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.

The Kalmbach Legacy Magazines At Firecrown Are Circling The Drain

I saw a post on Facebook:

Rumor is that Firecrown is not doing well with their acquisition of Kalmbach and may be taking all their magazines out of print and may only offer digital editions.

A commenter added,

Firecrown's business model has not been supportive of the hobby shops who sell the magazines in store. Firecrown no longer gives credit for unsold issues, and have made it more difficult for hobby shops to get even what they think they can sell. It looks as if they do not have the organizational ability to resolve the problems they have created. I feel especially sad for the MR (and Trains) staff, who are skilled and accomplished modelers.

I asked Chrome AI mode, "Have the magazines Kalmbach sold to Firecrown been performing well?" It answered,

The former Kalmbach Media magazines sold to Firecrown Media—such as Trains, Model Railroader, and Astronomy—have faced significant financial and operational difficulties since the May 2024 acquisition. Despite Firecrown's initial plans to modernize the legacy publications, the portfolio has struggled heavily with digital integration, subscriber churn, and print sustainability.

Key Performance Indicators & Community Reports Severe Technical Disruptions:

Subscribers have documented prolonged outages on the Trains.com ecosystem, including broken digital magazine downloads, non-functional password resets, and completely unresponsive customer service channels.

Print Distribution Concerns:

Rumors and community discussions indicate that Firecrown is struggling with the financial viability of print. Hobbyists report widespread shipping delays and missed issues, with heavy speculation that Firecrown may cancel print entirely and transition exclusively to digital editions.

Retailer Drops:

Brick-and-mortar hobby shops and independent distributors have begun actively dropping Firecrown-owned titles from their shelves, citing changing product focus and supply issues.

Content and Format Degradation:

Longtime readers note that flagship publications like Model Railroader have continued to shrink in size—dropping to a fraction of their historical page counts—while featuring less advanced technical content.

Staffing Transitions:

While Firecrown initially aimed to keep operations in Wisconsin, community updates show that much of the veteran editorial staff has cleared off the mastheads. This turnover has disrupted the community goodwill that Kalmbach spent 90 years building.

Regarding MR itself:

The situation surrounding Model Railroader (MR) under Firecrown Media's ownership has grown increasingly critical, with many long-time hobbyists and industry observers questioning the magazine's long-term survival.

Recent Major Developments

The Return to a Monthly Schedule:

After a highly controversial attempt to slash production costs by moving to a bi-monthly (6 issues per year) print frequency, Firecrown faced intense reader backlash and officially reverted back to a monthly schedule.

The "Thinning" Project:

To offset the costs of printing monthly, the physical magazine has drastically shrunk. Modern issues frequently hover around just 50 to 60 pages, which is less than half the size of the magazine during its peak decades.

Editorial Shifts:

Veteran editor-in-chief Kevin P. Keefe and other long-time staffers are no longer steering the publication. The newer editorial direction relies heavily on basic, beginner-friendly content and recycled layout techniques, causing advanced modelers to look elsewhere for deep technical articles.

Loss of the Historical Archive: One of the biggest blows to subscribers was the degradation of the Model Railroader Digital Archive (the 90-year back-issue database). The transition from Kalmbach's infrastructure to Firecrown's new digital platform resulted in broken links, low-resolution rendering, and a clunky interface that remains a major source of subscriber complaints on the Trains.com forums.

I get the impression that before they sold the magazines to Firecrown, Kalmbach must have taken a very thorough look at their business and decided there was no way they could continue it as it had been running. They had a bloated staff, a huge bulding containing non-productive features like a print library, old project layouts, a model railroad museum, a large employee club layout, and so forth. I actually wonder if a lot of staff time was taken up in showing visitors around the place, as well as moderating the on line forums.

I got fed up with MR during the mid-to-late Kalmbach era, when I realized I wasn't getting the monthly output on MR Video Plus that they promised, plus they were giving away videos that reguiar subscribers had paid for, but not giving subscribers any sort of credit for giving the paid content away for free. It was a little bit cold turkey to give that up, but I've never regretted it. I also gave up RMC when Carstens didn't pay his printers. I'd already had Carstens try to stiff me for $200 they said they'd pay me for an article they ran.

With Facebook in particular, it's easy to interact with the other authors, you don't need to wait a month for new stuff, and you don't have editors controlling the content. The print mags are simply no loss. It looks like Kalmbach had already figured that out.

Home Shops Split Rock Mining Ore Car

The Split Rock Mining Company, built by Thomas Gasior, is one of my all-time favorite layouts. It's very active on Facebook, and just the other day I got a notification that I'm a "top fan", I guess for the number of "likes" I've given it over the years. It has a web page here. Home Shops LLC does custom runs of rolling stock painted for well-known home layouts, and I got a Fox Valley/Scaletrains ore car painted and lettered for Split Rock Mining.

I got mine from Denver Model Trains. There isn't much "prototype" info on theae cars from either the Denver Model Trains site or the Split Rock Mining Facebook page, but from what I can gather, regular ore cara on Split Rock Mining are for on line service only. since they don't have data for interchange.

(I got this photo off Facebook, and I'm assuming it's by Mr Gasior.) So I'm assuming the Home Shops cars, since they have ACI labels, reporting marks, and data, are for interchange, since they'll be running on other layouts. This probably makes them likely to operate in "all rail" trains from the Minnesota ore fields to steel mills elsewhere in the country. As it happens, I relettered a few of the old AHM ore cars that have a B&LE prototype, but the C&NW bought a number of them for "all rail" ore service. They were variously patched and repainted and operated with other roads' ore cars. I decided to see what the Split Rock car would look like in a string with these.

Well, you can at least see that the B&LE cars are a larger prototype.