LFNW 160 Is Lost Then Found!

The Los Feliz and North Western received a message from Empire Belt Terminal Yard freight agent yesterday:

The Terminal Yard freight agent is endeavoring to locate freight car L.F.&N.W. #160 that left Terminal Yard on Sunday November 19th with cases of beer from local shipper Heileman Brewery. The shipment is consigned to Ace Wholesale Distributors in Zenith.

Car routing was Terminal Yard to Elkhart in train LS-1 and Elkhart to Chicago in train BN-1.

Kar Tracker last shows car arriving in Chicago.

But the freight agent copied the Union Pacific on the inquiry, which left the LF&NW confused:

Will get right on it, though I thought the routing was via ATSF Bay City – that could be the problem!

Terminal Yard replied,

You're right!
From my blog;
L.F.&N.W. 160 will be transferred to the A.T.S.F via the Belt Railway of Chicago's Clearing Yard to continue it's trip to Bay City, California on John B's layout.

Looks like the PC sent the car to the UP.
Very prototypical!

Well, this is the age of punch card computing and incompatible NYC and PRR data entry, so who knows what went wrong. I know first hand, that was when computer operators dropped decks of cards and put them back together any which way.

A call to the Santa Fe got things straightened out, and LFNW 160 was on Santa Fe's local from Riverbank for interchange with the LF&NW at Bay City.

Today's Riverbank-Bay City turn had the Santa Fe's Santa Safety Caboose:

The photographer caught the short train again as it ran past 14th St in Bay City:

Later in the day, the car was delivered to Ace Wholesale Distributing in Zenith by a leased Western Pacific S-4:

Ace Wholesale Distributing is a Thomas A Yorke kit from the 1970s:

Well, the beer from Heileman might be a little late for Christmas, but at least they'll have it for New Year!

Pulling Station Track 4

Working on ops videos:

One thing I'm finding is that although sound-equipped locos seem to be better subjects for videos, they don't operate as well at low switching speeds. Still studying the best way to do videos!

Bluebox SD9

I'm a big fan of how fellow modelers and bloggers John R and Ralph V make creative use of vintage models, especially Athearn bluebox locomotives. I used to do a lot with them, and I still have quite a number that I built in the 1970s and early 80s, but I've begun to realize that at 70, I'm less able to do some of the delicate and tedious work like assembling the handrails. So I passed on one of my last unassembled locos to John R, who has done a fine job finishing it and posted about it. The good thing about getting old in this era of the hobby is that I no longer need to assemble handrails with recent locos!

But as I move through the locos I have and install DCC, I've come to some of my own bluebox collection. About ten years ago, I found this DM&IR SD9, a bluebox that had been custom painted, at a swap meet for what I seem to remember was a distress price. As a DM&IR fan, I grabbed it without thinking too much farther, and thereafter it sat in my own virtual swap-meet-in-the-closet.

When I pulled it out yesterday, I could see how beutifully it had been done. Beyond the paint, the guy had added a brass horn and even sanded down the molded-on end ladders and replaced them over the decal stripes:

I originally thought the guy had sold it because newer SD9 models from Proto and Broadway Limited had made his wide-body version obsolete, no matter how nicely it had been finished. But once I put it on the test track, I discovered the reason for the distress price. The motor wouldn't turn over, even though the guy had done work comparable to the paint job upgrading the chassis:

Not only did he install a can motor, but he really went above and beyond by replacing all the Athearn stamped-metal current pickup system with hardwired connections to the motor:

So I debugged it bit by bit. It looks like the lube, whatever he used, had completely hardened around the worm and the worm shaft, so I disassembled the trucks and cleaned off the old lube so the worm would turn. Things moved under power after that. But the motor bearings were completely dry, and the motor screeched when it ran -- this is a sign of dry motor bearings. In extreme cases, the screech is very hard to get rid of and requires much re-lubing and running in. I had to do this here and spent several hours running the loco back and forth.

At this point, the loco still chatters somewhat at high RPMs, but at switching speeds, it's very smooth and quiet. Here's the chassis after I installed a Digitrax DZ126:

Considering how the lube had hardened and the motor bearings were completely dry, the guy must almost never have run it even after he did such a great job painting and remotoring it maybe 35 years ago. I'm glad I was able to bring it back to life. I used to do custom work like this, but I'm no longer physically as able to do this kind of thing, so it was great to be able to bring this one back!

But then I thought about some of the bluebox SD9s that I repainted and detailed for SP. Maybe I'll pull these out soon.

Also I now remember that in an Emery Gulash video, there's a sequence of DM&IR SD9s pulling a freight through the Detroit River tunnel while on lease to the New York Central. Apparently these got around in the winter months when the lakes were frozen.

Burlington Local Leaving Manhattan Transfer

I'm working toward doing ops videos. Here's a test:

50-Year Old Scratchbuilding Projects

At least from the time I was six or seven years old, I was "scratchbuilding" model train items from shirt cardboard and masking tape -- my dad worked for a company that made the tape and brought home lots of free samples. Naturally, I would have preferred the latest in the Lionel catalog, but what I could cut out with scissors and tape together was certainly better than nothing. By the time I was in the ninth grade, I seem to have graduated to thinner white poster stock like you can still find at Walgreen's and similar places, and I think I was using Elmer's to glue it together.

Somewhere around that time, my family visited Washington, DC, and when I got home I made a roughly HO scale model of the Senate monorail car that took the senators from the office building to the Capitol via a subway. That has long since disappeared, sorry to say. But in high school, I was in bed for some weeks with mono. During that time, with nothing else to do, I mass-produced three HO models of PRR H36 hoppers using the thin poster stock, some wood shapes, and Elmer's glue. These seem to be the earliest models I've built that survive.

One thing I still needed to learn about scratchbuilding, and that took me at least a dozen more years to figure out, was the need for a solid and reliable way to mount trucks and couplers, as well as the need for proper weight. Some of my earliest models have stayed in the purgatory box pending resolution of these problems. Recently I pulled out one of the high school PRR H36s. In a previous effort, I filled in nooks and crannies in the chassis with buckshot. More recently, I found a way to mount Kadee coupler pockets to the chassis with screws, and just now I used some washers from the miscellaneous parts box to make bolsters. Here's the result:

The car is pretty beat up from 52 years in the purgatory box, and you can see where I pulled off the crude ladders I'd made in high school. You can also see the Walthers decals, which were awful but all that was available in 1965. I plan to add angle stock to the corners, new ladders, and touch up the paint, but leave the Walthers decals as a way to stay in touch with my aspirations.

Next is a car I did maybe half a dozen years later. By then I'd mastered using basswood roof, floor, and end block stock to build up a car following typical articles in MR and RMC of the time. This is a Milwaukee Road car from a long-vanished RMC:

The overall process of decaling took longer, and for whatever reason, I never quite got around to adding trucks and couplers, so it never ran on any layout. With the PRR H36, I decided to fix it up and make it run. For now, both this car and the hopper have temporary junk box trucks and Accumate couplers that I'll replace with my next trip to the hobby shop. I also need to replace the roof walk, probably with one from Tichy. Both cars are a little short on weight, but I think they'll do.

I gave them a test run, which considering it took them 50 years to actually operate, was very satisfying.