Downtown Deco N Jiggles & Giggles

Here's a Downtown Deco N Jiggles & Giggles in progress to be added to the Kato street trackage T-TRAK module.

You can also see the Fine N Scale Easy Streets sidewalks that will be brought up to the Kato street panels. The sidewalks and structure bases will have to be shimmed up.

Tomytec N Scale Leipzig Trams

I found a pair of Tomytec N scale trams at a very good price on eBay. They'll be used on my developing N scale modular trolley/tram layout built on single-depth T-TRAK modules.

Here's a prototype photo I found on the web:

The cars come as dummies, with a power unit included to be installed by the user. There are also decals and various additional parts.

You can also see I've begun a module that uses Kato street trackage with urban street plates.

Bachmann N Illinois DOT Siemens Venture Cars

I ordered two of Bachmann's Illinois DOT Siemens Venture cars:

These seem to be hard to find. The ones I was able to find are Bachmann 74561 and 74562, IDTX 4002 and 4005. The Train World page on these list several others, 74563, IDTX 4009, and 74564, IDTX 4016, as well as "married pairs B" 74510, IDTX 4125, and 74511, IDTX 4130, and "married pairs A" 74512, IDTX 4203, and 74513, IDTX 4214. I asked Chrome AI mode, "What are Illinois DOT "married pair" Venture cars, and how are they used?" It answeered,

Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT) "married pair" Venture cars are passenger train cars that are semi-permanently coupled together in two-car sets. Manufactured by Siemens Mobility, these specialized Siemens Venture cars are part of a regional fleet owned jointly by a consortium of Midwest states (Illinois, Michigan, Missouri, and Wisconsin).

Out of the 97 Venture cars ordered for the Amtrak Midwest network, 68 of them are configured into 34 distinct married pairs.

How They Are Configured

Instead of using traditional couplers and separate gangway doors between every car, a married pair functions operationally as a single atomic unit. They feature open, wide, weather-tight gangway connections that make moving between the two cars seamless for passengers. IDOT utilizes two distinct types of married pairs:

Café / Economy Coach Pairs: One car serves as the food/beverage café, while its "spouse" car is a standard economy coach.

Business Class / Economy Coach Pairs:

One car houses premium Business Class seating (along with some economy seats), while the attached car is fully dedicated to regular economy seating.

How They Are Used

The married pairs are managed by Amtrak to serve state-supported corridors originating out of Chicago.Targeted Routes:

You will find them running on regional lines like the Lincoln Service (Chicago to St. Louis), Wolverine (Chicago to Pontiac/Detroit), Hiawatha (Chicago to Milwaukee), and Missouri River Runner.

Flexible Consist Sizing: Unlike other operators (like VIA Rail or Caltrans) that buy fixed 4-to-6-car trainsets, IDOT uniquely uses these 2-car married pairs alongside 29 individual "unmarried" coach cars. This lets Amtrak easily scale the train length up or down. If a weekend rush requires more seats, they can simply drop in a few single coaches or add an extra married pair without disrupting the core amenities.

Enhanced Accessibility:

These pairs are essential for accessibility. IDOT designed the built-in wheelchair lifts directly into the married pair configurations, allowing mobility-impaired passengers to navigate between the service cars (like the café) and seating areas safely while the train is in motion.

Maintenance Efficiency: By utilizing integrated 3-phase auxiliary power inverters and advanced shared braking systems across the pair, the cars experience lower mechanical wear and offer a smoother, quieter ride.

I'm not sure if any of the model mags has published information this complete. As far as spotting features, from the Train World page, "married pair B" cars seem to be indistinguishable from the individual cars, while "married car A" cars have vestibules at each end. My two cars are Bachmann 74561-74562, individual coaches. Now I'm going to have to look more closely at prototype photos and videos to see how the trains are configured.

Using Light Gray Panel Liner For Mortar

I saw some Tamiya Light Gray Panel Liner at my local train store and decided to try using it for mortar on model brick buildings.

Here it is on a couple of walls from a Downtown Deco background flat kit. It takes some time to dry completely, so I'll have to see how things progress. I'll need to continue with the detail painting as well.

I used Robewrs Products mortar on the building on which they're leaning, a Downtown Deco Triangle Fruit Company. This product is still around, and it may still be better.

Walthers Proto SP GP9

I've really been playing catch-up lately on recent runs of Walthers Proto GP9s.

All Midwest Model Railroad had left were DCC-ready units, but they installed LokSound 5 in this one and simply charged the factory price for a regular sound-and-DCC unit, and now that it's tested, everything's good. The loco is numbered in the 3300 seriees of GP(Es, which would cover the period from 1970 to 1990.

All other info is the same as the other Proto GP9s that I've recently discussed.

Re-Scrambling Some Background Flats

The background flats behind my Manhattan Transfer yard have been scrambled over and over. Here they were in November, 2011:

When King Mill went out of business, I got a lot of items from their closeout sale, and they replaced a lot of what was in that photo. But now, I'm looking at adding some Downtown Deco plaster flats to the mix:

I'm sure there will be a lot of tweaking and fitting.

Any Amtrak Trip Can Go South At Any Time

I'm starting to think it's become railfan conventional wisdom that even if you think you're having a good trip on Amtrak, it can go south in a big way at any time. Via Trains.com, over the July 4 weekend,

Heat-related delays already had the Chicago-bound Floridian five hours late when it reached Washington on July 4 during severe weather that caused cancellation of that evening’s holiday events. But after arriving at 8:30 p.m., the train didn’t depart Washington until 9:45 a.m. on July 5, nearly 18 hours late. It arrived in Chicago at 4:14 a.m. on Monday, July 6, some 19 hours, 29 minutes late.

The westbound equipment is supposed to flip back east the same day, but with no trainset available, the Sunday departure for Florida was canceled, as was Monday’s departure from Miami. Equipment availability should be back to normal for the Chicago departure today (Tuesday, July 7).

Meanwhile, the southbound Floridian that left Washington two hours late on Sunday departed Jacksonville, Fla., more than eight hours late on Monday after a three-hour delay there. It also encountered heat restrictions and freight train interference, according to Amtrak alerts. It was due to arrive in Miami at 2:44 a.m. today, more than 8½ hours late.

Another Florida-bound train, the Silver Meteor, was stuck at Washington Union Station from 7:03 p.m. Sunday until 4:47 a.m. Monday, waiting for operational locomotives. It lost another hour at Florence, S.C., because of a CSX signal outage. The train was almost 12 hours late leaving Jesup, Ga., on Monday evening and was projected to reach Miami at 5:58 a.m. today, not quite 11 hours late.

I notice that the popular YouTube channel Grounded Life Travel, which used to hype Amtrak sleepers extensivley, hasn't featured Amtrak for over a year, and not long before they dropped the Amtrak hype entirely, they posted this:

Riding long-distance trains on Amtrak is likely to be a retirement activity for most people, especially since you can't rely on scheduled arrival and departure times if you have to be back at work the day after you get back. Beyond that, there's definitely a non-trivial chance that the heat or A/C will go out, or you can simply be put off the train in the middle of nowhere for any number of reasons. Here's another reality check:

Originally, I looked forward t riding Amtrak a lot more during my retirement, but the experiences turned out to be more stressful, not least due to boisterous fellow passengers, than they were worth.