Frustrations

For whatever reason, my interest in the hobby, never very faint, has been rekindled even more lately. Maybe it's because gas is cheaper, maybe because I'm a little healthier, but I've been going out and railfanning a lot, and I'm seeing changes that have caught my interest more than since the 1960s, when I eagerly followed mergers, the diesel horsepower race, removal of roofwalks, and ACI labels.

Here's just one example of what I'm seeing that I'm aiming at more in my basement:

Just yesterday, the day before Thanksgiving, I was hitting my favorite spots, and it was just one train after another, sometimes two or three at once, whether it was UP or BNSF. Right after lunch I caught this meet of a BNSF intermodal with a manifest just south of the old Cajon station.

The intermodal is stopped, so the crew is down off the loco and doing a defect inspection. The cottonwoods along Cajon Creek are at their fall peak. But I'm seeing things that few modelers seem to pay much attention to.

• Of eight visible units, all superficially alike, there are three models, 9-44CW, ES44DC, and ES44ACC4. There are two different paint schemes.
• However, a more subtle difference is the antenna domes on the cab roofs. Positive Train Control (PTC) is being implemented, which requires new electronics and antennas on road locomotives. In other words, there are detail differences, new ones.

On the UP, the new antennas are pretty much out there for everyone to see:

On BNSF, it's less clear -- they seem to be hidden under domes:

Note that these are in addition to the single white antenna dome that's been on locos for the past 15 years or so. Here's the older type:

This by itself is pretty standard on recent HO models, but the additional PTC hoods aren't. But on BNSF, there seem to be variations on the extra white PTC hoods, and beyond that, BNSF seems to have gone to a different design on recent locos. Here's a pretty new ES44C4:

This design is carried over onto the new Tier 4 locos:

I haven't gotten a good down-on shot of these yet. However, a Shapeways seller has put out a part for this.

The model press (such as is left of it), the blogs, the forums, haven't touched this stuff. I put up a query on the Model Railroader forum; so far, nobody's answered. In one of John Armstrong's books, he was taking about designing a club layout and imagined a child looking at the finished layout and asking, "Daddy, why don't those men look like they're having fun?"

Armstrong was a perceptive guy.

My Favorite Trainfest Announcement

There were lots of good announcements from Trainfest in Milwaukee last weekend, reported at Model Railroader. The one that really turned my crank, though, was Accurail's announcement of 36-foot boxcar prototypes from the first few decades of the 20th century.

I'm not committed to any particular era or prototype, but I've always enjoyed the shorter and earlier equipment, especially in connection with small steam and short lines. Accurail has always done a good job on earlier prototypes. Here are some that are on my layout:

I notice that Accurail older prototypes like these turn up frequently on Model Railroader HO project layouts, like the current Winston Salem Southbound Tar Branch. With a little weathering and paint on trucks and underframes, they work very well. A couple of photos above show how well they also work with recent Bachmann locos of the same era.

In the past, 36-foot steel underframe boxcars were available in urethane. I assembled a number of these, although more recently I'm less willing to undertake all that effort. Here are two that were available in the 1990s from the Renssellaer club's store:

I always eagerly await each new Accurail release.

BNSF Is Growing On Me

I moved out to Los Angeles in 1968 and started railfanning the Santa Fe right away. Amtrak came along and the first yellowbonnets turned up:

In the background you can see the work equipment involved in the 1970s relocation of Sullivan's Curve.

Then things really got interesting, first, with the abortive SP-SF merger and the Kodachrome paint scheme:

Not to mention all the new and rebuilt power. Then we got the return of the warbonnets:

But I don't know what it was after that -- maybe the worn-out patch paint jobs after 1995 got too depressing:

For a while I kept telling myself that all the look-alike orange GEs were too boring:

But lately something's changed.

There are lots of little differences even among the GEs, and somehow the light catches them a little differently all day. Looks like I'm a fan!

Graffiti!

John R noticed the tagging on the UP GP38-2 in my last post. This is very common in the Los Angeles area -- unfortunately, where equipment is easily photographable, it's also easily reachable by taggers.

UP 1398 is an ex SP GP40-2 that's been in Oxnard for quite some time -- it stayed clean last year:

Just the other week, not so much.

That's at West Colton, and the train is probably the Gemco Hauler, taking the loco back out to Oxnard.

I like to model what I see, at least part of the time. Tagging is one piece of it.

Lineside Details-- Small Bridges And Culverts

I've been out railfanning enough recently that I've been inspired to go back and add some more prototypical detail to my layout. One thing I always look for when I'm out is small lineside details. Here are some culverts I've found along the UP:

Here are some culverts I've included on my layout: