Good morning from cloudy, foggy and rainy Northeast Ohio! Only got one thing done this week! Atlas RS-1, in order to do the M&StL RS-1 a number of modification have to be done. Since the Louie installed their steam era bells on the hood tops as the frame mounted bells froze up in the winter, the walkway over the top radiator vent has to be moved to the side. After removing the walkway, you will find the venting has a dip in it so the entire vent area is filed away, the walkway moved to the engineers side and a new vent area is scratchbuilt. Also installed steam era markers on the long hood. Changed to vent on top of the cab to match the ones the Louie had. Painted the unit with Floquil Signal Red and decaled it with the later Shroeder era decals I got from Mark Vaughn (now available from Clark Probst). The Louie originally received their RS-1's in small batches and every delivery had a different paint scheme (some said picked by the office staff). After Sprauge was kicked out in 1954 they Louie standardized the paint scheme into the Red & White scheme as this unit. I received three Rapido RS-11's in PRR, a really good looking unit. Since were doing Rapido, here is my pair of FA-2's. waiting for the FB-2's to be delivered in the spring. This was shot on the Strongsville Club layout. Thanks for looking! Rick Jesionowski
Staged 'City Scape' with Hiawatha peaking out from behind trees at bottom left. This is most of my paper buildings. In the long run they will be somewhere else. The picture gives an idea of my 'train room / living room' as that is the 'Southern Wall' between two windows. At some point I will be putting a mountain there. I am currently lobbying the 'Bureau of Land Management' for permission to paint the walls blue with clouds but she isn't having any of it. Sigh. Those windows face South Southeast and should provide a source of light for my 'Train Hendge' that will track the Equinox and Solstice events. Pic also shows long view of room. That is another 10 feet I'll expand into when the first phase is read.
Made this a few years ago to run and display during NTrak shows.............. Used to get some strange comments from the general public but not totally unexpected.