The 2-6-6-0 in the back is the illusive and hard to find Micro Ace 0-6-6-0 with a fabricated lead truck and a Model Power Vandy. A lengthened out slopeback was supposed to be there but a photography light accident changed that.
Finally cleared the workbench by getting both of my GN Mountains completely decaled at long last. Shown below is a P-1 Mountain that eventually was converted to a 2-10-2 by GN. The front is the P-2 Mountain that took over from it with its higher drivers and tractive effort. And the S-4 in the back has been severely turned into a decrepit BN patched only Alco on it last legs. None of them made it past three years on BN they were that bad. The only thing remaining in what used to be a pile in the back is a single snow plow being converted into a BN unit.
I will call this the 1 hour project even though it started to it's eventual conclusion over a few weeks ago. Old Arnold S-2 was on the test track after having been cleaned and lubed when it suffered a major gear failure with both trucks. That was all four axle gears plus all four idler gears. All attempts to get the idler gear axles out of the truck resulted in a failure to even budge them. No sense spending my money on new NWSL gears if I can't budge the originals without risking destruction of the entire truck assembly. Even a soak today in warm full strength automotive cleaner/degreaser made no difference. Can't see throwing good money at an old mechanism when there is a newer version on the horizon that will be light years better. So the first candidate to set on a track in the weeds awaiting the scrappers torch. Removed the motor and threw it in the motor box and then reassembled the loco. Took some thin scribed styrene painted it with water based paint for wood color cut it to fit all the windows in the cab and applied same. Covered the stack and top grills and then placed boards at each set of steps on the pilots leading to the walkways. Topside details removed. All lettering identifying road name removed by covering with paint. Then weathered it with black wash and when that dried used both fresh and older rust colors from my weather powders. The actual time to turn this into a derelict for the scrapper's torch was about 1 Hour. Should have done this with all the steam I had that died from gear failures. But then I would have needed more track space.
Wow, thought I was bad with the GP38-2 I've had on the bench for 7 months now...you win! I just finished this pair of ES44AC's for CP. No, they aren't 100% prototypical but they still look good... Also finished another private road SD40-2 Snoot for a gentlemen in Australia. Shown with a pair of sibling SD80MACs. Brian
Be careful about starting a "what's still on your workbench?" contest. Such a thing is not worth winning (and my RS-18 would probably be one of the biggest losers anyways).
If that's the case, what happens when the bench moves 4 or more times since you started a project? My BN business train has been on my bench now for almost 8+ years...got most of the cars done, ish, just need a place to paint them.
the awesome layouyt on my workbench After 30 years of planning and operational concept design engineering I have finally come up with what might be considers by many as THE ULTIMATE MODEL RAILROAD. This is East meets West...note the sprawling Omaha yard facility at the center on the layout. Almost ever aspect of model railroading that you could want is here in this layout. Take a look But try not to get too jealous. http://www.trainboard.com/grapevine/attachment.php?attachmentid=57477&d=1379048812&thumb=1&stc=1
I have had a couple of very nice but ancient Arnold Rapido covered hoppers setting around for awhile now, more like years going on maybe ten of them. Unfortunately their method of attaching trucks left me in the lurch. A hollow metal post that the truck set on that was retained by flaring the post edge. An MT wheelset with truck mounted coupler would not fit nor could you attach a body mount coupler due to the way the underframe was designed. Finally dawned on me to build a bolster out of styrene. I first ACC'd a small piece of .015 X .125 styrene as a base since there was a small lip at the base of the post. The two pieces of styrene went on top. A .040 X .125 strip that had the end beveled to fit around the post then a 2nd .015 X .125 also beveled glued on top to get the height. Two HO Kadee insulating washers were slipped over the post and down to the bolster top to complete the needed clearances. Once the bolsters had set on the metal chassis I sanded the edges to give a bevel to the outside edge. Some black paint and done. Now the next time I run across these little jewels I wont hesitate to acquire some more. I forgot to note that I also filed off that flare at the top of the tube post and will use screws to attach the trucks.
I've been working on a WM Baldwin DRS 4-4-1500. Its coming along quite well. I'll be taking a drive from an Atlas/kato RS11 to power it, hopefully it will be here any day now. No if I could only find my other sheet of decals so I could finish the other side....
NP Observation 393 - slightly modified from Kato, painted with Tru-Scale paints, lettered with Microscale decals. George
I was thinking either early NS, it's going on eBay when I finish, so I'm still open to suggestions. I've done 4 HH in NS and one in CP (that was a cool one).
