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….

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.”

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

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

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 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!

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…

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

HAPPY HOLIDAYS? YEP!

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.

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