Scenery Work

I'm continuing work at CP Drains and Tunnel 6. After staring at this unfinished area for 25 years

I decided to bite the bullet and fill in the gap that the electrical conduit was peeking through.

I broke up some scraps of beadboard and stuck them in the opening with Liquid Nails for Projects:

When it had dried overnight, I took a piece of something called Dragon Skin -- it's sort of like flexible metal cheese grater material -- and smoothed the insert over.

I cleaned up the debris with a shop vac.

Using the same Liquid Nails for Projects, I replaced the urethane culverts on either side of the roadbed.

I covered the shaped beadboard with Woodland Scenics plaster cloth:

Here's a track cleaning train running through the scene. The consist, a UP SD60, 3GS21B, and SD60M, is very prototypical for my area.

The SD60 and SD60M both have Digitrax Xtenders installed, which allows them to move over 12-18 inches of dirty track and is an excellent feature for track cleaning.

Background Flats And Low-Relief Buildings

I've been working again on backgrounbd flats and low-relief buildings. These give a lot of options for urban layouts, but they have other uses. I periodically get into project jags where I do more of them, but I'm starting to reach a point where there are fewer and fewer places to put them on my current layout. Here's the spot where I've used them to best effect, in my view, the stub terminal background area in Mahnattan Transfer:

I use a mixture of scratchbuilt and commercial products. Here's a closeup of the area on the far right, still in progress. The wood building is a Fos Scale Forley Lithography, intended as a low-relief building, now out of production, but Fos has similar kits still available. Another toward the middle is a Walthers plastic low-relief, while others are King Mill, some assembled onto foamcore mandrels:

At the opposite end of the room is Sunkist, with a Showcase Miniatures packing plant along with scratchbuilt structures:

Here is one by itself in rural scenery:

I recently finished a new set and put it in an area of West Egg to help fill in a background:

The New Walthers Mainline BNSF ES44C4

As soon as my budget allowed, I ordered one of the new Walthers Maintline BNSF ES44C4s. Although these are intended as layout-quality models at a price range and detail level generally comparable to Bachmann and Roundhouse, Walthers has issued these with some road-specific details, notably headlight position and truck sideframes. I was especially interested in the BNSF version, which it calls an ES44C4, since these are very common in my area. In fact, I've got hundreds of photos of these, so I thought that for starters, I'd post prototype and model shots for comparison.

Overall body details appear to be consistent with the prototype photos. There is a basic cab interior.

Major paint and lettering features are reproduced. Smaller labels and builder plates are not. As with other finer details like windshield wipers, brake chains, piping, grab irons, and the like, the question is whether it's worth the considerable effort and time required to add these, given the price level of the loco. Versions with finer details are in fact available from other manufacturers at a higher price. Interestingly, in the 1970s, when afermarket details became common, the Atlas and Athearn bluebox models available didn't have better-detailed counterparts available except in brass, although these ran poorly and often required painting, at a much higher relative price.

The biggest thing to note here is that there is no PTC antenna array on the cab roof. These vary by roadname, and on the BNSF, there are variations among orders, so at this price level, this isn't a big minus. On the other hand, the model press, insofar as it still exists, hasn't covered PTC or modeling options. I'm not sure if there are generally available commercial products for BNSF PTC antennas, though commercial parts do exist for UP and NS versions.

The fuel filler is present to the left of the air tanks here, but there's an object farther to its left that doesn't appear on most BNSF prototypes at least. I believe it may be part of the weight distribution system mentioned below, but the position of this box isn't consistent among orders.

The extra cylinders on the truck sideframe are what makes these locos a "C4" on the BNSF. The trucks do not have traction motors on the center axles, and when starting, the cylinders raise the center axles to take weight off them to allow the powered axles to have more weight on the rail. Walthers has maintained this detail for its BNSF locos. However, the box just under the BNSF AC44C4 class designation in the prototype photo does not appear on the model. This is apparently part of the weight distribution system. Although I mentioned a box above that doesn't always appear, this one does seem consistent in photos I've seen.

The detail that's present on the pilot is correctly positioned and colored, but Walthers didn't include cut levers, air hoses, MU hoses, and MU cables. The plow is the correct size and type for BNSF units. I substituted a Kadee #156 centerset long shank coupler for the Walthers coupler included on the front. This prevents the Kadee uncoupling loop on cars coupling to the loco from interfering with the plow. The Walthers metal couplers seem to be very similar to Kadee #5s, and I don't have problems with them. I left the standard-size Walthers coupler on the rear. I do substitute the Kadee coupler boxes for the Walthers coupler pockets supplied. I needed to trim some material off the top of the Kadee box to get it to fit the mount on this loco. However, the Kadee snap-together design makes installation much easier.

I do have some concern about the brightness of the head and ditch lights, although of any models currently available, I don't think any headlights or ditch lights are bright enough. If I really wanted to get this right, I'd probably want to pull the light board, hard wire the lights to a decoder, and fiddle with the resistor value to the LEDs to make sure that the brightness of the ditch lights in particular is increased. But especially considering the price level of the loco, I don't think this is worth the effort. On the other hand, I think the 3-rail O loco makers do a much better job of punching the headlight brightness up!

Regarding DCC issues, my loco is the DC, DCC-ready version. I agree with fellow blogger and visitor Neal M that too many locos with sound on a layout can be annoying. On the other hand, the price difference between Walthers Mainline locos with sound and DCC and DCC-ready is $50. Adding a DCC-only decoder is about $20, so considering the additional cost of a sound decoder and speaker, the sound versions of these locos are cost-effective. Full premium locos with more detail and all sound features from other manufacturers sell for around $100 more than the Walthers Mainline locos with Soundtraxx limited-feature sound. I certainly don't need to have more than a few locos with full sound features like radio messages and startup sequence.

Below is a photo of the DCC-ready ES44C4 chassis:

The loco is laid out much like the Mainline SD70ACe released several years ago. I'm not sure if there's enough room to put a Digitrax Xtdender capacitor in the speaker enclosure area, but it does appear that not as much material would need to be removed from the upper rear frame to make enough room for one.

Here is the chassis with a Digitrax DH126D decoder installed:

There isn't a whole lot of wiggle room to install these. The shell will just barely fit with the decoder mounted as shown.

My biggest concern with this loco, but it isn't unique to the Mainline marque, is the very brittle plastic horns, which in my experience often don't survive just taking the new loco out of the box. Otherwise, these are smooth-running, robust locos. They meet the need they're intended to supply, good, sturdy models that are meant primarily for layout operation at an affordable price. DCC will allow speed matching with locos of other manufacturers. I will certainly be adding more Walthers Mainline locos in the recent releases to my layout.

PCCM 43 G -- The Virtual Ops Session Heads West!

This post is a continuation of the Penn Central Car Movement series that takes up from Ralph V's post on his blog here. The series began on John R's New York Central Train Layout blog here. On John R's layout, two cars were headed from Terminal Yard to my Los Feliz and North Western. LFNW 160, an RBL car, is loaded with beer from the Heileman Brewing Company in Empire City to the West Egg team track on the LF&NW. GN 3630 is loaded with shrink wrapped hides for the Pot of Oakland on the Western Pacific. The routing is PC - CB&Q Cicero - D&RGW - WP.

Things often go wrong for some reason when LFNW 160 leaves the PC. This time, the car, along with GN 3630, somehow got routed onto a D&RGW local heading west from Denver. Nevertheless, 1:87 Sir Neal, 1;87 AtJoe, and 1:87 Larry somehow got wind of the move and were waiting at East Portal to shoot the cars on their way west:

Scenery is still just roughed in here.

On the west slope, the train passes through Terrible:

Behind the train is the East Terrible Mill and its tailings pile.

A day or so later, we're on the Western Pacific, not long after Mr Perlman's arrival from Penn Central. The green wasn't his idea, but now that we see it, we know he's around. Here we're in eastern Nevada:

That must be SP paired track on the left.

In contrast to the D&RGW local, it looks like LFNW 160 and GN 3630 have found their way onto an APF, Auto Parts Forwarder, hotshot. A BN Alco is in today's consist:

Manhattan Transfer on the LF&NW is masquerading as Oakland here. WP 707, as on the prototype, is working as a heavy switcher shoving our interchange cars to their destination:

As in Oakland, there's lots of street running in West Egg:

As it happens, Pier 27, the destination for the shrink-wrapped hides in GN 3630, is on the same lead as the West Egg team track, the destination for the beer in LFNW 160:

Here's a better view of Pier 27, which is a Fos Scale kit, sitting behind a Walthers car float:

Regarding the shrink-wrapped hides, my uncle came to work for Mr Perlman at Western Pacific not long after Perlman himself arrived there. As Sr Vice President -- Marketing, his job was to find new traffic. One source was a shipper wanting to ship hides for export to Japan. Mr Perlman blew his top. "HIDES?? You’ll turn those cars into STINKERS!” My uncle countered that the hides would be shrink wrapped. In fact, he had an example downstairs. Did Mr Perlman want to have a look? Mr Perlman said “That won’t be necessary”.

My uncle has always made the point that railfan authors who call him "Al Perlman" never knew the man. He was "Mr Perlman" to everyone.

The virtual ops session will now return to Ralph V's blog!