This is the 3rd of 5 GP18's to join my roster. The shell is a Walthers GP18 that came factory painted in the Maroon and Stripes. Walthers Rock Island GP18 I painted the yellow on the nose and the rear. Added the flared spark arrestors, firecracker antenna, cab shades, 5 chime air horn and renumbered it. The air filter box was scratched out of styrene. I used Pan Pastels for the overall weathering and a product called P3 Armor Wash for the stain under the rear grille. The Walthers chassis was replaced with an Atlas GP7/9 DCC ready chassis which was milled and ground to fit. Later, I got around to installing MTL couplers. It was another one of a kind Rock Island unit.
Two more GP18's join the fleet. These two were the first of the GP18's to join the roster, but it wasn't till now that I got around to weathering them. Again as I did with #1351 I replaced the factory LifeLike DCC ready chassis Atlas DCC ready chassis. I only had to add a few detail parts to bring them close to the prototype. It's tough finding good shots of Rock Island locos at times, but I did manage to find a couple that told the story. The 1343 wound getting a pair of flared spark arrestors and five chime horn and firecracker antenna. The 1346 only got the five chime horn and the firecracker antenna. Neither of them got cab shades from what I could tell in the pics I found. Both of these came factory painted in the 70's Red and Yellow speed lettering. The trucks and fuel tanks were also painted gray as per the prototype, but the gray waaaaay too light. 3 down, two to go...
Ok..no fair..where did you get the shrink ray to shrink from 1:1 to 1:160?? Those units look outstanding!! Wyatt
Today we held the 15th Ops session on The Little Rock Line. All in all things went pretty good with only a few minor glitches. Coy from K.C. returned for his third visit. Unfortunately, Rodney A.K.A. Rodsup9000 (also from K.C.) called this morning and said he would be unable to make it today due a personal issue, maybe next time Rod? We also had two new faces join us today. Tony is my niece's boyfriend. He's seen the layout a few months ago and became curious as to what we do? So I invited him over for this session. Bwahahahaha! He's also a complete newbie and has never been exposed to model railroading before, but actually picked up on things pretty quite quickly. The other newbie is Matt, he is in the throws of building a new layout and he's got the trains running but felt like something was lacking. He invited me down to see his layout about a week ago and we got to talking shop. The subject of operations arose so I coaxed him over so he could get an idea of what I was talking about. He's never attended any kind of operating session before so this was his first time. He was a little nervous before we got started but soon settled down after getting a throttle placed in his hand and the first train ran. We started them both off with a couple of easy "Run Through" trains to get their feet wet. It didn't take either of them too long to get the hang of things! They both walked away with big smiles on their faces. Asking Matt after the session if he enjoyed the Operating side of model railroading? He replied with a big smile and said he was going to go home and make some changes to his track plan! I got the session posted to my blog this evening along with a bunch of pics and one video. Enjoy. The Blog post...
The prototype photo of 1343 looks to me like it has cab shades. Please note that this comment is not intended to take anything away from the incredible job you did on the models!
You sir are correct, and I did notice that aaaafter I made the post. No offense taken. Thanks for the kind words.
With the Ops session behind me, and the proper decals in hand, I was able to get my last Rock Island GP18 #1337 wrapped up today. I say the proper decals because as I was applying the Shell Scale number boards, @SOO MILW CNW texted me and asked what I was up to. So I snapped a few pics of the partially decaled number boards to him. He quickly replied "Ummmm, I think they were black with white numbers? The proto pic you posted has black boards" So I stopped what I was doing and sat down and ordered the proper decal set......Siiiiiiiigh. I got them applied this evening. And the group photo. I've actually found one more GP18, but that will be for another time. Now I'm gonna return to the layout and get back to working on the fertilizer complex that I started about a month ago.
The other day I got a notice that someone liked one of my posts? Surprised by this I decided to get on and see what it was about. After signing on and seeing what post and who I realized I hadn't posted here in over a year??? Then it came back to me, I had troubles signing on again about that time. I had given up and went about my way. So tonight I figured I would do what I had done the last time I was able to get logged back in, but not in the same scale. When I last posted I had just finished up with my last GP-18 and had painted my backdrop. Since then I have worked around on several smaller projects and then got started on my town of Haskell, AR All the track work was done I got the tracks painted and then I wanted to add a wooden grade crossing that lead into the Gavilon Fertilizer distributor. Well I needed to know where the buildings would go thus giving me an idea where I wanted the crossing to go. After getting them roughly placed, I installed the crossing. Around the first of the year I started ballasting all the tracks and then actually got some scenery down! I'm now working on finishing up the Gavilon complex. Here are a few pics of Haskell as it stands right now: This was taken around Feb after I had the ballasting done. Here is the blog post that followed the last GP-18 for those of you who wants to get caught up. https://thelittlerockline.blogspot.com/2018/03/the-winds-of-change-are-blowing.html
