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...well...maybe not TYCO but, you gotta admit, it's cool.
Found whilst on the road in Simmesport, LA, apparently the Kansas City Southern owned a couple of these. This one now spends its time roadside as a tourist information center...
Now you have an excuse to make a home for that Silver Streak 'boose you've kept since you were a kid...
...summer of 1984. Sifting through a storage unit revealed some pics I took 26 years ago when I had better eyes and a bigger budget. I started it in 1983, just before I went to NCO school. It was a single track folded dog bone that went under itself. Built it from job site scraps so I could concentrate on motive power and rolling stock. You could have had a brawl on it and it wouldn't have dinged a rail. Just before I went into Bible College in '90, I left model railroading for about 2 years and donated the whole smack to a local club. Still see bits and pieces of it all over their N-trak and permanent layout.
The Eastern Shore Line was a mythical operation that theoretically ran the length of the Delaware/Maryland/Virginia Peninsula. Locals like to think of it as the state of Delmarva. Please forgive the yellowed and grainy pictures.
Once in Berlin Yard, we find a New Haven Pacific wondering where the heck are we?....My roads were done with 400 grit emery cloth with seams finished with plastic model putty. Once down, I'd paint the lines and go over it all with Dulcote.
Route 113 is two lanes through Maryland. Here it is passing the ESL Berlin Yard office to the left and Harrison Hall hotel to the right. That Pacific was an Atlas product and quite a good runner, one of my best locos and capable of pulling a string of 15 cars up the 3% grade into town.
That bus was a Wiking product I picked up on a whim. When I realized how European it was, it was too late to return it, so it became my first foray into Prototypical Plausibility Stretching 101.
The ESL's one bridge over what was since named Confederate Gap, near the town of Snow Hill, a quiet reminder of where the Peninsula's sympathies lay back then. In 1986, the remains of a Confederate soldier were found near there and buried with full military honors some time later. (True story, only the location has been changed) My bridge was built one piece at a time, in place, with trains in operation. I would glue the ties directly to the bottom of the rails and, once halfway across, removed any temporary support. A little hairy for my LPBs but, it kept the trains rolling.
Looking east into Berlin Yard and Roswells Processing Plant....
A glimpse of my control panel can be found in this shot, built on company time in the sheet metal shop My two most faithful runners, a Life-Like F unit and a Con Cor PA (gee, I miss them, sigh) idling at the ESL's Selbyville servicing facility. As seen on the panel, with some clever positioning of track, I was able to stuff in a 3 track mainline on a layout only 2'6" x 3'8" in size.
The last shot shows Route 113 passing through farm country. The gray house to the right was one of my first scratchbuild projects, a farmhouse built in a crumbling condition, using cardboard and split match sticks. It is in the first picture, shown with the junkyard that grew around it. One can barely make out Bubba's puddytat standing on the railing of the house on the left. My trees were lichen spray painted dark green then rolled around in a box of ground foam, then poked onto a twig trunk. Hope you enjoyed this little excursion into my modeling past.
...6 daze and counting...
Picked these Kadee N scale CP and CNR boxcars up at the swap meet I've referred to for next to nothing. The reason they were priced so low was because "Canadian stuff don't do too good down south here, you know?".
I can't imagine letting something like Canadian markings get between me and a good deal...after all, I like Canadians, made good friends with a bunch of 'em in Bible College. They taught me how to use a serviette, call my M&Ms "Smarties" and eat my Mac-n-cheese with ketchup and my fries with mayonnaise. Heck, we even almost speak the same English, eh?
The black CS Models CP hopper and the Kadee 50' CN plug door car were both found at the same meet...ten cent box lot rejects that only needed one truck each. I split a pair of Kadee medium shank roller bearing trucks between the two, making the Rapido coupler equipped hopper a transition car between the Kadee equipped car fleet and my Rapido equipped older motive power.
---But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty; And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are: That no flesh should glory in his presence. (1 Corinthians 1:27-29)
...and I thought my stack of modeling magazines taking over the head was pushing it.
My inner 13 year old would have a small locomotive mechanism inside of a rubber rat.
Yeah, I know...too cool...
Got the track laid last night while watching the History Channel, my favorite background noise next to a good football game.
Running flex track is not too hard. Once you bend around the curve and secure it with track nails, just stop short about an 1 1/2" from the end. Cut your rails even and remove the plastic "spikes" on the last tie (some folks remove the tie, trim the spikes, then slip it underneath the finished track), then slip rail joiners on the ends. Place you next length of track onto the end, then solder the joints. The secret to soldering is a good, hot iron,---I use a very old Radio Shack 30 watt pencil iron myself (Yep, 'nother freebie castoff)---and clean surfaces. Then bend the track around your curve 'til the next joint.
When doing tight radius curves, I've found that you want to make sure that the sliding rail side of the track goes to the outside of the curve. This places the gapped side of the plastic tie strip in your favor, keeping them from bunching up at the joint. These curves are 5" radius, laid out from the bottom of a drywall mud bucket.
UPDATE: Alas, my curves are just a shade too tight for my locomotive. It worked well in testing but apparently, when under power, the torque skews the truck a bit, causing it to derail. I hope to find a trolley or small diesel model between now and December.
...this year finds me taking my Christmas layout on tour to at least one nursing home and one Senior social event. With that in mind, I'm putting together a small loop of N scale track to run a short train alongside of my HO setup. The idea for it was shamelessly glombed from John, a fellow modeler from other forums. I haven't decided how elaborate the scenery will be, I'll probably keep it Christmasy for now and scenic it after the first of the year.
I'm using an old cork board ripped down for road bed and a salvaged piece of 2" foam roof decking for a base. Add to that some scrap N scale flex track and you can see I'm off to a budget busting $0.00 investment thus far...
...or, what does an LSU fan give a Buckeye fan when their team folds like a cheap lawn chair under your team's defence in the BCS Championship game...
It simply amazes me the work one can do from your own computer with a basic graphic program. No more cheezy pre-printed billboards for me.
...my N scale this time. I'm celebrating 18 months of dust free operation with my cabinet/bookshelf I built for the layout.
