Happy Thanksgiving

From the Staff and Employees at Washington Northern:

A LONG awaited update

As I look back, I see it has been a LONG time since I updated this blog. A job change, work on the new house and life has gotten in the way of model railroading. I am happy to say that now work is going to be more normal with set days off and this should help with getting the model railroading a little more frequent.

Plans include the following:

1) Finish laying track: The design has changed a bit and this will be a "U" shaped layout with a connection in the middle for continuous running. (There just something about the trains running around). Track is down on about 35% of the layout. Hoping to get some more track down after the Thanksgiving holiday.

2) SW10 Rebuild: Working on gathering parts and pieces to do a SW10 rebuild for my railroad. Picked up a shell but the concern I have is the NW2 locomotive that will be the donor for this. There is a large amount of weight material that will need to be drilled/milled for a decoder it fit. This project is a little bit lower on the list.

3) SD-50 Project: I recently purchased an Athearn SD-50. It's the CSX Y3 scheme. I plan on patching it up for the railroad. The inspiration I had was Reading Blue Mountain and Northern's recent purchase of CSX SD-50s. I plan on doing a post about it once it arrives.

4) Wiring: Once the track work is down, I'm hoping I can get the feeder wires and bus lines installed. My goal is to have trains running by Christmas (hopefully before)

5) Industry building: I have a few kits that came in that I have been working on. Will have a post about those in the near future. Some of them are just built stock, but I have one, Blue Star Cement, that I added a kitbashed/scratch unloading shed and modified the kit a bit to accommodate the shed.

6) Locomotive finishing: I have 2 SD 40-2s that need to be finished being decaled. I also have a GP7 that needs a repaint, and I have another SD40-2 that is in the stages of being details and hopefully that will be ready for paint. The is also a GP40-2 that needs to be painted, and Two GP-40s that are patch jobs but will be repainted to WN colors.

Lots of projects which present lots of material for posts....

Stay tuned for more!   

New Beginings

Time sure flys! So my wife and I are getting settled in our new house. We had some surprises along the way and the hobby room was functioning more as a storage area for alot of things. I was able to start getting those things organized and slowly chipping away at making space for the railroad. I'm still up in the air on the design, but I am hoping to include a rail yard, even if it is just a small one.

I hope to do a better job of updating this year as that has been lacking these past couple months.

Christmas 2018

Merry Christmas to all of my followers!

Update 2018

Well it has been quite a long time since I posted something. A lot has happened since my last post. Projects still continued but not much of an update. My wife and I decided it was time to look for a bigger house as we look to start a family in the future. While looking for a house one of the items on the list was a house that had a space where I could have a layout. During our house hunt, it became obvious that to have the size layout I would dream of meant a house out of the budget. Also came the factor of losing the battle of having the ENTIRE basement to myself. Was overruled on that one.

We settled on a house where there was a 10x17 room that would be dedicated for my modeling (I do 1/35 scale military models and WW2 wargaming as additional hobbies). Given the space of the room, I would have enough for a decent size switching layout. I had a small switching layout that, over time, i kept downsizing in anticipation of this move. I would have loved to utilize the whole area of this room for the layout, but this room, which had built in shelves and racks, will also serve as a location for some storage of some items.

I am just thankful to have a space for the new updated layout. I have a few ideas for some industries and looking to have a more simple and detailed layout as opposed to a big layout that lacks some wow factors.

Stay tuned as always and I hope to get posts up more frequently as life allows it.

Shop Projects

The WN Shops have been quite busy. A few weekends ago I started a project I was putting off for a long time. I purchased some undercoated SD40-2s from Kato. I really liked them and figured it was time to paint them up.

The first one I figured I would try and do what I do with my WW2 armor models and try a shadow coat. Looked great till I put a second coat of BN Green on. It looked TERRIBLE. So i quickly threw the locomotive into a 91% Rubbing Alcohol bath. Took the paint off right away and I had a clean canvas again. I repainted the model with no issues.

Shadow paint job....

Once the paint dried, i put some decals on. I'm running low on decals and I am waiting for Kevin Smith to get some to me so I can finish up the SD 40-2s. I also need to add all the warning labels and some safety striping. I'll do some highlighting and some light weathering and I will be in service! After that a decoder will be added, along with a Keep alive.

I have also been working on the box car fleet for the WN as well as some of the covered hoppers. I am hoping to have some pictures up of the box cars in the coming days. 

Ops Session on Jim Hertzog's Reading Shamokin Division

Today I had the pleasure of going to Jim Hertzog's to be a guest running an ops session on his Reading Shamokin Division layout. It was a great time. This was my first ops session, outside of my own little ones by myself.

My initial assignment was train 11. A small passenger train that was using Jersey Central Power. My starting point was Tamaqua, making stops at East Mahanoy, Mahanoy City and Gordon. Ending the journey was track one at Newberry Jct.

After tying down in Newberry, I took was assigned for another trip, but this time from Reading to Gordon. 

Entering the Mahanoy Tunnel (aka big tunnel)

After dropping the empty coal cars at Gordon yard, my locomotive was tied down at the engine house at Gordon. My next assignment was the Lehigh New England AM Turn that would be dropping some freight cars off at the Tamaqua yard. There I picked up some cars and made the return trip. That train was quick and easy and didn't get a picture due to the heavy activity at the yard.

Next train I picked up was in Newberry and I was off to Reading. This was my longest train I had so far. I was loaded with some mixed freaight but my first stop was at the Shamokin yard where I picked up some cars to go to Reading. After picking up some cars, my next stop was to pick up some loaded coal cars bound for Reading at Locust Summit. I made a rookie mistake and missed that on my orders. As I reached the yard limit I advised the dispatcher I was awaiting clearance into the yard. Dispatcher asked if I missed work at my last location. Checked the orders again, and yep I missed it. So I backed the train up the grade and picked up my "5 missing children" as I coined it. 

Once that was fixed, I began the journey to Gordon yard where I needed to pick up some more freight bound for Reading. At Gordan I picked up what I needed. My car limit was 23. As I left Gordan I realized I was now at 27. The Alcos had some difficulty climbing the hill and there wasn;t a helper available, so the "hand from above" had to help the Alcos go up the grade. 

I made it to Tamaqua yard where I was able to drop 4 cars and get back on my limit.   

Climbing the hill from Gordon Yard

My last train of the Day was TN-3. Originating in Tamaqua this was another freight train bound for Newberry. I loaded up and was on my way. After clearing the tunnels I had to pick up some loaded coal cars at St. Nick. After loading up I began my journey where I would be assisted by the Gordon Helper. At Locust Summitt the helper cut off and headed back down the hill.   

One of my favorite shots

I had a great time and the layout was amazing. Though the transition era isn;t my thing, it was just a great fun. Till it was all said and done, we ran 41 trains and the session was about 4 hours. I look forward to another invitation to run this layout again.