  Even at its worst, it has always been at least entertaining.

Anyways, I picked up some neat items.  First, is this steam engine!

 

She is a Bachmann Spectrum 4-8-2 Mountain lettered for the SP.  The best part is I got her for about $90.  She has some very nice detail and can probably pull teeth she is so heavy.  I broke her down, cleaned and lubed her, and put in a spare DCC chip and boom!  Now I have an excursion/special locomotive for the SRR.  However, the DCC install requires you snip some capacitors to make it run smoothly.  See this link to the TCS DCC Install page for instructions.  Soon, I will add their WOWSound decoder to finish it off with some replacement details!

 

Also, I found this DVD.  It is Part One of the Valley Eagle trip taken by UP 844 back in 2010.  This video is really cool because it covers the first time I ever really chased a train.  In fact, I show up in it a few times (actually my old Chevy Blazer shows up more than I do...).  I had a simple point and shoot camera, some storage boxes as a tripod, and little experience.  It turned into a 6 hour affair spanning nearly 100 miles.  The results?  Some really nice pictures, new friends, and tons of fun that I look forward to doing over and over.  Especially now that I have a better vehicle, camera, camera equipment, etc...

 

And now the random picture of the day!

 

That's a lotta hot sauce!



 I caught several tankers of Louisiana brand hot sauce in Englewood yard waiting to be humped.  From what I understand, they no longer carry the good stuff but it is fun to dream.  It would be awesome if one spilled near a crawfish farm!

Anyways, until next time!

Progress Update

Howdy everyone!

I have had a LOT of free time lately.  Turns out getting laid off can do that to you.  So while this means trains funds are essentially nothing (read: actually nothing) it also means that I can do what I can with what I have.  Which is a lot actually!  There is seriously a huge list of things to do.

Right now I am working on the scenery.  I added some hills of extruded foam and coated about half of the layout in brown paint.  I am most of the way done covering everything in a layer of Woodland Scenics Green Blend fine turf as a base layer.  There will be several more layers of scenery to come.  I also will be adding the ballast to the yard while I do the rest of the scenery.  The basics can be seen in the below picture.  Hopefully I can get some better pictures and process explanations up later this week.

In addition to all of this, I used what was left of the train budget (and some begging of the CFO) on a new engine at the local train show.  I like supporting the vendors at the Greater Houston Area Train Show as they are typically small time guys and they have great prices and even better customer service.  I bought the below engine for only $50.  They are going for over double that on eBay...  Anyways, this Athearn SD45 is a great runner.  I have some extra details laying around that I can spruce it up with.  It is also pretty close to the base black color I want the railroad to have.

I will have to cover up the PRR logos, but I will hopefully be able to do that soon.  I downloaded a free Vector file program called Inkscape.  It will be used to design some custom decals that several fellow modelers on the internet will print for a nominal fee.  That will be so much simpler than putting on individual letters...  

Until next time!

New Paint Scheme

Howdy everyone!  I finally got a paint scheme nailed down that I like.  What do y'all think?

Yes there is also now a new caboose!  More on that later.

The biggest conflict on what I want has been to have something simple but distinct.  I do not have the skills, equipment, or finances to get into really well done painting and decaling.  In my past attempts, the paint goes on too thick or pools up, the decals never come out the right color, and custom work is expensive, etc., etc....  So for now I will stick with the simple design I have on the above.  

I chose to have the body be a simple black color.  Both loco and caboose were sprayed using a regular rattle can of flat black paint.  The bottom of the plow and the edge of the walkways are Signal Yellow by Floquil that I hand painted.  All of the handrails on both were done using a yellow paint pen I got from work.  Big box hobby stores have these as well for good prices.  The lettering, conspicuity stripes, and nose stripes are from Microscale.  And yes, the names on the sides were done one letter at a time.  I spent 2 hours on the caboose name and it STILL isn't straight.  

The face colors are the finishing touch.  I love my home state and I wanted to represent it somehow. Seeing lines such as the Heart of Texas or Alamo Gulf Coast made me want to paint the whole thing in a flag scheme, but that would have killed my OCD (curving masking tape?  No way) and was outside my painting abilities.  So I scaled it back and found out that this looks really nice as well!  I plan to stick with this scheme for all future locomotives and cabeese (cabooses?  Seriously need to figure out that plural).

And now for the random pic of the day!

Today's selection is a fun one.  I found this beauty entirely by accident on my way home from work.  I had heard she was coming, but I figured she would be going well away from my area of town.  Then BOOM! her she is waiting to head South on the BNSF line along Mykawa Rd.  I do not remember much of the history of this engine, other than she is a former Duluth, Missabe and Iron Range (I think that is right) locomotive.  The best my fellow Railspotters and I can make out, she is going to be a industrial locomotive in Bloomington, TX, possibly at the port near the city.  Anyways, it was an absolute joy to see this old girl.  Hopefully there are many more safe miles in her furture!

Last Post of the Year!

One last post everyone!  I have actually gotten a good deal done lately (by my standards, of course :) ).  I hope this means that 2015 will be just as productive!

First off is all of the replacement ties are complete and installed!  All over the layout there are no more gaps so I have begun putting in the masking tape for painting the track.  Once the taping is done, the modules will be removed one at a time and the track sprayed.  This will also give me a chance to put in new legs and get the remaining wall supports out of the way.  All of this will have pictures in a future post!

Now the only reason I got all of the ties finished is because of this beautiful device:

This is the Dremel Workstation.  More info is available here, but it works like your typical drill press.  The difference is the various things a Dremel can do and be, versus drill bits.  I put in the tungsten carbide cutting tool and went to town on those plastic ties!  I removed a small channel on either end where the rails will go and then flipped the piece over and removed a small bit from the bottom to allow it to slide in easier.  This Workstation is a wonderful accessory and I highly recommend it to anyone with a mating Dremel!

The third major completion is my first detailed locomotive!

I have been working on this particular locomotive sporadically over the past three years.  It started life as an Atlas Trainman GP38-2 in CSX YN3 paint.  I stripped that off and made it the first locomotive for the Spindletop Rail Lines, the previous name of the SRR.  At the time I had the idea of doing a green and orange paint scheme as you can see.  This one is not getting sound as it has all of the weights in tact and can pull like a six-axle engine.  Along the way I added Cannon & Co radiator and dynamic fans, grab irons, lift rings, pilot details, windshield wipers, sun shades, and other details.  But I am now calling this one finished as the ditchlights are lit!  This was my first experience with SMDs and magnet wires.  I got these pre-wired as I cannot hold my hands still enough to solder my own. 

I won't lie, I had a lot of fears about using these.  They are delicate, there is only an enamel coating on the wires, and they are pricey (or so I say).  However, that does not mean they do not work perfectly!  In fact, I kick myself for being such a wuss about getting these installed.  All future engines will most likely use these over bulbs.  They look great, were much simpler to use and install, and put out a great amount of light!

Anyways, thanks for reading this year and I would like to wish everyone a Happy New Year and good luck in your 2015 endeavors!



Tunnel Motor is Back Together

I finally have the T-2 back in running order!  The loco is much quieter now that it has the modern Genesis motor in it.  I haven't been able to test it against the other Genesis as that one is disassembled for detailing and painting now.  Really I am just glad to be done with the wiring.

However (as usually happens with me and the hobby) I created a new problem to solve!

Before I started, you could not see through to the other side between the air tanks and the fuel nozzle...  That area was all frame that I had milled out to fit the backwards motor.  Fortunately, it is only noticable from eye level as you can see below.

The camera was raised only a little and now the gap is invisible!  So I may or may not fix it.  We shall see.  Next for this loco is a little decal to show this engine is under ownership of the SRR now and some touchup paint.  Nothing too fancy.

I am also in the midst of planning to lay down the main line this weekend on the layout!  Finally!  I had everything in place and then I found I am out of rail joiners...  So after a quick trip to the hobby shop I can get started.  One the main is laid I will move on to designing the remaining layout portions so the roundy round can get started again.  I miss just having the trains run in a circle...

Re-Powering a Favorite

Howdy again!  This time I come bearing improvements that worked right the first time!

I bought an Athearn SD45T-2 a while back and I made posts on it and its progress here and here.  I finally got the replacement dogbone drive shafts that I mentioned last time.  If you recall, the model came with 1.609" shafts, and after putting in the new motor one of the drive shafts was short.  From what I could tell the best fix would be the 1.76" shafts.  Voila!  They are just right!  Below shows the shaft in the flywheel and gear tower.  It really is a perfect fit.

 

I gave the motor a few spins with the drivetrain fully assembled and I felt no resistance or binding.  So next up is to put the whole shebang back together and run it on the rails.  Hopefully she will run with the other Genesis locos well enough to consist them together.  Since I am finally going to join a club, I can really use the heavy haulers.

For a visual, here are the two different drive shafts side-by-side.

Check back soon as I will be updating with the performance of this over-hauled locomotive.

Re-powering the Tunnel Motor is a Pain

So right now my budget doesn't allow much in the way of buying brand new locomotives.  I could if I saved up over time, but that doesn't work so well with me.  I plan on getting a new locomotive and suddenly "ooooo shiny new tank car!" or "well dang, I just got to have that Hy-cube" and etc, etc, etc...  So instead I tend to put a little bit into the existing engines.

In this case, I want to have my tunnel motor be able to run with my SD45-2.  This is the beginning of the Pain.  When I tried to do this a few months back (around September...  geez) I found that they were just too different speed-wise.  I played around with the speed table settings on their decoders but that was a lot of time to get nowhere.  So the idea was side lined.  However the idea has come back to the forefront as I am trying to join a local club.  But if they won't run well together then what can I do?

While the two locos are similar in drive train design, it turns out they have very different motors.  The tunnel motor is from the RTR line and the 45-2 is from the Genesis line, and the output on their electric motors is very different.  I had an extra RTR motor sitting around so I tried it in the 45-2, but the frame and weights will not allow it to fit (Pain).  So I decided to try a Genesis motor in the T-2.  After some time on the 'bay I got a new Genesis motor and went to install it.  Turns out it fits as far as the securing screw holes, but the frame was too tall for the screws (Pain again).  SOOOO more work.  Now it looks like this after some time on a mill.

One of the perks of working at a place with a machine shop

 

The motor now fits in the frame!  I had to add some shims into the securing holes as the screw heads could pass through them but it can be done.  However, I am now stuck again (more Pain).  To get the motor to fit, I had to put it in "backwards" so now one of the dogbone shafts is too short...  Blah...  There are some longer ones on order so I will update again when they are installed. 

If you want more detail on the process, or advice on how to avoid the pains above, leave me a comment and I will help out as best as I can.

Later!