Missouri Pacific

Over at the New York Central Train Layout, John R covered some work he's been doing on a pair of Bachmann Spectrum B23-7s. He was going to strip he bodies, which the prior owner had painted to suit himself, and add his own paint -- but the stripper appears to have dissolved the bodies, and he ordered replacements from Bachmann, which happened to be painted for Missouri Pacific.

I've always liked the Spectrum B23-7s, and I have an MP stashed away somewhere. Beyond that, something has always appealed to me about the MP late diesel color scheme. I never lived in MP territory. although it served New Orleans, which I've always thought is fun to visit. But without wanting to model MP or its territory, I've always found good reason to run MP diesels and equipment. MP had run-through agreements with other railroads (including UP) in the 1970s, and in 1982 it merged with UP.

UP at the time did not have a policy of patching merged power, and unrenumbered, unrepainted MP locos were common on UP, both the "classic" network and ex-MP routes, for some years. For that matter, MP lettered freight cars are still common on UP:

John R wasn't sure what to do with his MP B23-7s. I suggested he simply leave them as MP units, and he's tentatively decided to do this. They could be either running through in power pools on his PC-inspired layout or paying off horsepower hours.

From a modeler's standpoint, MP locos are fairly common, but the road name isn't among the most popular, which means MP models can sometimes be found in closeout offers. MP locos were plain vanilla, which makes detailing fairly easy, while MP blue with red and white accents was quite attractive. Over the years I've taken advantage of MP locos on sale:

One thing to keep in mind for 1970s and 80s consists is that usually the host railroad's units had to be on the point, since the radio frequencies on foreign units couldn't be changed. Thus a PC U23B is leading MP power in the photo above.

Below is an ex-MP U23B painted for UP with an MP GP38-2 still in the old paint:

MP 2120 is an Athearn RTR that was a pretty easy detail job, given the plain vanilla of MP orders:

Athearn and Atlas units don't MU well together straight from the box. UP 865 and MP 2120 have both been equipped with DCC. I was able to adjust the starting voltage on the Athearn unit to get it to run compatibly with the Atlas U23B.

Ex MP GP38-2s have been staples in the Los Angeles basin, by the way:

Tweaks

This week I finished some tweaks to a Roundhouse boxcar I picked up a couple of years ago at a swap meet. Here it is as it was when I brought it home:

Here it is after the more or less standard things I do to get a car on the layout:

I had a bottle of Polly Scale MEC yellow and painted the bare plastic black brake wheel. I don't remember if the prior owner had equipped it with metal wheels, but I painted the wheel faces and Kadees with the former Floquil Rail Brown. Truck sideframes and underbody painted grimy black. ACI label added. Here's a prototye photo:

Clearly it needs a weathering job too.

1968 Railfan Photos

I was stuck in northern New Hampshire in the late 1960s. Only good thing about it was the ability to railfan Canadian Pacific, Boston & Maine, and Central Vermont. One day in the spring of 1968 I wandered around White River Junction, VT and the B&M facility across the Connecticut River in Westboro, NH. The photos were made on 127 film with a snapshot camera.

Here's the power for the East Deerfield-Springfield freight laying over in Westboro:

B&M Alco S-4 1271 across the river in the White River Jct yard:

CP International of Maine Division box:

B&M small crane on flatcar:

Looking north in the White River Jct yard. The passenger station is at center right in the distance. At this time, there was no passenger service. Amtrak would restore it in the next decade.

Although it was 1968 (48 years ago!), there were no ACI labels to be seen, and the freight cars mostly still had roofwalks. How things would change.

Dual Use

European models aren't the main focus of my layout, but I do have some. There was a thread about modeling European prototype on the Model Railroader forum recently, but it didn't get a whole lot of replies, and there was a tendency to equate European models with Märklin.

Other than the remaining Märklin 0-6-0T in my last post, my European equipment is all 2-rail DC. The big difference with European models is the flange depth. My understanding is that this is required mainly due to the way 4-wheel European cars interact with the track -- the long wheelbase gives less tolerance for track irregularities. However, European flanges won't run on US code 70 track, and mostly not on US code 83 track. However, European code 83 track is engineered for the deeper flanges, so if you want to run European equipment on code 83, you have to use European track.

I have some code 83 rack that's meant for both US and European equipment, mostly giving US equipment "trackage rights" in "Europe" to reach spurs and staging.

Getting In Touch With My Inner European

After I posted on railfanning the Czech Republic (insofar as I could do this from a boat), I suddenly remembered that what started me in HO was a Märklin starter set my parents got me, as best I can calculate, in 1956. Previously my family had set up a Lionel layout on a plywood rectangle (probably smaller than 4 x 6) that had belonged to my uncle at Christmas. However, that year, we moved to a smaller apartment, and there wasn't room for the Lionel, so the Märklin was a replacement.

I still have the loco from this set:

However, it's 3-rail AC, so it won't run on my layout, though it does live in a display case. I erred in my earlier post in saying that I didn't get hooked on European trains until the 1960s -- I was in fact fascinated with the Märklin set. Trying to read the instructions that came with the set was almost certainly what got me started studying German in school a few years later.

Wind Turbine Loads

I notice from the Model Railroader product news page that American Model Builders has announced wind turbine blade and nacelle loads.

While wind turbines are common on Tehachapi, Beaumont, and Altamont Passes in my area, it's unusual to see all the turbine components shipped together. In fact, I normally see the blades moving by highway, while the nacelles go by rail. Here are two nacelles that seem similar to the AMB model, riding on a Kasgro heavy duty flat:

They appear to be on a Mojave-bound manifest at West Colton. I would guess that the covered hoppers, returning to Mojave empty, are being used as spacers. These are heavy loads. However, the elbow-shaped device to the left of the AMB model seems to travel separately:

These are loaded in twos on QTTX flats, mounted over the trucks.

It looks as though two of the nacelle kits would provide loads for one Walthers (or similar) heavy duty flat and one Athearn or Intermountain 60-foot QTTX type flat.

Detour Into The Czech Republic

My wife and I just got back from a river cruise down the Elbe. I got hooked on European trains on my first visit to Europe in the backpack-Eurailpass-Europe on $5 a Day times in the 1960s. At the time, there was still quite a bit of steam in most countries.

My wife and I have made it back several times. One thing I've had to recognize is that my Eurailpass days are over: it takes quite a bit of agility to hump luggage up the steps from low-level station platforms and then into overhead racks -- and then there's the issue of dashing across 20 tracks or so at a station like Milano Centrale to catch a connecting train with maybe 2 minutes to spare. Plus, the TGV-ICE type trains becoming more and more common are hard to railfan from -- they go fast enough that photos from a moving train through tinted windows just won't work.

So we tried a river cruise, a much better solution for retirees. Boats are nearly as much fun as trains, much better than a bus. This cruise went from Berlin to Prague, entirely through the former East Germany and the Czech Republic. As a young railfan, I saw East German equipment only at border stations and never got to the former DDR itself until well after the wall came down. By now, the two former German rail systems have been thoroughly merged, and there isn't a whole lot left of what used to be -- not much different from railfanning BNSF or UP now.

The Czech Republic is another matter. Once we crossed the border, the Elbe River had electrified double-track main lines on both banks, each with trains running on each other's blocks. Even so, between the trees on the banks and the speed of the trains, grab shots were hard to get. Here are a few:

This is a 363 class electric, dual-voltage locomotives built by Skoda between 1980 and 1990. It is hauling an old-style conventional passenger train with 40-plus year old coaches, the kind of train that goes from city to city, swapping coaches in and out from connecting routes. You see this less and less in western Europe.

Here's a 362-class electric, a dual voltage loco built by Skoda in 1990. This is hauling empty auto racks, probably back to Skoda, the European double-deck style rack, unenclosed. The green and yellow scheme is apparently earlier than the blue on the loco above.

My best shot was of this German 189 class electric running through in the Czech Republic on a container train. This is a Siemens ES 64 F4 four-current freight loco equipped to run on all four of the common European voltages, so it can run through into the Czech Republic.

One factor for modeling more recent European trains is that the containers are very familiar to those of us on the other side of the ocean: