Re-Scrambling Some Background Flats

The background flats behind my Manhattan Transfer yard have been scrambled over and over. Here they were in November, 2011:

When King Mill went out of business, I got a lot of items from their closeout sale, and they replaced a lot of what was in that photo. But now, I'm looking at adding some Downtown Deco plaster flats to the mix:

I'm sure there will be a lot of tweaking and fitting.

Any Amtrak Trip Can Go South At Any Time

I'm starting to think it's become railfan conventional wisdom that even if you think you're having a good trip on Amtrak, it can go south in a big way at any time. Via Trains.com, over the July 4 weekend,

Heat-related delays already had the Chicago-bound Floridian five hours late when it reached Washington on July 4 during severe weather that caused cancellation of that evening’s holiday events. But after arriving at 8:30 p.m., the train didn’t depart Washington until 9:45 a.m. on July 5, nearly 18 hours late. It arrived in Chicago at 4:14 a.m. on Monday, July 6, some 19 hours, 29 minutes late.

The westbound equipment is supposed to flip back east the same day, but with no trainset available, the Sunday departure for Florida was canceled, as was Monday’s departure from Miami. Equipment availability should be back to normal for the Chicago departure today (Tuesday, July 7).

Meanwhile, the southbound Floridian that left Washington two hours late on Sunday departed Jacksonville, Fla., more than eight hours late on Monday after a three-hour delay there. It also encountered heat restrictions and freight train interference, according to Amtrak alerts. It was due to arrive in Miami at 2:44 a.m. today, more than 8½ hours late.

Another Florida-bound train, the Silver Meteor, was stuck at Washington Union Station from 7:03 p.m. Sunday until 4:47 a.m. Monday, waiting for operational locomotives. It lost another hour at Florence, S.C., because of a CSX signal outage. The train was almost 12 hours late leaving Jesup, Ga., on Monday evening and was projected to reach Miami at 5:58 a.m. today, not quite 11 hours late.

I notice that the popular YouTube channel Grounded Life Travel, which used to hype Amtrak sleepers extensivley, hasn't featured Amtrak for over a year, and not long before they dropped the Amtrak hype entirely, they posted this:

Riding long-distance trains on Amtrak is likely to be a retirement activity for most people, especially since you can't rely on scheduled arrival and departure times if you have to be back at work the day after you get back. Beyond that, there's definitely a non-trivial chance that the heat or A/C will go out, or you can simply be put off the train in the middle of nowhere for any number of reasons. Here's another reality check:

Originally, I looked forward t riding Amtrak a lot more during my retirement, but the experiences turned out to be more stressful, not least due to boisterous fellow passengers, than they were worth.

The Kalmbach Legacy Magazines At Firecrown Are Circling The Drain

I saw a post on Facebook:

Rumor is that Firecrown is not doing well with their acquisition of Kalmbach and may be taking all their magazines out of print and may only offer digital editions.

A commenter added,

Firecrown's business model has not been supportive of the hobby shops who sell the magazines in store. Firecrown no longer gives credit for unsold issues, and have made it more difficult for hobby shops to get even what they think they can sell. It looks as if they do not have the organizational ability to resolve the problems they have created. I feel especially sad for the MR (and Trains) staff, who are skilled and accomplished modelers.

I asked Chrome AI mode, "Have the magazines Kalmbach sold to Firecrown been performing well?" It answered,

The former Kalmbach Media magazines sold to Firecrown Media—such as Trains, Model Railroader, and Astronomy—have faced significant financial and operational difficulties since the May 2024 acquisition. Despite Firecrown's initial plans to modernize the legacy publications, the portfolio has struggled heavily with digital integration, subscriber churn, and print sustainability.

Key Performance Indicators & Community Reports Severe Technical Disruptions:

Subscribers have documented prolonged outages on the Trains.com ecosystem, including broken digital magazine downloads, non-functional password resets, and completely unresponsive customer service channels.

Print Distribution Concerns:

Rumors and community discussions indicate that Firecrown is struggling with the financial viability of print. Hobbyists report widespread shipping delays and missed issues, with heavy speculation that Firecrown may cancel print entirely and transition exclusively to digital editions.

Retailer Drops:

Brick-and-mortar hobby shops and independent distributors have begun actively dropping Firecrown-owned titles from their shelves, citing changing product focus and supply issues.

Content and Format Degradation:

Longtime readers note that flagship publications like Model Railroader have continued to shrink in size—dropping to a fraction of their historical page counts—while featuring less advanced technical content.

Staffing Transitions:

While Firecrown initially aimed to keep operations in Wisconsin, community updates show that much of the veteran editorial staff has cleared off the mastheads. This turnover has disrupted the community goodwill that Kalmbach spent 90 years building.

Regarding MR itself:

The situation surrounding Model Railroader (MR) under Firecrown Media's ownership has grown increasingly critical, with many long-time hobbyists and industry observers questioning the magazine's long-term survival.

Recent Major Developments

The Return to a Monthly Schedule:

After a highly controversial attempt to slash production costs by moving to a bi-monthly (6 issues per year) print frequency, Firecrown faced intense reader backlash and officially reverted back to a monthly schedule.

The "Thinning" Project:

To offset the costs of printing monthly, the physical magazine has drastically shrunk. Modern issues frequently hover around just 50 to 60 pages, which is less than half the size of the magazine during its peak decades.

Editorial Shifts:

Veteran editor-in-chief Kevin P. Keefe and other long-time staffers are no longer steering the publication. The newer editorial direction relies heavily on basic, beginner-friendly content and recycled layout techniques, causing advanced modelers to look elsewhere for deep technical articles.

Loss of the Historical Archive: One of the biggest blows to subscribers was the degradation of the Model Railroader Digital Archive (the 90-year back-issue database). The transition from Kalmbach's infrastructure to Firecrown's new digital platform resulted in broken links, low-resolution rendering, and a clunky interface that remains a major source of subscriber complaints on the Trains.com forums.

I get the impression that before they sold the magazines to Firecrown, Kalmbach must have taken a very thorough look at their business and decided there was no way they could continue it as it had been running. They had a bloated staff, a huge bulding containing non-productive features like a print library, old project layouts, a model railroad museum, a large employee club layout, and so forth. I actually wonder if a lot of staff time was taken up in showing visitors around the place, as well as moderating the on line forums.

I got fed up with MR during the mid-to-late Kalmbach era, when I realized I wasn't getting the monthly output on MR Video Plus that they promised, plus they were giving away videos that reguiar subscribers had paid for, but not giving subscribers any sort of credit for giving the paid content away for free. It was a little bit cold turkey to give that up, but I've never regretted it. I also gave up RMC when Carstens didn't pay his printers. I'd already had Carstens try to stiff me for $200 they said they'd pay me for an article they ran.

With Facebook in particular, it's easy to interact with the other authors, you don't need to wait a month for new stuff, and you don't have editors controlling the content. The print mags are simply no loss. It looks like Kalmbach had already figured that out.

Home Shops Split Rock Mining Ore Car

The Split Rock Mining Company, built by Thomas Gasior, is one of my all-time favorite layouts. It's very active on Facebook, and just the other day I got a notification that I'm a "top fan", I guess for the number of "likes" I've given it over the years. It has a web page here. Home Shops LLC does custom runs of rolling stock painted for well-known home layouts, and I got a Fox Valley/Scaletrains ore car painted and lettered for Split Rock Mining.

I got mine from Denver Model Trains. There isn't much "prototype" info on theae cars from either the Denver Model Trains site or the Split Rock Mining Facebook page, but from what I can gather, regular ore cara on Split Rock Mining are for on line service only. since they don't have data for interchange.

(I got this photo off Facebook, and I'm assuming it's by Mr Gasior.) So I'm assuming the Home Shops cars, since they have ACI labels, reporting marks, and data, are for interchange, since they'll be running on other layouts. This probably makes them likely to operate in "all rail" trains from the Minnesota ore fields to steel mills elsewhere in the country. As it happens, I relettered a few of the old AHM ore cars that have a B&LE prototype, but the C&NW bought a number of them for "all rail" ore service. They were variously patched and repainted and operated with other roads' ore cars. I decided to see what the Split Rock car would look like in a string with these.

Well, you can at least see that the B&LE cars are a larger prototype.

Walthers Proto Wabash Passenger GP9

Not long ago, I finally found a Walthers Proto Wabash passenger GP9 with sound and DCC on the web. These came out last year and seem to have disappeared very quickly.

I came to appreciate the Wabash late in my modeling career, primarily via the Emery Gulash Green Frog DVD, but the Norfolk & Western has always been one of my "majors". The Chris Wehman Green Frog DVDs on Norfolk Southern cover the former Wabash route from Detroit to Decatur, IL, which also is very informative on the Wabash. I'm slowly gathering some Wabash models that I can run either in pure sets or in post-merger consists with N&W units.

The features of the model are very similar to the Walthers Proto Penn Central Phase III GP9 that I covered last month. A feature carried over is that the number boards are separately lit with F6. In railroad rule books, the number boards are typically lit only on the control unit in the consist, but it looks like most prototype engineers forget to set this either on or off.

On this model, the oscillating warning light is lit with F5. On the prototype, the whole light housing is motorized to move in a figure-8 pattern. On the model, this is simulated by a slow blinking of the LED. In addition, on a number of roads, the top lens is red and lights only when the brakes go into emergency, sometimes called a "dump light". The bottom lens is clear and is used in normal operation. This is the case with the Wabash prototype, and only the lower clear lens on the warning light is lit. I don't believe the model is set up to operate a red upper lens, as this wouldn't be a normal event on the prototype.

The ESU sound decoder with the Proto version has the LokSound 5 prime mover delay at start feature. This means that when you throttle up, it takes the loco a fairly long time to begin to move, reproducing the prototype spool-up time. Setting CV 124=16 will turn this off; CV124=20 will put it back. As a longtime DC operator, I've never gotten used to features like this. I also set CVs 3 and 4, acceleration and deceleration momentum, to 0. These features are maybe more suited to large club-type layouts, but each to his own!

The horn comes from the factory with the single-trumpet "blat" sound.

LaBelle Kit With Dry Transfers

Not long ago, I discovered a car I hadn't unpacked since my last move:

I must have built it closer to 50 years ago than 40. It's a LaBelle wood kit marketed as a 40-foot Illinois Central car, but it's basically a "generic" 40-foot truss rod box. I used dry transfers that I recall were intended to apply to this LaBelle car, but I don't recall who made them. I think I probably did other cars like this, but have never found them.

I see that at the time, I was using Kadee 711 "old time" style couplers. These are intact only because they sat in the box for decades. The others I used have long since disintegrated, these are very brittle.

The Original Whistle Stop Moves

In May, the Original Whistle Stop moved from the storefront at 2490 E. Colorado Blvd in Pasadena to a much smaller office front at 23 N. Altadena Drive. The old store was 3300 square feet; the new one is 800 square feet. There's a history section on the store's web site, but it's sketchy in places, and it's centered mostly on the store's current owner, Fred Hill, who has an ego. The headline on the site says of the move,

After 75 years of continuing service to the model railroad community, and 42 years at this location, retail businesses across the country are now sadly being forced to “redesign” how they do business.

I think this misstates the actual circumstance: Fred is 83 yeaes old, and he has no successor to run the business. My guess is that he's just selling out remaining inventory at the new location. This reminds me to some extent of Fred's last business move, the 2007 acquisition of former competitor Allied Models in Culver City. As a then-customer of both Allied and The Whistle Stop, I heard a certain amount of inside gossip over what was really going on.

What I heard was that Allen Drucker, then-owner of Allied, had invested quite a bit to construct an all-new building in Culver City for the store in 1992. Allied had previously been on Pico Boulevard in West Los Angeles; the problem with that location was that a big new West Side Mall was under construction, which would quickly make nearby parking impossible, forcing Drucker to move. The new building amounted to a huge expansion of the business, which had previously been in a conventional storefront.

On one hand, staff at Allied apparently began to hear Drucker's complaints about the level of business at the new location, as well as his remarks that if he simply rented the building out to another store, he could make as much in rent as he was taking in from running Allied. By the late 1990s, key Allied staff had left, recognizing there wasn't much future there, and by 2007, the axe fell, and the store was up for sale.

When I was up at The Whistle Stop one day, I asked Fred's partner, Brian Brooks, "So, are you guys gonna buy Allied?" meaning it as a joke. I was surprised to hear him take the question seriously, although he didn't sound optimistic. He said it was nearly impossible to get straight information from Drucker on how much the store actually made, and he certainly didn't seem completely on board with the idea, whatever Fred Hill may have thought.

It's hard to tell what Fred had in mind for the new Allied. The one thing I kept hearing at The Whistle Stop was that he didn't want to spend any time at the Allied operation. But Nick Barone, the former manager of Allied under Drucker, had been brought into the partnership that bought the store with Fred and Brian, so that shouldn't have been a problem.

In any case, the deal went through, although it included the Allied operation, now owned by The Whistle Stop, moving out of its new building and into a nearby storefront, which was owned by Drucker as well. Drucker rented the former Allied building to Samy's Camera. Whether for reasons related to tbe Allied purchase or not, Brian Brooks left both tbe Whistle Stop and Allied partnerships in 2011.

It's hard to imagine what Fred may have had in mind, but it very much appeared that the actual purpose of the new Allied store was simply to sell off the old Allied inventory at full retail prices. I visited the new store occasionally after the sale, but it seemed as though everyone was going through the motions, and there was little or no new stock.

If this was the case, it took eight years to sell everything off, and in July, 2015, the store declared itself insolvent and closed. A commenter on a forum observed,

In recent visits to Allied, the shelves were bare. I haven't seen any new stock in the store in quite a while. They still had the toys and model planes carried over from the old store. I was told they had a lot of NWSL and brass parts in the back room by one of the employees, but they never had the time to look for what I needed. They just started bringing out brass parts a short while ago.

I have to wonder if the lease was up and Drucker raised the rent. I was told, again by a employee, that they got a low rent for the store when the sale was made. Also, I have to wonder if there's a tax break for all involved somewhere down the road.

Only a few weeks after the shop closed, the vacant storefront burned in a mysterious fire. However, the remaining inventory was in the hands of the insolvency agents. Was buying Allied a good business move on Fred's part? It's hard to say. If his sole motive was to sell off the Allied inventory at full retail, it took a long time and a lot of unnecessary expense in paying store staff; he probably would have done better to sell it to a closeout specialist in the first place, rather than to wait eight years. If his motive was to rebuild Allied's business, it was a bust.

The Whistle Stop had been the subject of much hype over the years; as the history section of its web site puts it, "There was a lot going on in the model railroad industry during those years. Whistle Stop was right at ground zero."

But I gradually became disillusioned. Although The Whistle Stop only occasionally ran discount specials, as a longtime customer who wanted to be loyal in the face of on-line discounts, I took advantage of the ability to order items on special in tbe Waltners catalog through The Whistle Stop and pick them up the following week -- except that often, they just wouldn't come in. I eventually discovered that Walthers wouldn't ship orders for The Whistle Stop if the store was behind on its credit, and my orders were part of that freeze.

I wrote a letter to Walthers asking why they weren't shipping to one of the most reputable and best-known hobby shops in the country, and Walthers replied that they don't comment on the credit status of their customers, which of course was a comment on the credit status of The Whistle Stop.

My own view is that The Whistle Stop under Fred Hill has always been the creature of hype. Although it claims to have been at the forefront of the hobby, its specialty has always been brass, which over the years has varied widely in quality and now, if it's produced at all, has become wildly expensive. Converting vintage items to DCC, sound, and LED lighting is a major project. But The Whistle Stop never carried DCC, while other major train stores embraced it.

I would say that in making the move, Fred has effectively acknowledged the store is at the end of its life, although I think its real decline came around the time Fred bought Allied. Certainly this move reminds me of the Allied fiasco. Other high-end train stores in the area survive, The Train Shack in Burbank, Railmaster Hobbies in Bellflower, and Arnie's Trains in Westminster.

Walthers Mainline Susquehanna "Susie-Q" Boxcar

I'm a sucker for anything Susquehanna. I lived in northern New Jersey with my family until 1963, and around 1962, I was old enough to ride to Butler on my bike to railfan the Susquehanna. By then, it was owned by real estate developer Irving Maidman, and it had acquired the appearance it took in a couple of Pechulis Media DVDs, surrounded by knee-to-waist-high brown weeds, with not much happening. But that was my one dose of Susquehanna. Not ong ago, I ordered a Walthers Mainline Susie-Q boxcar:

Most models of these cars use an AAR 40-foot box car body, but prototype photos show they were an older, smaller style:

According to the Model Rairoader Forum,

The 400-series cars were - as you found - PS-1’s that NYSW purchased in the late 1940’s. In the early 60’s, the railroad sold all but two of them (401 and 402) to the Monon. To replace them, they purchased a group of 40’ boxcars from the Lehigh Valley (oddly, the replacement cars were built in 1926, which made them significantly older than the cars they replaced - I don’t get that decision). Those cars were numbered in the 500-series and many of them were repainted into the green Susie-Q scheme.

Although the boxcar body style on the model is fairly close to the car in the photo, there are differences in the side sill, but it's a better choice than the usual AAR 40-foot car. The Walthers model gets the green color and the Susie-Q figure right, but the style of lettering for the Susquehanna road name differs from the photo.

The Susie-Q lettering would have come after my one trip to Butler. According to Wikipedia, Ford closeds its Edgewater Assembly Plant in 1955, which cost the NYS&W one of their primary sources of traffic. 1961, real-estate developer and millionaire Irving Maidman purchased the Ford plant for use as a rental warehouse, and he eventually purchased an Alcoa plant for the same purpose.

In October 1962, Maidman purchased the NYS&W to ensure their freight operations in Edgewater remained active, and he began arranging for the railroad to lease some property in Edgewater for backup storage. I've seen elsewhere that the Susie-Q paint scheme was the result of a Maidman-sponsored employee contest. However, traffic on the Edgewater Branch continued to decline, and the Susquehanna declared bankruptcy in 1976. In 1980, the NYS&W was sold to the Delaware Otsego Corporation, which began ther road's revival.

Walthers Proto Penn Central GP9

I'm a big Penn Central fan; I commuted on it to school from Washington to Springfield, MA during its first two years. I couldn't wait to get a Proto Phase III PC GP9.

I wouldn't have complained if they'd offered a PC GP9 in their Mainline range, where the only real difference would have been the lack of end grab irons, which as you can see in the photo are practically invisible on an all-black model.

The PRR had 270 GP9s, numbered 7000-7269. They all kept their numbers under PC. It appears that PRR/PC 7230-7269 were Phase III, with 48" diameter radiator fans, instead of 36" fans on earlier GP9s and GP7s. This final order also lacked PRR train phone antennas.

One difference between Walthers Proto and Walthers Mainline is that Proto has more features in the ESU decoders. The most visible change is that the number boards can be separately lit via function key 6:

In railroad rule books, the number boards are typically lit only on the control unit in the consist, but it looks like most prototype engineers forget to set this either on or off. Notice too that since the PRR GP9s kept their numbers going into PC, their numberboards retained the special PRR serif style, which Walthers reproduced.

The ESU sound decoder with the Proto version has the LokSound 5 prime mover delay at start feature. This means that when you throttle up, it takes the loco a fairly long time to begin to move, reproducing the prototype spool-up time. Setting CV 124=16 will turn this off; CV124=20 will put it back. As a longtime DC operator, I've never gotten used to features like this. I also set CVs 3 and 4, acceleration and deceleration momentum, to 0. These features are maybe more suited to large club-type layouts, but each to his own!

Lemonade Out Of Lemons

Fifty years ago, I used brake fluid to remove paint from plastic models. It was messy, and it sometimes dissolved the whole model, or at least twisted it out of shape. Eventually I switched to Easy Lift-Off, apparently still available from Testors, which worked a little better, but these days, I pretty much avoid painting whenever I can, especially because factory paint jobs are so much better. But here's an old Varney car that didn't quite make it out of the brake fluid:

Before I tossed the whole thing, I remembered I'd seen photos of hoppers whose backs had broken. This was common enough that railroads had elevated tracks in yards where the loads of bad-order hoppers like this could be dumped into cars in better condition and continue their journeys, so I decided to push on with this one. I even replaced the cast steps and grabs with brass ones.

I lettered the car with a Herald King Decal set. The big question was what color Westmoreland Coal carx were. I think the Herald King instructions said the car was red, and I probably used Floquil Zinc Chromate Primer for this one. However, manufacturers mostly did models in black, including Old and Weary Car Shops and Micro Trains. Bowser, though, did a model gon in red. Protutype photos seem to go both ways:

Playing Catch-up With ACI Labels

I finally realized I have to start playing catch-up with putting ACI labels on my equipment from the 1960s and 70s.

The Kartrak system with ACI color-coded labels was an unsuccessful program that lasted from 1968 to 1978, so it covered the period of the first big mergers, N&W, PC, ICG, BN, SCL, Chessie System, etc. It apparently failed for two reasons, fist, the ACI labels got dirty and unreadable, but more important, the program required labels on all cars, but it didn't require the railroads to install readers. So it never quite got going.

I think I stopped putting ACI labels on the cars that should have them when I ran out of the Micro Scale decal data sheets that carried them. For many years, they were the go-to source, but eventually Micro Scale became hard to deal with.

I looked at the current sources, and for now, the least expensive is from K4 Decals, whch I'm using for the current project.

Back when I was modeling in the 1960s and 1970s, it was hard to find photos that showed where specifically the ACI labels were mounted on a particuiar prototype car. These days, with internet sources like the Fallen Flags site, this is much easier.

In Praise Of Walthers Mainline

I recently picked up two Walthers Mainline SD60s that a retailer seems to have been anxious to clear out. I assume these were the least popular roadnames from the last run, and they let these sound-and-DCC locos go for roughly half price.

Between the paint and drives, I'll take just about any roadname, especially since for some decades, pretty much any roadname can turn up on any prototype railroad. The paint is even, opaque, and sharp. The sound is budget, reduced-function, but that's fine, especially for a trailing unit. The only CVs I need to tweak are CVs 3 and 4, acceleration-deceleration momentum. which I switch to 0, simply because I'm used to it as an old DC operator.

For some time, I've noticed that the Walthers quality assurance is head and shoulders above the competition. It's been some years since I had a loco with a missing part (a cab side window), and Walthers supplied a new one by return mail.

Track Cleaning Hack

The problem with track cleaning cars is that if the track is dirty enough to need cleaning, the loco pulling the car is going to have spotty performance on the dirty track. Sometimes I daydream about getting a radio controlled battery powered "dead rail" loco for this purpose, but it suddenly dawned on me that I could hook a 9 volt battery onto an ordinary HO diesel chassis and have pretty much the same result at far less cost and trouble.

I wound up ordering a 3-pack of what Amazon calls a DAIERTEK 9V Battery Holder with on-off switch at $6.99. I used an old Stewart/Kato F-unit chassis that had couplers mounted. I disconnected the ttrack leads from the trucks to the wire bus on the plastic mother board and soldered the leads from the battery holder to those same wire leads. I installed a 9 volt bettery, taped the holder to the chassis, turned the on-off switch ON, and it went whirring away.

I can turn the Stewart chassis back to a model loco simply by untaping the battery holder, unsoldering the battery leads, and reconnecting the track leads from the trucks, but I would probably add a DCC decoder if I did this. If the whole idea doesn't work out, that's what will happen.

My layout cleasrances are set up for "Ezceeds Plate C" auto parts cars and such, and the battery holder has no trouble with tunnels and bridges.

My main line is an oval in a sort of double folded figure eight, about 160 feet. At 9 volts, the Stewart chassis runs at a medium-slow speed, which avoids derailments. It takes several minutes to do a complete transit of the main line. A big advantage is that the layout has really too much hidden track, but this setup will clean in the tunnels. The hookup works on 2% grades on the main line.

The photo shows it coupled to an A-Line track cleaning pad mounted in an Athearn box car. I've also used it with a Bachmann track cleaning tank car. So far, it seems to need at leastr a dozen transits of the main line to get things in acceptable shape. Full testing is still under way.

A Few More Howard Moore Photos

Howard Moore's photos are fairly difficult to date. But this one is of a Santa Fe F3 that looks like it was in from its first run to Los Angeles after delivery in November 1946:

ATSF 16 was the class unit of the 16 class. In their original form, they had no lower headlight on the nose, and there was a third porthole in the A unit sides. The lower headlight and revised side vents were added over subsequent months. They remained on the Santa Fe's most prestigious passenger trains for their whole careers.

Here is PA-1 51, again just after delivery in September, 1946. It's posed on a special Pacific Electric siding on Exposition Boullevard in Los Angeles, where railroads often displayed new equipment:

ATSF 51 was re-engined by EMD in 1954.

Here is Santa Fe FT 158 in Barstow during the 1946-7 period.

The Santa Fe equipped some FT sets with steam generators and painted them in red and silver in 1946, contemporary with the other photos here. The last passenger FTs were returned to the freight scheme in 1954.

Howard Moore Photos

Last week, a guy named Richard Wilkens posted on Facebook,

In 2025, the Pacific Northwest Railroad Archive was donated the collection of Charles Givens. Within the collection was a group of 4x5 negatives that Charles purchased and he noted it as the "L.A. Collection" but he did not know who took them. Most of these were taken in Southern California and appear to be from around 1946 to 1948.

He then posted several scans, hoping someone might have information. As it happens, I knew the photographer right away, because I'd bought 8x10 prints of the same photos from just that guy, Howard Moore (1916-1998). He was one of Athearn's first employees, and he took the photos because Irv Athearn sent him out specificslly to take photos of rail equipment that Athearn might think worth manufacturing as models. I believe Howard had previously worked for a camera store, so he was capable of using a large-format camera. Here's one of the scans Mr Wilkens posted:

In 1947, the eastbound UP Train 2, the Los Angeles Limited, was scheduled to arreive in San Bernardino, CA at 1:55 PM. The sun angle and position of the train suggest this is that train, with new FM Erie Built units. From my collection, here's his shot of what is probably the eastbound Santa Fe Chief, Train 20, probably in San Bernardino the same afternoon. In 1948, it arrived in San Bernardino at 2:18 PM. UP 981-A was UP's first Erie built, renumbered from 50-M-1A in 1946, renumbered to 700A 9n 1948.

Eleven sets of Santa Fe FTs were painted in the passenger scheme in 1946 and ran in that scheme for several years.

I got to know Howard about 1980 when I was doing custom work for an LA hobby shop. I visited him and looked at this photo collection when I delivered projects to him. Here's an Athearn S-12 that I detailed with scratch built warning lights before Details West made the castings. He took the photo on his small layout:

I bought several dozen 8 x 10 prints from him back then, and I enjoyed his stories of railfanning and his lifelong friendship with Irvin Athearn. I'm glad I was able to identify him to the Pacific Northwest Railroad Archive as the photographer, but now I realize I need to get back to scanning the rest of those 8x10s. I'll post more as I do so.

New Kato N UP ES44AC In Union Pacific "Small Flag" Scheme

Kato recently brought in a run of N scale ES44ACs in the Union Pacific's 2022 "small flag" scheme.

But it's worth noting that UP recently releaaed a photo of its American 250th Anniversary 1776 locomotive in what's basically just a revival of the former "large flag" scheme (UP photo):

The original "large flag" scheme lasted over 20 years, from 2001 to 2022. A big disadvantage of the scheme was that the flag could become so dirty and/or faded that it amounted to desecration:

I still remember my Boy Scout training in display of the flag, and I've sadly got to conclude that UP's decision to drop the large flag if they couldn't keep it clean was long overdue.

One point to note is that Kato's factory cab roof detail is as the locos were delivered. The photo above shows the prototype in as-delivered condition in November, 2012. However, after this time PTC antennas were added to the cab roof, changing the appearance greatly:

The photo above is from 2014, when this installation was pretty much complete. A loco with the as-delivered cab roof shouldn't have the 2022 "small flag" scheme. I'll have to see what kind of N scale PTC antenna I can find.

Norfolk Southern Retires Its Last SD70ACus

Kato released N scale SD70ACus earlier this year, just in time for Norfolk Southern to retire the last of its prototypes. These seem to have sold out almost immediately, and I didn't get one, but now it doesn't really matter. I discovered this from this Facebook post.

Which brings me to the next issue: there's no longer a reliable way to get this kind of locomotive news. In the 1970s and 1980s, there was Extra 2200 South, but according to AI,

Extra 2200 South, the renowned locomotive news magazine, remains technically in business but has faced significant publication delays as it transitions from a print-focused model to a digital one.

Owner Doug Cummings reported in August 2025 that the magazine is "alive and well" but has been delayed due to the complex process of switching to a digital edition. This involved a lengthy legal battle to separate the publication from its former web host, which was only resolved in mid-2025.

. . . Founded in 1961 by Jerry Pinkepank, the magazine became a vital resource for railfans, specializing in detailed locomotive rosters and news. Much of its original news function has since been superseded by real-time internet forums and sites like Trainorders.com.

The problem with online forums is that they aren't edited, and they're often dominated by young kids or emotionally immature adults, and that includes Trainorders.com. Meanwhile, remaining print venues have the problem that they aren't well indexed and aren't included in online searches. The cost of converting decades of print information to digitally indexed formats is prohibitive, as appears to be the case with Extra 2200 South.

On the other hand, if I'm forced to use AI, I might as well make lemonade out of lemons. I asked Chrome AI mode, "Can you give the history of the SD70ACu locomotive?" It answered,

The SD70ACu is a remanufactured diesel-electric locomotive created by rebuilding older EMD SD90MAC units. The program was designed to modernize the aging SD90MAC fleet by replacing unreliable Siemens electrical components with updated Mitsubishi technology and installing a more crash-resistant cab.

The SD70ACu was born out of a need to extend the life of "SD9043MAC" cores—locomotives originally built in the mid-1990s as a lower-horsepower version of the SD90MAC.

NS launched the first major rebuilding effort in September 2015 at its Juniata Shops in Altoona, Pennsylvania. They acquired 100 second-hand SD90MACs from Union Pacific via Progress Rail and another 10 through a trade with CIT Group.

In 2018, CP followed suit, contracting Progress Rail to rebuild 30 of its own long-dormant SD90MACs. This order was later expanded to 60 units, utilizing CP's remaining stored fleet and additional cores purchased from Union Pacific.

However, this answer didn't mention the SD70ACus NS sold to Progress Rail, which sold them on to Ferromex. I asked about this, and it replied,

Yes, Norfolk Southern (NS) reportedly sold approximately 30 retired SD70ACu locomotives to Ferromex (FXE) in 2024.

The units were not sold directly to Ferromex; instead, they were sold to Progress Rail, which then facilitated the acquisition by Ferromex. These locomotives are undergoing rebuilding at Progress Rail and Ferromex's Guadalajara shops in Mexico for future deployment on the FXE network.

Current Status: Being rebuilt and repainted into Ferromex colors (some units, like FXE-4155, have already been spotted in service).

Here's a photo of FXE 4155 that was recently posted on Facebook by a photographer who goes by Car Knocker Joe. It looks like Kato missed a good prototype.

If we dom't have X2200S, at least we have AI -- but you have to ask AI the right questions. X2200S, especially when the Dover family ran it, had editors who could anticipate the questions people had.

1980s Brass N Scale Diesels

Forty years ago, I was concentrating on N scale. I had a small N layout in an apartment walk-in closet. Eventually I wound up getting a number of painted brass N scale models from Hallmark, W&R and Sunset, and a number of others that I painted myself. Here's a Hallmark (I think) U36C that I painted myself:

As for looks, these locos have aged quite well. One thing I liked about them was that Hallmark in particular was bringing them out in up-to-the-minute paint and detail versions, so that these locos are now something of a memento of what I was railfanning in the mid-1980s. But the photo below shows their current Achilles heel for 21st century modeling:

These locos had open-frame motors, electrical pickup from only one side of each truck, neither incandescent light bulbs nor LEDs, and DCC wasn't even a glimmer in anyone's eye, much less sound.

Here's a factory-painted Hallmark SD45u. The "shouldn't have painted so fast" paint scheme dates it perfectly:

Another SD45u, factory painted in the traditional yellow bonnet:

A UP "fast forty" that I painted myself:

An SP SD45E, factory paint:

A check of Chrome AI mode tells me that these locos are selling for about half of their mid-1980s retail price, and that would be 2026 retail. I'd be lucky to get $100 for any of them if I were selling to a dealer. They'd be too much trouble to try to convert to DCC, although one possibility might be simply to swap out the chassis for a Kato -- but even rhen, the brass body might cause shorts against the Kato split frames.

But they do look great in their display case.

Intermountain N Norfolk Southern SD40-2

I found an Intermountain N Norfolk Southern SD40-2 at a good price:

The paint scheme puts it in the general time frame I'm interested in, since the full white stripe on the frame would have been added to the loco in the late 2000s prior to the 2010 FRA mandate. This would also have been during the time NS ran short hood front. However, the NSDash9 site doesn't list it as a loco that ever received the solid white stripe. NS 3201-3328 were former Southern Railway units that retained their numbers in the 1982 NS merger. However, all of these have since been retired or rebuilt into SD40-3s with low short hoods.

Nor, apparently, did 3224 ever get the "horsehead" scheme. Locos in the 3200 series have since been replaced by AC44C6M rebuilds from 9-44CWs.

The model has truck siderrames with two brake cylinders, which is correct for former Southern Railway units on NS. Original Norfolk and Western SD40-2s had a third brake cylinder above the center journal. However, only 11 N&W SD40-2s had high short hoods, so this Intermountain model is much more typical of NS SD40-2s, at least prior to Conrail.

The model has ESU LokSound 5 DCC and sound. Following my preference, I set acceleration-deceleration CVs 3 and 4 to 0. I also found that I needed to set CV 2, starting voltage, to 20 to get the loco to start rolling on speed step 1. Once I did this, its performance matches other DCC equipped locos from other manufacturers.

Iconic Replicas LA Metro Bus

I recently discovered a new N scale product, an Iconic Replicas Los Angeles Metro NFI Xcelsior XN 40 Bus. As an LA resident, I can testify that these are ubiquitous. In addition, it's one of very few contemporary US N scale vehicle models:

For comparison, here's a Kevin Wong photo of the prototype:

The model lacks typical ad panels that appear on the prototype. Also, there's no route designation. In addition, the prototype wheel centers are dark gray, not silver.

According to Chrome AI Mode, Iconic Replicas also offers the N scale Xcelsior XN 40 in New York MTA livery, as well as two basic generic schemes. It also offers an N scale MCI D4505 Intercity Coach in Greyhound (Newclassic scheme two-tone blue, white, and silver); Greyhound Canada (Shadow trim); FlixBus, and GO Transit.

Two Locos Back From Warranty Repair

Last fall, I had two new locos that had to go back for warranty repair. Over the post month, I got both of them back without problems. The first was a Broadway Limited N CSX AC6000. This showed some signs of life, but it didn't move on either DCC or DC. I contacted BLI support, which told me it needed a hardware reset and then gave me elaborate instructions on how to do this. I replied that for that kind of money, I want to get this done under warranty service, and they gave me an RA, I sent it in, I waited maybe 12 weeks, and it came back and ran fine.

Then I got a Kato CSX AC4400CW with factory installed DCC. The decoder ran OK for maybe 30 seconds out of the box, but then would either switch to creeping or switch to maximum speed without control input, and to stop it, I needed to disconnect track power. I checked the Kato web site, and it said no need to get an RA, if it's within the warranty period, just send it in with a note sayng what's wrong, the receipt, and return address. The web site also notes that new or not, Kato will not honor the warranty on anything purchased from eBay. I sent this in and got it back with a new decoder within maybe 10 weeks.

'

Fleshing Out The Rockwork On The Small N Layout

I finished building out the rockwork inside the curve at one end of the small 27" by 48" N layout, building up a scenery base behind it with more Woodland Scenics white foam.

I like the way it provides a scenic divide while putting the relative size of the track and trains in perspective. The scenic base of the hill will taper farther in toward the center of the layout.

Broadway Limited Class D Shay

Two weeks ago, I posted on research I did on Class D Shays. The upcoming Broadway Limited Class D was a model I always wanted to get, and I did the research to help me decide which road name I most wanted. I wound up focusng on El Paso Rock Island Route 105:

Here's a picture of the prototype:

As I noted in my previous post, this loco was built to operate on the Alsmogordo & Sacramento Valley branch of the El Paso & Northeastern, where it carried ties for construction of the El Paso-Tucumcari main line. It lasted in this service about three years before it was sold to a Mexican operator.

Broadway Limited appears to have followed Pacific Fast Mail's 1960s philosophy, which was to issue a "generic" model of any particular prototype with features that don't match any one individual locomotive. Thus every BLI model has acetylene style headlights, but also an electric generator. The prototypes were built over a relatively short time period before electric headlights were in general use, and photos suggest that at least some never had electric headlights. Nevertheless, the sound features include an electric generator whine to power the acetylene headlight.

However, in many cases, there are so few prototype photos of these locomotives that it's very difficult to determine exactly what features individual locos had at particular times, and for several prototypes, there's no information on exactly where and in what service they operated.

I chose the El Paso Rock Island Route prototype, even though the model features least resemble the actual loco in the prototype photo, because it matches the southwest area of some of my layout scenery, and because I have some ties to New Mexico. As a Boy Scout, I went to the Philmont Scout Ranch, and in later years I traveled through several times, as well as working for a client in Albuquerque, so the loco is a souvenir as much as anything.

I'm still figuring out the best way to tweak the sound to get the best results. I've ridden behind Shays on the Roaring Camp & Big Trees and the Georgetown Leep Railroad, and while the sound has the correct triplet cadence of a three-cylinder loco, I think the chuff rate is too slow, and the bark of the exhaust isn't as muffled as on the prototype. I'm going to turn the volume down.

Cleaning Up My Logging Area

I have a Broadway Limited Class D Shay on order, and I decided to get my small logging branch in shape for its arrival. I also got the Walthers Plymouth ML-8 lettered for M Lummus Railroad Construction in part to use on my logging line, as I heard it may have been used to dismantle the Pickering Lumber operation.

I'll show more after the Shay arrives.

As an update, I discovered while searhing today that M Lummus was Marty Lummus, whose headquarters was in Richmond, CA, with another yard in Phoenix, AZ. He had at least two small Plymouths in an operation that lasted at least from the 1960s to the 1980s.