I’m dreaming of a green christmas…..

Specifically two-tone green, with a dash of perhaps gold or yellow stripes to match! Winter is setting upon us here in the Bay Area, and I find that my mind is wandering as I try to entertain myself with the (steadily more boring) internet. I can’t find my focus! What with the holidays, family moving, car troubles and et cetera there are things that could better use my attention than reddit and Trainboard (blaspheme! LOVE Trainboard and the guys & gals who lurk those forums).

This year, Christmas was spent with family (both on the eve and the day itself), giving gifts and getting them was certainly not the focus of the time we spend together. In fact, some of us had asked not to receive gifts as we take pretty damn good care of each other year-round! Now, while everyone got a chance to open up something nice, I find that the most enjoyable moments of Christmas were clear to me. First, during our little unwrapping session, I had directed my brother-in-law Todd, who is a rabid train nut and a recent N scale convert, to open the bag I had assembled for him. The tag contained a simple little riddle, directing him to open the wrapped boxes within in a vry specific order. His initial unwrapping was a standard Con-Cor Northern pacific coach, followed by a diner and a dome and finally an observation car, all bearing the two-tone Loewy green colors I love so much. The fifth and final unwrapping was something I am very proud to say is as good as it gets- an Intermountain Northern Pacific FP-7 locomotive, brand-new in jewel case. Quite a fine piece, indeed! I happen to have two, one of each (prototypical! they only owned 2) road numbers. Todd was, needless to say, quite excited to get them on his tracks!

The second, and notably more poignant, gifting that I was excited about was a gift for my father. He is moving back home, to New York, in a matter of a couple weeks. Something he had mentioned some time ago that would be a fitting present, would be a photo album of the family (us three kids) and our lives…. something for him to remember us by on those days he misses us most. Of course, my brother Jason spared no effort in collecting and refining a gamut of family photos (embarassing candids and all) into a wonderful archive of our own lives’ joys and accomplishments. Apple offers an “iBooks” bookbinding service that offers a striking amount of flexibility and customizability for your photos, holding the book I felt as though I was reading an archival manifest of fine art, rather than some digital photos and text-laden borders. Quite a piece of art. Of course, dad was very happy with this….. that’s an understatement, but I need not go into great detail about how emotions rose when confronted with a gift that is tied so closely to someone so wonderful moving so very far away.

Now back to the topic of holiday hauls- there is a stack of new boxcars and reefers (all ~1940 style, see my previous “wish list” post! haha) sitting on my workbench, and a partially finished string of classic Northern Pacific “Butterknife” scheme cars receiving a hand painting. Of course, due to scarcity of proper decals, this shall be a “foobie” train (mock-up) to give me something coordinated to drag behind my multitude of Intermountain EMD F3′s and F7′s in NP’s handsome 1947 scheme…. there’s a preview of my (admittedly rough) handiwork below! Perhaps I’ll finish this thing up this week, a nice evening project while I rest up in anticipation of the coming of 2012. Yes the paint is a bit shoddy but eh, I like it….

in-progress, missing a final stripe….

The wishy-washy wish list!

There’s too much nice stuff in this world. I have too much free space. Coincidence? I think not! So; at the request of a family member,  am putting my wish list “out there”. I now refuse to miss out on American consumerism at its finest…. the “gimme” season known as Kwanz….. um, er….. CHRISTMAS! For what it’s worth, these days I seem to be stocking my own humidor…. but I sure could use a nice lighter…..

Ebay most-wanted list!

Non-ebay wants: Here and here !

“And here, children, is where the warehouse holding all of Brian’s sh*t is located.”

Times, they are a-changin’….

Outside my café

What a summer! Went by like a silver streak…. and it was in many ways quite wonderful (and often funner than said Gene Wilder comedy). I have divested myself of iron money-pits for the time being, yes the three Plymouths are gone to good homes. Being a Mopar guy, of course, I had to stay in the family with regards to my daily driver. A well spent few grand later, and I now own what is likely one of the cleanest M-body mopars in the bay area, if not Northern California! Won’t dwell long on it, but this Chrysler spent its life garaged and babied by a retired war hero in Sebastopol. Not everyone is a fan of these old fuel-chugging emissions-choked cars, but with a few tweaks and mods they’re quite a nice drive. Mine happens to also have the smoothest, cleanest and prettiest leather interior I’ve sat in….

Now that I have my vehicle situation handled, every other paycheck need not be invested in a hard-starting noisy beast! Of course I’ll miss the days I spent on the highway behind an oversized steering wheel, feeling heat through the floorboards and a rumble resonating through an old well-worn bucket seat….

I do plan, of course, on returning to my former ways and purchasing/driving another classic car. Not today though, and not soon. I have had my fill of “projects”, and it seems reasonable for me to grow the hell up and just buy a finished car that always starts. I like to fiddle and tinker, I just don’t want to have to!

So in the meantime, I have stockpiled a few more rare and/or collectible N gauge items (there’s more trains than track, which actually sounds like a euphemism for lunacy!) and tinkered on a nice 2′x4′ double over/under loop. Let me tell you, it’s a good thing I have more motive power than freight tonnage; an 8% superelevated graded curve is fun to see, but takes a bit more tractive effort than a prairie or 4-4-0 can handle! All in all it’s temporary and fun, so that’s (little) money well spent. There are a few nice pieces I have procured, including a diminutive replica of a train station still-standing in my region of rearing; my father recognized the build and was as enamored as I. Thank the preservation-minded north easterners for the relic, thank some north eastern hobby folks for making it easily attainable!

I’ve been working on some terrific cigars recently; yesterday it was a La Gloria Cubana Serie N that had my palate simply awestruck. The right cigar at the right time can be a beautiful thing. I’m working my way through some 5 Vegas Maduros that seem to be consistently tight and canoeing…. not a common problem for the normally 5-star cigar brand. Oh well, you win some/you lose some. Of course, for the pennies I paid I suppose I still kinda won! Furthermore, some Fonsecas and Cusanos have trickled through my smoking list recently. I have a few different Cusanos from a delicious sampler, and they came in a 4-veriety 12-pack so I’m smoking my way through 4 similar and delicious cigars three times. I have found Cusano  to be somewhat of an underdog- not oft seen in the lounges or blogs (from my experience, ymmv) but a reliable and enjoyable smoke (to the nub!) nonetheless. Then there’s the Macanudos in drawer 6, or the sun-grown untrimmed torpedoes, or the…. hell, there’s too many to list right now!

I should share this next bit, it’s saddening on a rainy day- I relocated halfway through writing this, from a nice pleasant cafe to my deperately-in-need-of-a-maid apartment (my fault!). Now I am sitting here being forced to listen to some hip-hop garbage my neighbors are blasting from their minivan speakers. I regret two things right now: 1) not staying in a quiet, comfy and classy environment and 2) living near Oakland. Take that as you may, but myself? I simply can’t stand hip-hop/rap “culture”. It’s angry, it’s ignorant and it’s really quite offensive. Some of the garbage I hear in those songs makes me pity the fools who take it literally, other things I hear make me despise the fools who wrote it. OK, stepping off the milk crate now.

Back to more positive (and appropriate for this blog) things; a particular new product has caught my eye, something I had long-ago ordered and am (with any luck) soon to receive. It’s a replica model of a once often-seen and quite beautiful style of passenger railcar; the Western/Eastern style smooth side dining car. Several prototypes can be seen here, and the models I’m referencing currently adorn this page over at M.B. Klein. The cars I await look like this-

Wouldn’t it have been something grand, taking a cross-country trip dining and sipping scotch in these pieces of rolling art? I am sure (relatively) that some folks who visit this blog have done just that. With regards to style, something screams “art deco” to me from this car’s fascia; perhaps it’s those smaller side windows (likely in the kitchen of the real car) or the skirting adorning the car…. of course there’s a very Modernist paint scheme (a la Raymond Loewy) decorating the particular road name’s pullmans. I’m more a fan of the earlier “Pine Tree” paint scheme these cars carried through 1953,  but that’s a picture for a different post.

It’s sunday and I have spent half of it drinking coffee and thinking about all these wonderful additions to my life, now it’s time to partake! So off I go, to smoke another tightly rolled 5 Vegas Maduro the size of a baby’s arm, and maybe play with some trains. It’s raining, and seeing my all-too-recently washed & waxed ride get piddled on by dark, looming clouds is almost too much

 

 

 

BOOM! Winning.

Northern Pacific GP-18 pulls this small freighter.

Recently, I have been fortunate enough to make two winning bids on the big E-auction site; you know the one. First, I pulled a very special gift for very little money…. I managed to buy a complete, new-in-box 1990′s-era Life-Like American Workhorse train set, in my roadname (Northern Pacific). I’ll point you back to my first post,  my opus on the joys of unboxing the first truly awesome gift I recall reciving; this very trainset (worth a read if you’ve got a couple minutes!). Those memories still run deep, and I had a bit of a…. moment while unboxing the new one. What a trip down memory lane…. half my life away, those memories still hold clear and happy. Here it is, sitting in front of me on my antique coffee table, waiting to be played with….

The second “win” of the month, I’ll admit, I had no intention of vying for when I had first seen it listed. As the auction wore on, I relaized I may not have to fork-over the $400 this special collectors’ set often commands! How much did I pay? Let’s just say I feel like I stole it

Con-Cor North Coast Limited, Northern Pacific Railway

This is the Con-Cor Northern Pacific Railway North Coast Limited boxed collector set, one of a series of named passenger trains released almost 30 years ago. There were quite a few of these decorated (and sometimes compromised/fantasy painted) passenger sets, suffice it to say almost every major railroad received this treatment using whatever Con-Cor had available to fill the consist. Of course, this one is special to me because I have wanted this particular set since I can remember, one of the first “golden calf” pieces of N scale for me. I recall pining for it as a new model railroader, after seeing it on…. you guessed it, E-bay. The paint scheme is very true to original, with two-tone green carbodies striped in white and generally (on the prototypes) kept clean and shiny. The Vista-Dome cars are one of the neatest parts of this set; long glass domes adorn two of the passenger cars, giving the passengers (whether real or miniature) a breathtaking view of the trains’ travels. Long before I knew who Raymond Loewy was, I loved his color scheme (even having such a Locomotive printed on the side of my own coffee mug at age fifteen!). Of course, you old fogeys and rail buffs likely know he had a hand in streamlining the planes, trains and cars (notably Studebakers!) throughout the mid-twentieth century. Simply beautiful!

Rare as can be, and with quite a beautiful presentaion here in N scale, The North Coast Limited was known as one of the fastest, most luxurious Western trains; so proudly did NP serve those Western terrirories that many of its locomotives were adorned not with the name of the railroad, but the italicised slogan “Main Street of the Northwest”. They truly meant that, and it showed in their takeover of the northern routes early in the 20th century. There are various reasins for the proliferation of passenger service in the area, including vacation travel and business expanmsion; NP served a wide array of clientele and offered excellent dining (famous for their “Great Big Baked Potato”) to almost any traveler, most any trip. Keep those bellies full and those eyes gazing into beautiful scenery, you’ve got a recipe for repeat business!

Con-Cor offered a very nice presentation job with these, using the fiberboard woodgrain boxes usually found on expensive gifts and small home decor in the 1970′s and 1980′s (boy, how style has changed). No vacuu-formed plastics here! When the set arrives, I will be sure to post a video of this beautiful trainset traversing my small layout, pulled by those powerful (and strikingly stout looking) EMD F-3′s. An A-B-A consist leads this six-passenger-car train around, only one locmotive is powered in the set; I know from my experience with these locomotives, it’ll fly around those tracks just fine. Let’s hope the postman pays me a visit soon!

For now, I sit in my quiet, comfortable living room and tinker with the Life-Like trainset. It invokes such vivid memories of my childhood afternoons shunnning video games for a much more creative pass-time. Even the paper manuals and plastic box inserts have that familiar, heavy smell of gear lube and old printers’ ink. This set is going to stay in the box for now, as I have plenty of other trains to toy with…. yes this one stays new, stays safe and stays waiting patiently for me to open it up and relive some of my fondest years of childhood….

Maybe I’ll bring it out around Christmas and really live it up!

-B

My Batmobile!

My black beauty

I drive a 1959 Plymouth Belvedere, 318 V8/Auto. People stop me all the time and shout about my “Batmobile”… fine by me, I’m a caped crusader at heart! It’s not myuch to look at, a ten-foot car I believe is the term? The car’s seen some rough years and cheap fixes, but I have been finding out what needs to be replaced on the car by trial-and-error. I drive her, and when something breaks, I fix her. She’s not yet named, but she is definitely a character. I picked her up for a song out in San Francisco, looking tired and beat up, but running all the same. I am crazy for seeing potential in the rusty black hulk I purchased, but it has proven to be a worthwhile venture! So far, I have done some tune-up work (her engine had been rebuilt) and with a few cycles of fresh fluids, she’s got no leaks and good compression. There are lots of small needs, but for less than $2100 invested so far (repairs included), I am quite satisfied!

A couple weeks ago, I was driving with my gal and she asked me about the horn, whether it worked. I knew it was busted, never worked from the day I got the car; I’ve pressed that horn ring a hundred times waiting in traffic, impatiently and never heard a peep. I looked at my girlfriend, pressed the horn rim, and the horn let out this quiet, distressed little *meeep* and I started laughing maniacally! The car is fixing itself! Yeah, like Christine…. I’ve always been, and now am even moreso, a firm believer that some cars aren’t just metal and paint….

About to get mounted!

Last week I shot down the bay to Sunnyvale in my ’66 Plymouth, where I hooked up with an old hot rodder who had a set of wheels for sale; I ended up driving home with a pretty much perfect set of chrome smoothie wheels and hubcaps (4 fresh tires mounted on them!), and a nice unmounted set of used P78/15 (the big ones) 4″ wide-whitewall tires very worthy of a second life on somebody’s car. Those will sit for now, but I’ll be spending a day next week installing and polishing my new chrome wheels! This hobby can get expensive, but the best advice I have is; check craigslist first!! I got $700 worth of new wheels and tires for $250. WIN!

The next big step is interior. I’ve bought brand new seatbelts (chrome buckles, like the 50′s airlines used!) and have a fresh headliner in box, with carpet picked out. I’ll be making new door panels myself, with clear sheet plastic tracing out the old panel fitment, then hardboard sealed with rubber spray & cut to fit the original location. Wrap it all with a quality vinyl and you’re in business! I’m leaning toward oxblood leather-grain vinyl, should look nice against all the black of the body/dash/etc.

With a 2bbl carburetor feeding the engine, I am quite unimpressed with the get-up of this car;  yeah I can burn some rubber, but those 5.2L engines are capable of so much more! Enter Craigslist (again!), where I found a guy in the area who’s got a 4bbl intake waiting for me. Drop in a new Summit Racing carburetor for about $240, and I’m in business!! Those dual exhausts will be put to good use any time now….. *rumble*

Pics and updates to come!

Planning!

I’m sitting here at work, listening to a playlist of songs from the early 90′s that were on the radio when I first started Model Railroading. Boy this takes me back…. I used to spend hours addressing the little details, winding my locos around my NTRAK modules (bought after the plywood-and-grass-mat proved bland haha) and I would spend literally hours tinkering and hauling little trains. I sold those off about, um… fourteen? Yeah, fourteen years ago. Good thing, too…. what’s the point of Ntrak modules without enough to have a loop? Yeah, I never thought that far ahead when I bought ‘em. I should have built my own, but I was a kid and they were available/cheap. I’m over it.

I spent a couple hundred bucks the last year or so, and built a practice layout (gosh I really should post pics), enclosing workbench table and everything. Grass, scenery, trees, ballast, switches, turntable… Fun project, sure, but I can only watch those trains go around the loops (2 ovals, 2′x4′) about four times before I start snoring. Yeah, it’s that bad. I think I am done with it, perhaps some other newbie will want to buy it for a song and run it for his kids.

For the time being, I have spent my efforts and resources collecting and modifying quite an impressive fleet of locomotives, not to mention all my freight cars and passenger consists! It’s been a long trip from 2 locos and some Rapido-equipped cars… I’d list all my stuff here but it’d be a long read

The new layout will be different. It will be big, it will be long and well built and movable (in separate modules). I measure. I sketch and visualize and brainstorm. There are thousands of railroad photos on my hard drive, and I scan them all for new ideas, for inspiration.I have an opportunity to finally make something of my own- make a layout suiting my wants and needs, fitting my space, meeting my standards. Something that will provide me with the exact operations and capability that I want, running my own trains. This is exciting as hell! There have been few times that I have racked my brain this hard on a project, usually I just attack head-on and get it done. Not this time, no… I want everything to be purposeful and inspired, well placed and useful.

So here I sit, planning…

Goodbye, Sweet Warbonnet FT’s! Hello, Northern Pacific!

Just ok’d a trade…. NP FT’s for SF FT’s, and I couldn’t be happier! My black & gold fleet is growing! LOVE those Intermountain units… In fact, I have been growing (albeit slowly) my collection as the layout sits stagnant, and I’ve got quite a bit of new news and new building to show off! Going out the door:

And the new babies (I should say- my second set!) coming soon…

HAPPY HOLIDAYS? YEP!

Smoke

Here I sit, amongst the swirling dragons of smoke trailing off my Ghurka cigar…. I see beautiful, flowing patterns and reminisce over past occasions where I’d smoked such a divine cigar before. Those occasions are few and memorable. There’s something so enticing about filling the room with those earthy-sweet smelling clouds of Dominican and Nicaraguan leaf set ablaze…. I enjoy cigars from all over the world, and pipe tobacco from many fields. That (I feel I must say) is all I smoke, nothing else….

I have had a moment of realization. Most of my interests and passions are linked intrinsically by the creation of swirls, puffs and clouds of smoke. Smoke pouring from the end of a stogie, or out the stacks of some museum-relic of a locomotive, or even from under the tires of my three fifty-year-old Plymouths…. Otherwise, the three are not necessarily related. The locomotive will take you to a destination of the railroad’s choosing, tied town to tracks and switches and relying on going where only a notable number of people ever need to go…. the car will take me anywhere, everywhere I may need to go and with nobody else’s directions or instruction. I find my own way. Both of these implements are romantic in their own way, both are loud and strong…  hard, seemingly impenetrable iron. The cigars, however, are entirely different. Cigars are delicate, they are needy and sensitive to elements and improper care, but the end result of careful handling and proper storage is something so enjoyable I put it above liquor and gourmet food. You may not agree, but this is my train of thought here.

Of course, there is no rule saying I can’t combine any number of the three loves of my life into a special occasion or a trip…. I can smoke a cigar on the drive up to the railroad museum (as I regularly do), or go trainspotting laying back on the hood of the hot rod with a Cuban Churchill in my hand! Living here near the Bay Area railroad junctions, I have quite a few spots where both passenger service and freight move through…. but alas, no steamers. No big coal-driven monsters with tenders loaded over the top….. no side pushrods or pistons emanating rhythmic releases of scalding steam across yellowing fields. No romance left in the railroads here, or nearly anywhere anymore….. so I make do with little tiny plastic versions of those long-ago scrapped iron horses.

Other people seem to have this same affliction of a love of smoke as well…. go out and observe a cigarette smoker, one who truly enjoys smoking (there are plenty who don’t)…. their attention is constantly drawn to the beautiful and unpredictable trails and bodies of smoke in front of their eyes. It’s almost entrancing for those of us with the smoking habits….

Part of me believes that the intangible, ethereal gray smoke is what is in itself so fascinating. There is a beautiful (if not somewhat depressing) correlation between smoke and life itself. We create smoke, as we do life….. it must be fed and nurtured, something must be used or destroyed to make it, it is beautiful and unpredictable while it lives, and eventually it will die while we look on…. usually without a means to stop its demise. It has substance, we can see and feel and experience it, but it’s not necessarily a physical thing. We create it and sustain it knowing it will end but we enjoy and use it to its fullest while we have it, its appearance and worth is different to each of us. I believe smoke imitates life, if only for a brief moment. I also think about how crazy that may sound, but as I sit here nursing a small, quantifiable life of smoke and scent in my hand I understand how true it really is. I’m off now, to go appreciate smoke and life together.

Sprinkling on the green stuff

Been busy, had some time this week to push more dirt around on the little world. Here’s where I am at; I have fixed the gulch and remade it into a little hill, I have redone all the roads and the pad around the siding in a nice medium gray. The roadway/cement needs a lot of weathering, but I’ll likely wait until after I install buildings to do that. Otherwise, the scenery is close to finished!

 

1 month update!

It’s been a busy month! I have been all over the place, working on this-and-that… I have been working on a custom sculpt in my other hobby, I have been helping people move, I have been smoking good stogies and going to comedy shows with a friend (who happens to be on-stage every time! Funny guy). Last night, I sat back and enjoyed a nice generic Dominican smoke while watching a Tarantino flich, and I spent half the movie daydreaming about a new, bigger layout….. I think it would be prudent of me, at this point, to get some wood together and get my butt in gear building the table for the 2×4 layout…. that puppy’s not gonna build itself!! Not a problem… I know where to bget everything, from the sideboards to the legs to the plexiglass (1/4″) top. Last thing to do is to build a couple controls for it, likely using 12V rechergeable batteries and some radio shack voltage regulator dials…. that way it’s kid-friendly speed-wise, and no cords to get in the way.  We’ll see….  

Recent buys to talk about! I’ll post pics as soon as I can take ‘em (another stand-up night tonight haha)…. picked up a set of Rapido AT&SF “Shorty” passenger cars, and Arnold AT&SF rib-side streamlined cars…. 7 in all. Half with proper couplers, so less work for me! I now have a consist (imaginary and non-proto as it may be) to pull behind those stellar Intermountain FT’s!! That’s pretty exciting…. despite the fact that the majority of my equipment is 50′s Northern Pacific…. eh, who cares? It looks fine to me! Especially the dome car and the observation car (rounded end)- truly classic.  

AT&SF Passenger train

On the Northern railways front, I have picked up a couple goodies, including a set of three Burlington grain cars (which are quite period correct) and a SW9/1200 in Great Northern scheme. All on a severe discount so guilt is nowhere to be found! Not to mention the sweet little GN short Semi trailers- part of my layout will be dedicated to the TOFC (Trailer-on-flat-car) setup so common in the old days but less common on layous now…. I picked up some off-roadname trailers (40′) for DIRT cheap at the LHS, and they’ll be receiving a full repaint in Northern Pacific sheme quite soon (where is the link for that paint? Oh wait I remember!) so see the pic below.  

  

 Now the next big project is starting work on a new set of layout benchwork without getting killed by my lovely girl. She’s really rather understanding but there’s always that looming fear when I get out the Visa   Wish me luck… I had in mind a relatively simple layout, something very space-efficient and yet expandable. I think I have settled on an idea here…. there’s a standard most of you should be familiar with, called NTRAK, which is a group who has designed some very straightforward guidelines to building interlocking sections of a model railroad which would be universally compatible and easy to build. Their standard is rather large, though, and allows for long runs of three or more trains. I have nooooooo such need. In fact, my layout will not only be focused moreso on scenery, but on the quality of train consists versus quantity of trains run. I see two distinct ends of the spectrum with N scale folks- the guys who build layouts for operations realism and the guys who build them for simplicity (put a train down and watch it run in circles!). I am neither interested in reflecting prototype operations nor would I be happy with a circle of track and a Brio train…. so the happy medium, for me, is going to be a layout where I can both run trains for fun and run them with a purpose. That isn’t too much to ask, is it? So without the space required to run NTRAK and with the necessity of something bigger than a coffee table, I am aiming for a four-module layout that has the best of several worlds- It will offer two larger end modules for large-raduis curves, and two narrower center modules for long runs in between. I know I posted about this previously, and at this point I am about ready to commit it to wood. Best of all? In tight space situations I could actually use only the two end modules, if I lay my track right Need to clean the garage first before the sawing and drilling begins, but the result should be akin to this, without the lopsided-ness: 

   

The creator of this layout has been mentioned here before- he’s a pro Z-scale modeler and he has done some incredible wood lasercutting kits in N and Z scale. I need to remember to pick up a kit from him… check out his old site (if you haven’t already), HERE.   

For the moment, I am going to sign off and do some more mental sketching, so keep your eyes peeled! I’ll snap some shots of my diorama very soon… 

-B

Go into the light….

I sent the better part of this evening trying (at the end, in vain) to add lighting to the interior of a Con-Cor streamlined passenger car. It seems I’m unable to make appropriate brass contacts with the sheet brass I have. Instead, I decided to put my micro-LED’s to the test! Would I be able to recreate cab lighting in my most beloved locomotive? With a soldering iron and tenacity, I found fitment and function quite quickly; It turned a passenger car failure into a prime-mover victory! In low light (which is generally how I dwell) the effect is nice, and as I have already detailed the cab interior with some very steady-handed painting techniques (black piping on the white engineer’s seat!) I wanted to show it off. My camera does not have the zoom focus to capture the interior shot i’d like, but here’s the idea-

As I hope you can see, the effect is quite nice. You’ll also notice that I seem to have foliage and trees in place as well! Yes, my layout is nearing the final stages of “completed scenery”. The plaster is drying where the roads will be found, and the glue is almost set on the 50+ trees I both produced and installed over the last 2 evenings! I’ve been quite productive, yes. Thankfully, Intermountain has some new goodies on the way so I shan’t be lacking in “eye candy” when this layout is officially unveiled as the centerpiece of the living room…..

Learning a lesson!

I have disassembled and reassembled locomotives countless times. I have tinkered, fiddled-with and messed-with more miniature things than I can remember. Sometimes, I find a glitch in the reassembly process. Last night I hooked up my new DCC controller to the small layout, and began reprogramming and running trains- I found a glitch. One of my locomotives, a venerable old Atlas Classic GP-7, was making a painful whining sound! I recall it had begun last month after a decoder install and I shelved it. “Not tonight” I thought… I wasn’t going to let that nearly-new little loco continue acting up. Fixin’ time!

Upon disassembly, I found that everything was spinning freely and in its place. There were no rubbing parts or otherwise. I had to disassemble and reassemble the locomotive four times (decoder included) before I figured it out! It was the darn bearing blocks. Four little squares of plastic that have internal “fingers” that, when installed vertically, are held against the shaft of the worm gear and create a low-friction/ low-movement environment. Without installing the bearing blocks vertically (smooth sides of each block facing you when installed in the half-frame), these little puppies will make an awful racket that will drive your basic instincts to grab a hammer! Don’t smash. Just fix.

New toys!

Let me start off by saying that I am in no way a perfectionist- I don’t have to have the nicest of anything, and I don’t have to nit-pick about little details or flaws in a product. Having said that, I do notice these things. I do recognize quality when it’s seen, and poor workmanship when it is glaring. This is not one of those times. In fact, I have to say that my recent few additions to my locomotive collection have been quite a surprise in terms of quality and detail! Of course, nobody is ever surprised when you tell them your Lexus is nice, but when you got it for the price of a Chevy Cobalt that’s when they’ll start to notice!

Anyway, thanks to the marvels of Ebay I have several new toys to talk about. Forst off, I came back from a trip to Hollywood a couple days back to find a nice little USPS box waiting for me; inside this box I found a bubble-wrapped plastic jewel case filled with about three ounces of precision-cut, laser-printed, four-axled, silver corrugated AWESOME. Kato is a company well known for their quality and detail level, and this RDC (Rail Diesel Car) is no exception! The photo below, provided by Kato, simply does not do the car justice- the included roof detail is superb, and the windows/interior look quite believable. I’m curious as to whether I’ll be able to light-up the interior when I add a DCC decoder! As of right now, I have noted two things; the headlights reverse and show white (front end) and red (back end), they can be see as 4 micro holes along the front roofline. Also the LED’s constant lighting came on at a surprisingly low voltage! The motor they use to move the light locomotive is small and hidden under the floor, with good pull and smooth acceleration. Starting and stopping is a different story though, and I imagine I’ll be playing with the speed-steps in DCC to drop the start voltage for smoother takeoffs, as well as adjust the top voltage to bring the maximum speed to somewhere below its current 1 thousand miles per hour….   Despite the quirks, $40 well spent indeed.

 

My second new toy is a similarly striking and detailed model of, by many accounts, the most important diesel-electric locomotive ever built. I am talking, of course, about the Electro-Motive Company’s  FT locomotives. (Two separate links for the EMC and the FT’s, also diesel-electric is longhand for “diesel” as the engine powering the locomotive only actually powers the electric traction motors in the axles of each truck which means there is no mechanical link from the diesel engine to the motive power of the engine)

These first-generation locomotives had only ever been offered as N scale models in brass, and the good people at Intermountain Railway Models decided it was time to change that. Their tooling on prior locomotives was impeccable, and I truly believe that their FT’s are another line on a long list of “oh wow!” N scale models. The set I purchased was an Ebay last minute bargain, and worth every penny (and then some!). I purchased the set, brand new from a reputable seller, for $71. That’s less than half of their retail price! How could I resist? The Santa Fe Warbonnet scheme happens to be in my top three all-time favorite schemes; I was actually impressed by the color richness and paint detail when it arrived! The photo above clearly shows the details of the separate metal-wire grab irons, and the side grates along the top of the locomotive are etched brass. The headlight’s color and brightness are stunning, and the smoothness of its starting and creeping leaves me wondering if it’ll ever get much better? I’ve not heard a quieter locomotive, save for maybe the Intermountain FP-7 set I also call mine!

The FT was a unique locomotive for several reasons- one of which being its odd, almost haphazard-looking truck spacing. The trucks are set-out almost to the ends of the A locomotive, but only on one end for the B! The reasons for this are long-winded, suffice it to say it’s unique and quite an attention getter at eye-level compared to most other diesels I have seen. Another feature EMC offered was the drawbar coupling between units. While it may look like two separate locomotives above, EMC had designed, build and shipped most FT sets as a set, referred to as one locomotive. The new 16-cylinder diesel engines inside the locomotives were simply too large to house in one road locomotive without extending it further than the design called for; a second locomotive AKA a booster was added to carry the extra horsepower. A drawbar permanently coupled the sets as an A-B configuration, but Santa Fe and several other railroads ordered theirs as a coupler-linked, non-permanent set. While this impacted the number of train crews required, it allowed more switching and servicing flexibility for the roads who ordered their FT’s separatable. Of course, the one flaw with the Intermountain unit is it does not properly reflect this detail in its lack of an end window for the engineer to operate the B loco independently. Other than that, I’ll simply say this- these locomotives are stellar, and deserve a place on any transition-era layout. Heck, I’d put them in a display case if I wasn’t running my set all the time. A big thank you for Intermountain on this one!

Holiday cheer, and some N scale updates…

Laid out before me are all the tools I need, but at this very moment I have none of the requisite energy to move forward with the task… I am sick. Last night was a blur of television and NyQuil, waiting for sleep to come and heal my weary body….. this morning brought no relief. Despite all this, I am excited! I am excited for the holiday coming, I am excited for the work I have done on my own little hobby as well as Todd’s (we built his layout, as planned, in a day). I am more than excited about getting home today, hopefully to find some freshly delivered Ebay-originated packages of model railroad goodies to further my little 8-square-foot world. Christmas time is a time for toys, laughter, and cheerful feelings and it seems I am quite full of holiday cheer! I am quite sure I’ll be making someone’s Christmas quite memorable this year, details to come after I actually give her the gift

Here’s what has been done lately on my own layout- not much really, but the grass is a nice start to all the scenery it needs. I’ll be going down to the LHS this afternoon to get a bit of foliage and ground cover to start really filling out the details here-

The mixed ballast I used came out nice, in my opinion, and looks similar to what can be found in my own locale, as this little layout will likely pay homage to a bit of local lore. With all the lighting and painting and gluing left to do on the buildings, I have a lot of opportunities to add some character from familiar places to each little structure. I received a box of several pre-built buildings yesterday, and with some reworking I should be able to have them all looking quite snappy by next weekend! I still need to push the box containing the unbuilt miniature sawmill under my girlfriend’s nose; she promised me she would build it up nicely so she could claim some stake in our little living room centerpiece-to-be!

Another recent addition to my collection is a pair of TCS CN-GP decoders for my Northern Pacific freight engines; the decoders (when installed inside a locomotive) allow me to run multiple locomotives on the same track, while individually controlling the locos without affecting the others. Quite a nifty little setup, I am sure after getting them all installed I’ll have fun teaching Todd the ins & outs of Digital Command Control. He’s like a kid in a candy store, with his trains… his purchase of an HO scale Northern Pacific GP-18 makes my heart warm- I have 2 of those locomotives, but in N scale. Anyone who has seen my collection knows my adoration for the ol’ NP, whose herald adorns most of my collection and even a few antiques around the house! I have a nifty little gift for Todd this Christmas, my help in building his layout notwithstanding. Again, details to come after the “big day”

Other recent developments include my addition of a painted cab interior in the NP FP7, which is visible through the windshield, and some new additions to the collection of a six-car flatcar set all individually numbered, and a new set of NP reefers to line up next to the meatpacking plant behind my other three reefers- all six are a beautiful argent silver and look quite realistic in a consist, perhaps to be pulled behind my BN GP-30 around the loops….

Speaking of the GP-30, I had a little lesson in the quality of Kato Locomotives the other day! The GP was whining and grinding around the curves, and making one hell of a racket. I pulled the shell, and found almost every internal part to be bone-dry! That simply is not acceptable- I took care in removing every part and piece, I lubricated the bearings for the work gears with light oil and the truck gears/worm gears with white grease (teflon type). I had never seen such a freerolling truck before, the little suckers both went off the edge of the table into my lap with almost zero slope to the surface. Those low-friction Kato/Atlas drives are a thing of beauty. After lube and reassembly, I took the engine for a spin at half-power and over the course of a minute of running, the engine sped itself up (noticeable both visually and audibly!) and smoothed out, taking on a near dead silence while running, and to top it all off the loco coasts to a stop when power is cut- flywheels sure do their job. For a $30 Ebay loco, new-in-box, the only thing I can think of to possibly make this model nicer would be some proper couplers and a decoder! Otherwise, an A+ all the way. Have you got one? If not, I highly suggest it- you won’t be sorry!

One last note- I have found that the couplers and trucks on my Con-Cor Passenger car set are painfully inadequate. I’ve replaced the front coupler/truck of the RPO car with a Micro-Trains set that proved to be a good fit and looks wonderful, but could be cost-prohibitive at $10 a set for 9 cars. I’ll be looking into bulk packs. Otherwise, I’m slowly but surely banishing Rapido couplers from everything I run, and I say good riddance! The cars do not seem to be friendly to my tight radii on the coffee table layout either, so it seems I may be forced to retire the set until I have a larger layout at my disposal. Last night, while running the train around a bit, I had a derailment of the trailing observation car. I decided to run it a few more inches to see if the couplers would hold up, and it hit the left-hand switch just right. It rerailed itself onto the inner track, and for a brief period I was running perfectly on two different tracks with one car! Honestly one of the most cockeyed things I have ever seen…. but entertaining nonetheless.

small stogies

I just left the local cigar store off *** street. What a disappointment. I know things are pricier in San Francisco, but that’s ridiculous! I don’t make a habit of spending $17 for a $11 cigar. The selection is decent enough… but from what I can see the store caters to only the high-end cigar conniseur. Is there even a market for that anymore? Is there even much of an upper class left for whom these exorbitant prices are intended? I suppose today’s market does not require one such business to lower its prices, but it damn near demands some leniency at the register. What’s making matters worse is, with the limited number of people/businesses left with any money these days, the “powers-that-be” are squeezing every red cent out of them because nobody else can be squeezed any further! I have days where I feel like it’s all a joke, all a revolving little universe around each and every one of us to strip us of finances and, in the  long term, deny us escalationinto the moneyed ranks. Nobody ever got rich without someone else getting poorer…. And naturally, I did not leave emptyhanded so my whole argument is $12 lighter!

Be that as it may, I still rather enjoyed the little CAO flavored cigar (vanilla) I just happened to have with me today, on the walk towards the cigar shop. I had snuck it out of my girl’s humidor, and grabbed a good (yet cheap!) Thompson-provided off-brand cigar for my long smoke after the gym. The CAO was, until recently, low on my list… but at some point I remembered this isn’t one of my 45 ring gauge churchills, it’s a little cigarillo and should be smoked delicately. Old habits die hard, I suppose. Lighter, more intermittent draws (puffs?) solved my complaints about an acrid finsh, and now I rather enjoy these flavored sticks.

 I had paused briefly outside the skating rink, watching the lonely half-dozen skaters brave the cloudy sky and the drizzle, to get their midweek fix of a fixture that only materializes downtown for a handful of weeks, then disappears for the warmer majority of the seasons. I’m rather looking forward to my plpanned trek to the rink this Friday, I’ll be with my love and my friends and a flask of something warming…. Of course, all the while I’ll be trying to sneak in a few cigars! I purchased some small (3” ish) Romeo Y Julieta Habana Reserve Piquenos, a nice firm little box of eight sticks printed with some delightful little romantic artwork reminiscent of old Roman art. I’ve unwrapped two from their plastic sheaths in anticipation of smoking one, but as I’m at my desk it will be a while before I have anything to say about them! Patience, Hunter, patience….