Rolling Stock Update

Here's a project I pulled out of the big swap meet in the closet: a Sheepscot Scale Products pile driver conversion for the Walthers derrick:

Clearly it's done and just waiting for paint, couplers, and so forth. I think what had me stumped was deciding what road to paint it for -- it's just a sorta-kinda model, so any one would do, and that's probably what's held me up. Another issue is what to use for an idler, but I'm pretty well settled on a Tichy 40-foot flat. I'm leaning toward Virginian, using the Great Decals VGN crane set.

I've been working on adding post-2010 conspicuity stripes to more of my fleet. I have a lot of hopper cars, but the traditional steel hoppers are quickly disappearing, although you can still see some in post-2010 DVDs. Here are a few:

This one is old McKean tooling from the 1970s. ConCor took this over in the 1980s and did them in Conrail and NS, among others, although the trucks they used were horrible. Also, newer best-practice is to attach couplers with coupler boxes and lids that have screw mounting, so I did this mod. Also, the NS ex SOU paint on the original ConCors was very approximate. I painted out the pre-1980 lube plate and substituted the smaller post-1980 version and also painted out the top CAPY line in the data. I also added the conspicuity stripes.

It's OK if the stripes are crooked, they are on the prototype.

I got a crate of a dozen of these cars with individual numbers sometime in the 1980s and am still working my way through them. Most won't get the conspicuity stripes, as these cars are disappearing and mostly now used in MOW service.

As best I can figure, Conrail equipment that went to CSX was lettered for NYC but often kept its Conrail paint otherwise. Conrail cars that went to NS weren't relettered and stayed CR. Thus you can see CR hoppers like these running now with post-2010 conspicuity stripes.

CN acquired the Bessemer & Lake Erie in 2004. Walthers brought out a pair of B&LE lettered cars from old Life Like tooling with CN website lettering but no conspicuity stripes. I added these, again not too worried if they're crooked. Like other steel hoppers, these are used less and less in coal service and now seem to be used mainly in Michigan and Minnesota ore service on former DM&IR and Wisconsin Central lines.