Eye Candy

One of the modelers who inspires me is John Allen, and it's worth pointing out that Allen wasn't especially keen on maintaining era or location consistency on his G&D.

But the prototype isn't all that era- or location-specific. We see preserved locos like NKP 765 touring all over the country, for instance, or tourist-"heritage" railroads like the Strasburg operating 100-year-old steam locos in freight, mixed, or charter-freight service.

My own layout keeps a tourist-museum flavor, in part because I like to visit such railroads. They're fun to railfan and fun to ride. One thing I enjoy is looking at their "back lots". Here's a shay carcass I found, fr instance, on the Roaring Camp and Big Trees some years ago:

Recently I found a supplier called Rusty Rail, which makes a lot of "eye candy" style detail castings in both O and HO scale. I was immediately drawn to their derelict shay engine (scroll down), which reminds me a lot of the W.M.Ritter Shay in Felton. It arrived in yesterday's mail.

It turns out to be well-detailed and reasonably priced. It will also fit where I intended to put it with only a little trimming on the base:

This will be the start of detailing this area.