I see this conversation has gone completely septic!! I would be green with envy, but had to play with some septic tanks yesterday.......
An update on the roids..... ummm I mean rods load. I just have to figure out about attaching it to the car. I was thinking straps but maybe chain but I don't have any chain so it's straps or as is util I get around to getting some chain. Thoughts? Progress on the new pipe load as well I'm not sure if I like the PC Green color any better than what I had. I wonder how NYC Jade Green might look?
The PC color would probably be sharp for that kind of load. And at normal viewing distances, the straps should look fine too, especially when it's moving.
Saturday, i had to drive up to TN to take care of a couple of things. An old friend who is one of those Horribly Oversized scale modelers stopped by where I was to bring me some items including a couple of N scale things that were mixed in with a lot he had picked up. Nothing exciting really but I thought the bridge was really nice. There was this box that is Atlas in the mix. I've never seen this before so anyone have any ideas on it?
Sunday, I got around to trying out these new reflector stripes. I picked this poor gon as my practice victim. They were super easy to apply actually. You just use a hobby knife or something similar to pick one of the stripes off the page then place it where you want it. It semi sticks as soon as you place it but is still movable until you rub on it a little. That apparently activates the adhesive on it and that's all there was to it. I'm not the best at straight lines but turned out good enough. I did make one mistake but will be easy enough to fix and not repeat and that is that I used all ling reflectors on the car instead of a couple of long and the rest short. I continued working on more pipe loads as well. More green and now some black as well First got the green ones all banded up Then tried them out in a gon to make sure all was good with the fit. I banded the black pipe with silver thread so it would show better. Here it is in the same gon. Probably okay. Still have one more of the green and one more of the black in the works. Should get those done next weekend. A few weeks back, I made notebooks to better organize my reference materials. Since then, I've been going through a drawer of disorganized papers and either trashing or moving them to the proper notebooks. I got far enough along that I realized I had enough Atlas engine and car exploded parts diagrams that it warranted it's own book so whipped up an Atlas book for the collection. The real fix would be to make sure I have digital copies and just trash all the paper but what can I say, I'm still partial to hard copy. Another project for the weekend was this poor fella, the ole #5 The P42's are a fairly straight forward install. Here it is with the factory board removed. I did my other P42 several weeks ago and not a single issue. This time, I had one but was me not reviewing the process. Where the motor contacts stick up, you really need to pop the long contact rails out and put a little kapton tape around them right there where the motor contacts come up. That was a step I bypassed and had to go back and redo. Once I did it the right way, the ole girl was off to work pulling a test freight. All that plus updating 3 freight cars to metal wheels, one of which was that Milw. Gon, pretty much filled up my train time over the weekend. Glad you all are following along. Thanks for humoring me
Wow, those were fun projects and they all turned out great. The MILW gon and pipe load are really cool and your P42 looks better than the real thing does at this stage of their lives.
[mention]BNSF FAN [/mention] thanks for sharing the reflective stripes-they look great and will eventually pick some up myself. Wouldn’t worry too much about them being straight-I’ve seen them crooked on the prototype! Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Thanks sir. I will be sharing them more in the weeks to come. I met the kid who is making them. I hope he and his business continue to grow and thrive. Who knows, maybe he'll even be an advertiser here someday.
Yes sir, you are correct, that P42 has been well cared for while running the JPT Sub. Thank you too. I will admit that I am having a bit of fun making all these loads.
The Atlas box with the compartments was used for the relatively short time that Atlas sold N Scale Figures (people). The shot below from my website shows one of those figures on the porch of the farmhouse. "Grandpa" is almost as old at this point as he's supposed to be...
Added a new boxcar to the fleet recently. While I certainly have many Atlas boxcars, this is the first one in the Master Line that I have picked up. I like some of the features and it has an interesting option. This one is Atlas #50 005 449 NSC 5277 PD Box Car Canadian National (CNIS) Road Number 413039 Unless anyone really wants to see all the views all the way around the car, I'm just going to hit a couple of nice points. Here is the car in the box. I really like the etched metal platforms at each end of the car. the details nice. The paint and lettering seems crisp and clear. The metal wheelsets are a win as well. The car also came with some additional parts that can be swapped out to extend the coupler out. I opted not to do that on this car but it does offer a unique option. The car has logged a couple of hours of run time on the layout already. It tracks well and no operational issues so far. Overall, a car that I'm happy to have in my fleet.
Detouring back to the mystery package... here's a grab from a recent auction listing of what they looked like with people in them. It's been so long since I saw an actual package of these that I don't know if these are how they were originally configured, but I do know that the mail carrier with the cart (remember those?) was among the figures Atlas sold in these packs. Checking my copy of the 1972 Atlas Catalog, I see that the figure sets aren't listed, so now I'm wondering when they were sold...
My 1971/1972 JMC catalog shows six Atlas figure sets @ $1.29 Ea, but doesn't show the Atlas item numbers. Here's a great link with item numbers and photos of each set. http://davidksmith.com/n-scale-figures/atlas.htm
Friday evening, I was chatting with a friend about freight car loads while I was continuing to work on the pipe loads that have been invading the workbench lately. He started talking about making a tie load for a car he was working on and that set off my shiny object syndrome. I've had a container of wood cross ties I picked up so long ago, I don't even remember getting them and thought, hey, I can do a tie load! An hour later, I had this. Looking at the pics, I'm now trying to decide if that looks about right or if I should fill it up a little more?
