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A Few New Train Pics.

Just finished up a quartet of U30s in Kaiser Steel colors to pull my Kaiser/Southern Pacific iron ore unit train.

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I wasn't really expecting the four units to pull the whole darned thing up and over our 2 1/2 % grades, but Mister Athearn must have designed better than he knew. (Kaiser only used four units at a time to pull the 100-car trains back in the day, but it's downhill all the way from the Eagle Mountain Mine to Ferrum on the east side of the Salton Sea. There the S.P. swapped in their road power to drag the cars over Beaumont Hill, and the S.P. commonly used 20 GP9s to power the train......a six-unit road engine, a ten-unit swing helper, and four more units pushing in back.)

Aside from details and weathering, all four units have been hard- wired, the stock Athearn sintered-iron wheelsets have been replaced with solid nickel-silver wheelsets from NWSL, and each unit now carries an extra 2 ounces of lead inside the shell.

Lighting and a crew for the cab of the lead unit will be arriving shortly; then I've got to scratchbuild a Kaiser caboose to bring up the rear end.

~Pete

Reply to
Twibil
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In message , Twibil writes

Nice long train you have there.

Reply to
Mike Hughes

Thank you, MIke.

The cars are just the plain old Roundhouse models of the S.P. ore cars

-and are not quite correct in terms of dimensions- but the idea of scratching an entirely accurate 100-car train simply didn't appeal to me as I'm already 67 and probably wouldn't have had time to finish the project before my departure date. ;-P

~Pete

Reply to
Twibil

Wolf K.

Reply to
Wolf K

Don't be to pessimistic: my father is 86 and still very alive and kicking. Ermin

Reply to
Ermin de Winkel

First pic is very good & nice looking locos. Second pic, well, WOW!

Reply to
Lobby Dosser

Thanx, Lobby.

Would have looked a lot better, but one of our overhead light fixtures is down for the count so the left half of the backdrop is much darker than the right half. (A partial eclipse of the sun?)

It doesn't normally look like that, and I'm ebarrassed to admit that I never noticed it while I was looking through the lens: only afterwards.

Doh!

~Pete

Reply to
Twibil

In message , Lobby Dosser writes

Just getting in on the act with some pics I've taken recently of friends layouts. Go to

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click on Seaboard Southern for pics of Three Bridges N scale layout

and Layouts visited 2011 to see pics of the Littleton and Humphrey HO scale. (Owner Ron Gager is a jazz fan, hence the name)

Enjoy

Reply to
Mike Hughes

Some nice pics, as always, Mike. How is the layout coming along?

Reply to
Lobby Dosser

In message , Lobby Dosser writes

The latest project is the Loco Yard control panel - DCC only needs 2 wires unless you want to have a control panel - so there's not much to see externally. Having built the panel, I tested each of the wiring components with their respective turnout and / or LED and they all worked first time. Now all I have to do is to wire them up to the Tortoise motors.

If you want to see how I put the panel together there are photos starting at

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I'm hoping to do that in the next couple of weeks then get down to some serious ballasting and finally start some more scenery.

I intend to write this up for inclusion in the NMRA BR's Roundhouse magazine in around 2 months time. If anyone is interested enough I may be able to post the text here or send you a PDF copy.

Reply to
Mike Hughes

A PDF would be nice.

Reply to
Lobby Dosser

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