A Couple Of New Items

My camera didn't die after all. Since it uses a rechargeable battery, it was up in the air as to whether the problem was the battery or the camera itself, but with the battery no longer holding a charge, it could be either. But then it occurred to me out of the blue that the last couple of times I used the camera, the battery died really quickly, so I decided to order a new battery and see how that worked out before I went ahead with a whole new (actually used) camera body. Turned out to be just the battery.

This was great news, and instead of spending the money for the used camera body, I got a Walthers Mainline GP9 in SP Kodachrome.

I don't know if it's the new battery or something about my last visit to the eye doctor, but the camera now seems to be taking much better pictures on its auto settings. Or maybe it just likes the Kodachrome paint job.

Kodachroome is by far my least favorite SP paint scheme, but I've lived my entire adult life in Los Angeles, and for some of those years had no choice but to railfan the Kodachrome. And after that time until the end of SP, there were likely to be Kodachrome units in consists.

By this time, pretty much no two GP9s were quite alike in terms of their lights and upgrade features. As a result, even though the model doesn't have SP lights, I can live with it. The same applies to the sound options, where ESU doesn't provide a Nathan P3 horn. These are good basic locos that are far better than the Proto 2000 version on which they are based but still at a comparable price.

I also got a Walthers Railgon in the Seaboard System patch lettering. This will need a lot of weathering.

Here are some prototype examples from recent years.