Another old project I dug out was an A-Line model of the original SP double stack cars. This has had some dings after 25-plus years packed away, and I'll need to do some restoring before I can run it.
Sunday, November 11, 2018
Getting Ready For Intermodal Virtual Ops
In last week's post, I talked about revisiting my ideas in Version 1.0 of this layout and re-booting my double stack modeling. It actually goes a little deeper than double stacks. Here are two photos from that layout (I was using print film in a very basic handheld 35mm SLR with predictable results at the time):
The locos are Bachmann 8-40Cs, upgraded per an article in MR. I still have these, a bit the worse for wear afte 30 years, but I'm going to bite the bullet and install DCC and get them back in service.
The Conrail locos are all Rail Power Products bodies, detailed for Conrail with the usual aftermarket products, and mounted on Proto Power West chassis. These were weighted and tuned Athearn bluebox chassis with can motors. I still have all three of these, in much better shape because they'd been living in display cases. I installed DCC in CR 6607 just a week or so ago:
I was originally going to install a Digitrax DH126 with a Power Xtender, but I began to realize that with the old Athearn chassis, the decoder and Xtender were just going to be flapping in the breeze inside the body, so I stuck with just having the DH126 flap in the breeze and will put the Xtender in a Walthers SD60M, where it fits pretty nicely in the speaker enclosure on a non-sound unit and won't rattle and flap. Here's an SD60M with one already installed:
I'll install DCC in the RPP-PPW C32-8s in coming months. I'm finding that the PPW chassis do very well with DCC, and they run comparably with ScaleTrains C39-8s, which is encouraging. Of course, these don't have lights, and I'm not inclined to want to create a wiring nightmare inside the shells with LEDs and resistors. But they'll be very, very good as trailing units.
These ran from the early 1980s to the mid 1990s. At that time, I had work assignments in the Oakland, CA area and saw them in storage there.
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Nice work on the Conrail units. I've never worked with the PPW or RPP products, so it's nice to hear how they perform for you. I did see the scalestrains.com C39-8 engines, just not sure if I want them. I do have 2 of the Scaletains.com SD40-3 engines, and they run very well.Looking forward to our intermodal op session!
ReplyDeleteNice looking equipment and very impressive rock walls in the background!
ReplyDeleteAn interesting chapter of your modeling has been reopened and reinvigorated. Glad to see the "old" modern equipment looking good, getting upgraded andready for service. The rock walls are very nice. Looking forward to the inaugural intermodal ops!
ReplyDeleteGreat looking sets of locomotives and stack cars. I did a number of RPP projects from the same era. Completely understand why you wouldn’t want to load them full of electronics. Both the Bachmann and RPP units make nice looking power to haul those stack trains!
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