East Coast Circuits Lighting In A BNSF Hi-Rail

I recently got an East Coast Circuits lighting package, which comes pre-installed in a variety of HO vehicles from other manufacturers. This one is in a BNSF utility truck, which would be somewhat similar to a maintainer's truck. In this case, the original model is from River Point Station. These are quite accurate as far as body work, wheels, and so forth, but they're a bit sparse on the railroad lettering. East Coast Circuits adds a label to the River Point package indicating it has added the lights and specifying 9-12 volts DC.

The lighting is quite nice. The headlights stay lit, while there are alternating strobes behind the grill. There is a gumball flasher that blinks on the cab roof, while the tail lights flash a hazard sequence. Here are photos from the front and rear:

The photos couldn't capture each lighting feature in a single exposure. You can sort of see the tail lights partly lit, due to flashing during the exposure.

I was able to light the truck from a port on an NCE Illuminator, which is similar to a Woodland Scenics Just Plug module but powered from the DCC bus. It puts out 12 volts DC. I put my model on the track for the photo -- and prototype hi-rails usually operate all their lights only while running on the track -- but I will probably mount it in scenery near the track, with the lights flashing anyhow.

One thing to note about the color coded wiring is that the red and black on the ECC wires are opposite the red and black on the NCE plug with stub wiring that comes with the Illuminator. Thus you need to wire the red wire from the truck to the black wire on the Illuminator plug and vice versa.

The NCE Illum9inator also allows a port to be programmed individually to turn the lights off and on at random intervals. This may add to the overall interest of the product and eliminate any possible monotony. I plan to experiment with this.

Here's a very similar prototype BNSF utility truck hi-rail that gives an idea of lettering and striping that are left off the River Point Station model. However, this is a feature of the River Point Station product and is not a comment about the East Coast Circuits lighting, which works very well.

The photo also gives an idea of other details that can be added to the model. I've added traffic cones to the beds of several River Point Station hi-rails as well.

A Look At The ScaleTrains N Scale Tier 4 GEVO

One reason I've revived my interest in N scale is that new acquisitions take up far less space than HO, and a lifetime collection becomes slightly less unwieldy. Another is that if we have to downsize or relocate, I have a fallback. As a result, based on recent railfanning, I decided to double up on BNSF GEVOs, and I now have a ScaleTrains N version to match my HO:

The comparison is instructive. The details are carried out pretty equally on both locos. One slight puzzle is that ScaleTrains claims to use TruColor paint on its locos, but the shade of BNSF orange on the HO loco is somewhat darker than the shade on the N loco. This isn't bad; in my experience, colors vary with fading and weathering, and the N loco strikes me as a slightly faded BNSF orange, while the HO loco seems to have a newer verson of the paint.

All the grabs on the N loco are freestanding, in contrast to Kato N locos, where they are mostly cast on. The headlights and ditch lights are separately controllable, in contrast to Kato N locos, where headlight and ditch lights go on and off together. F5 on the ScaleTrains loco puts the headlights in DPU mode, where the single rear facing headlight is illuminated to the rear when the loco is operating on the rear of a train. However, as far as I can determine, the loco numberboards stay lit no matter what. There may be a function key that controls this, and I'll check with tech support to see if there is.

My loco has DCC installed, but not sound. The ESU decoder with the loco comes with a default acceleration-deceleration momentum set in CVs 3 and 4. I prefer not to have this extra momentum, so I simply reset CVs 3 and 4 to 0, which worked fine. The speed curve with the ScaleTrains loco is much slower than that on Kato N locos, but this can be adjusted to match speeds more closely.

ScaleTrains has had problematic couplers, and it seems like it has issued several updates to its couplers and revised the mounting to make MicroTrains couplers a drop in fit. Test runs so far, though, indicate that Kato factory couplers are not good matches for the ScaleTrains versions. Here's a side view of the loco:

The truck sideframe detail is very fine, and it includes the C4 A1A-A!A air cylinders on BNSF locos. The model also includes PTC antenna detail on the cab roof. Here's a prototype view:

Railfanning The BNSF Bakersfield Sub

My wife and I took a few days in Northern California last week, and it's always a fun challenge to find different ways to get up there with the possibility of railfanning. One of my more recent standbys has been the BNSF Bakersfield sub, which I can reach from Los Angeles by driving over Tehachapi, itself often interesting (although work windows and traffic make it unpredictable). But the obvious railfan route north from Bakersfield, California 99, is a freeway with heavy traffic, and the UP line is often not visible from the highway.

The other choice is California Route 43, which parallels the BNSF Valley route on a two-lane lightly trafficked highway, with the railroad close by and visible for much of the route. The BNSF line is also busier than the UP line, and BNSF trains outnumber UP trains on Tehachapi. Beyond that, the BNSF line hosts Amtrak state-supported trains between Port Chicago and Bakersfield.Last week we picked up a northbound unit grain train and paced it for much of the way between Wasco and Hanford:

The train was doing 50-60 mph, but from the photo, you can see there's very little traffic on this route, so there was no problem getting stuck behind someone driving slowly or having to worry about speed demons tailgating me.

Another issue in California is that the scenery in places like Cajon, Tehacnhapi, or the surf line along the coast can be distracting. The San Joaquin Valley has far fewer distractions, which means you can learn something while railfanning. For instance, the unit grain train we were pacing was made up of 100 identical covered hoppers of a type I'd never specifically noticed, like CITX 701712

Here is CEFX 201342:

These cars turn out to be TrinityRail 4-bay cylindrical covered hoppers built about 2006-7. As far as I can tell, no models are available in any scale. There were cars from TILX and AOKX in this train as well. Unit grain trains on BNSF serving cattle and poultry facilities in the Valley are common. I'm now hoping someone comes out with a model of these cars in either HO or N, although N would be a better choice for unit trains.

The BNSF line between Barstow and Los Angeles has a dedicated pool of locos, so there's a sameness to what you normally see on Cajon Pass or in Commerce. You're more likely to see rare locos on the Valley line. The middle loco on the unit train we paced was BNSF 617:

617 is an AC4400C4m, one of 20 9-44CWs rebuilt by GE in 2014 as AC locos with A1A trucks like those on the later BNSF ES44C4s. You can see that it kept its early style side cab windows in the rebuild. While Norfolk Southern is rebuilding a lot of 9-44CWs into AC locos, it looks like BNSF has done no more than the 20 from 2014.

The Valley line is single track with CTC and sidings, although the passenger speed limit is 79 mph. Thus you see a lot of signals, along with evidence of busy dispatchers. This adds interest, too.