HOn30 Layout Pulled Out Of Mothballs

I pulled a small HOn30 layo0ut out of storage after about 27 years. I first became interested in what RMC called HOn2-1/2 in the 1960s, when it first introduced the scale, and I had a small Minirains layout in my dorm. Then I discovered that while 2+ foot gauge was rare in the US, there was a lot of it in Europe, and I started a layout based on Austro-German prototype. I startted it in 1989 in a different home.

I eventually got the scenery to about 50% but put it on the back burner. Not lonmg ago I pulled it out again to try out some of the new OO9-HOn30 UK prototype items. The loco is a Bachmann Talyllynn Ry No 1. The UK modelers are a little lulewarm about this, since it's just a cleaned-up Thomas series loco, but I like it. The brickworks is an old Pola kit with some tweaks.

A Second Central Vermont GP9

As I said I would, I ordered a second Walthers Mainline Central Vermont GP9, this one 4445. The CV was the last railroad I grew up with, turning 21 in the White River Jct area.

As mentioned, both units will get winterization hatches and CN style spark arresters like GT 4448 in the photo. I'm still puzzled why the factory added snowplows to the short hood end, which is the rear on these locos, when they assembled the figures in the cab facing the long hood front -- and the decoder is also factory programmed for long hood front.

I don't have a photo of 4445 from the front, but here's a photo from an unknown photographer off the web of 4447 with its plow on the long hood end:

My first project on both these locos will be to figure out how to pry the plow off the short hood end and reattach it to the long hood end.

Bachmann Silver Series 4-Wheel Caboose

I really like the Bachmann Silver Series 4-wheel caboose, which is a somewhat retooled version of a model that's probably been in their line from the start. I have more of them than I should:

Not long ago, I found another one on eBay. It was bright red with an incongruous New Haven McGinnis "NH", but it was cheap. I discovered that if I just brushed the lettering with some Walthers Solvaset, the letters simply floated off. With that problem solved, I masked off the black of the roof and cupola and sprayed the car boxcar red. Then I applied decals from the K4 NYO&W loco and caboose decal set.

Here's a prototype photo off the web:

Close enough.

Vintage eBay Find

A fun sub-hobby I enjoy is occasionally finding vintage items that can be restored to operate compatibly with contemporary equipment. This usually involves replacing trucks and couplers, but it may also involve adding weight and sometimes cosmetic improvements. Not long ago I found a Chateau Martin wine car on eBay that I'm pretty sure is a Laconia kit from the 1950s.

This is exactly how I got it from the seller (it was pretty cheap). A prior owner had converted it to Kadees mounted with wood screws, so that's one thing I don't need to worry about, but the trucks will have to go, and the roof probably needs sanding sealer and new paint.

The prototype is a General American Pfaudler milk tank car (the tanks are internal within the wood carbody), the same thing as the much more recent Athearn car. Chateau Martin used it for wine. For some reason, as far as I can tell, Athearn never brought its model out in the Chateau Martin scheme. A web search shows Lionel brought one out in 3-rail O, AHM did an HO freight reefer in this scheme in the 1950s, and Roundhouse did a 50-foot HO express reefer in this scheme, but neither is as close to the prototype as this 60-year-old Laconia car.

Tony Thompson's blog has a post on this same Laconia car. He pretty much agrees it's an OK model as is, and nothing better has come along.

There's also a history of Chateau Martin and the wine cars at this site. They ran from 1940 to about 1974 in the basic magenta paint wirh several different lettering schemes. The traffic was between Waterford, CA and Bronx, NY, where they were unloaded at a Chateau Martin bottling plant, but they somehow seem to have appeared in freights all over the country.

Progress On Fat Lou's

I've finished the detail painting and weathering on the Downtown Deco Fat Lou's Liquor and have also added the wall signs.

I decided to position it with the front facing the front edge of the shelf. But as you can see, while I've figured out exactly where it should go, I still have to level things out and clear the surrounding area up.

The detail painting and signage went much easier than I expected. The basic model should be complete within the next few days. The signs in the kit are Downtown Deco's older style, not actual decals, but printed on thin glossy paper. I cut them out and mounted them on blobs of full-strength Elmer's glue the general size of the sign itself. I squished the signs into the glue and straightened them out, then left things to dry. The glue shrank and pulled the paper signs into the brickwork pretty well. If glue seeped out from the edges of the signs, that was OK, it was invisible when it dried.

Opening Up A New Photo Angle

I decided to begin opening up a new photo angle to a corner of the Manhattan Transfer section of my layout, which I've bern neglecting from the start. I want to add several Downtown Deco kits, starting with the Fat Lou's Liquor, kit DD165. Below is a photo from their web site:

I've gotten as far as assembly of the plaster sides and basic painting:

Most of the work that remains will be in the detail painting and weathering on the walls and adding the signs and roof details. Then several more structures in the bare area to the right, and then other street details and vehicles.

Walthers Mainline Central Vermont GP9

The Central Vermont is oone of the railroads I grew up with, because in my late teens I spent several years near White River Junction, where I saw CV GP9s and Duluth, Winnipeg & Pacfic RS-11s all the time -- even had a chance to ride to St Albans on the Ambassador the year before it was discontinued. Central Vermont models, especially for the later years, have been fairly hard to find. Walthers released a Mainline GP9 in the post-1977 green and yellow not long ago, and while this is after my time railfanning and riding the CV, I'll take what I can get.

The Walthers Mainline brand are bare-bones models and lack many of the details on CV units, includiing sunshades, winterization hatches, rerail frogs, correct horns, bell mounted on the long hood, and spark arresters. Oddly, there is a plow mounted on one pilot, but this is the rear pilot, when the CV units in the late scheme have plows on the front pilot, the long hood end. I'm not sure how easy this will be to change. The shade of green strikes me as just a bit dark, but this is a subjective judgment.

I've added some of these details to GT 4448 above. I covered GT 4448 in a post here four years ago. As I said in that post, the Grand Trunk Railway, which was the US portion of the CN line from Montreal to Portland, ME, was a mountain railroad that did have dynamics on its GP9s.

In addition, CN subsidiary Central Vermont, which was the US portion of a CN line from Montreal to New London, CT, was also a mountain railroad that had dynamics on its freight GP9s. Grand Trunk Railway GP9s 4442-4450 were built for the line to Portland, ME and originally lettered with just the name Grand Trunk, not Grand Trunk Western, on the long hood in the CN green and yellow scheme.

The GT and CV units originally ran interchangeably on both the lines to New London and Portland. However, the GT units, or at least most of them, were eventually sent to the Grand Trunk Western, although parent Canadian National transferred GTW units back to the CV as needed. By the 1970s and 1980s, GTW blue units could be found on the Central Vermont along with their own green and yellow units.

Baseds on the original roster info, CV 4450 would have originally been lettered for the Grand Trunk, but for whatever reason seems to have been transferred to the CV before the other GT units went to the GTW.

As a result, GT 4448 will opeate as a mate with CV 4450 on my layout, something I had planned all along. I'm also hoping to track down the other Walthers CV number in this run, 4447, although these locos seem to have sold out very quickly.

Both these locos are the DCC sound versions. The only change I make to the ESU OEM CVs is to set CVs 3 and 4, acceleration and deceleration, to 0 -- I'm still used to DC control, and I like to see a loco start right away. This is a pure personal preference.