Thank you much! I just painted the floor; I started with a medium brown, then washed it with a dark wash. Once that dried, I just drybrushed some dark grey, light grey, and other shades of brown here and there on individual boards, easy and looks good!
A perfect photo for capturing the mood that I wish to recreate! A Q4b (With the extended cab with the brakeman's seat!) towing an I5 caboose and a pair of wagontop boxcars; can it possibly get more B&O than this?
Welp. The new gearbox arrived, and it's too tall to fit. Urrgh! I'll be adding some thrust washers inside the original United one to quiet it down somewhat, as the largest component of the noise is end play in the worm shaft. Unfortunately I must order the thrust washers. In the meantime I will work on the headlight I suppose.
Wooph. That's why I am reluctant to do anything expensive with gnarly drive trains. Off by a fraction and back to square one. Interesting photo that: the locomotive appears to be backed up upon the train and the railroaders are intently examining a journal on the tender.
Try a Northyard gearbox, they are Australian. I suspect that picture is of a local, 2 reasons; B&O used Q4bs everyway and primarily on locals in the later years and B&O ran cabooses on each end of Locals so may have cut off from the front to spot a boxcar or two!
I have found loads of photos of short trains (like, 2 or 3 cars, and sometimes a combine) with an E27 or a Q4 and an I5 cabin. That seems to have been very much the norm in Ohio and Indiana. This fits perfectly in my space, so I love these little locals! Stauffer's B&O Power even has a photo of an E27 on a local near Medina with one EJ&E gon and a caboose! As my next wish item is a Q4b, soon I will have one of each! I hope.... And yeah, this drivetrain is irritating me. The loco is gorgeous enough to make me suffer through it, but urgh - it isn't just a simple project. The can motor oddly has a much higher minimum speed than the old open frame motor, but I've a feeling DCC and some running in will help it. If i can get the gearbox quieted down - and I think I can - i'll be thrilled! If i cannot, I'll try Northyard.
The more you live, the more you learn! The B&O ran cabooses on both ends??? And to use such massive power on such short, local trains?? Wow, I had no idea at all. Very strange motor issues, that the can motor would need to run so fast as opposed to a cranky old open frame. I would wonder if a tab of grease, as opposed to oil, would help quiet the transmission noise. Back in the day, I heard it was a scheme to put banana peels in crummy used car transmissions to quiet them down enough to get them off the lot into the hands of unwitting buyers. Something like that. Once looked at a used car, and considered buying it until my mechanic pulled the transmission oil dipstick and showed that it was positively drowned in water. Apparently GMC ran some coolant system through their automatic transmissions to keep them from overheating, and they were prone to leaking over time. Yikes.
Toward the end of the mixed power era, a mainline train with one ailing diesel tended to get that one unit from that branch line train as a substitute. The branch line train then got reserve power. And toward the end of the transition era, the reserve power was the best steam ever built--some were locomotives which were more powerful than any single-prime mover diesel yet built.
They did? I... like two cabooses at once? I missed that? Or did the post just mean they might put the caboose at either end, as needs dictated? I always figured it was the latter. As far as the gearbox, the biggest cause of gearbox noise in these old brass grinders is excessive worm shaft end play, followed by play between the gearbox housing and the axle or axle bearings. The gearboxes themselves are bombproof. Mine has a lot of play in the axle - odd, as it's barely been run - and some end play in the worm shaft, so I will try thrust washers to tighten it up and a heavier gear oil and see what happens. And yeah, peanut butter in a differential was another one people'd pull in the old days. These shortish trains with big power are one of the reasons I was drawn to B&O; it's very accurate to do Lance Mindheim-ish layouts depicting just a handful of industries, yet switched by pretty large power considering the task pulling short consists.
My misreading, it would appear that as you said, the caboose is one that particular end out of happenstance, most likely. Interesting sidebar about the reserve steam power for small jobs.
The thrust washers (and a few N scale bits) have been shipped! As this is likely just a padded mailer, it should be here relatively quickly. Hopefully next week!
A brief update: The motive power department is in negotiations with Baldwin for the purchase of a new 2-8-2 type locomotive to offer heavy freight service to the Seneca Branch. The operations department has also begun researching the cost/benefit of installing CPL signaling. We will keep you informed!
to clarify about cabooses, they would have a caboose at each end of the local. This was a convenience thing for the crews.
For those interested: I have decided to base my track plan somewhat on Jefferson, Ohio, a town I lived in for several years as a child. While this line now belongs to the AC&J shortline, at one time it was part of the Pennsylvania, and the small town of Jefferson boasts (Or boasted) from north to south: https://www.google.com/maps/place/J...f4d53ad1cc4b02!8m2!3d41.7386662!4d-80.7698066 A rather busy grain elevator complex (must be harvest time; I NEVER remember seeing this many hoppers there) A depot and team track (where the caboose on display now sits, the depot is the longer skinnier building south of it) A lumber / building materials company (no longer rail served) A smaller feed and seed sort of place (siding still there - for many years it had an ancient green boxcar on it, but it seems to finally be gone) A factory (Stone Container IIRC, the long covered dock was to prevent the heavy paper products getting wet). While I will move the town further south and east, and I believe the container plant will become a spring plant just to diversify the cars used on this line, this is what I want to attempt to fit - of course, somewhat compressed - into my space. Interestingly, I could probably model this just about true scale in N, but alas; we dance with who brung us!
Remember the bad old days when we'd slog to our local library for views like that... if we were lucky, otherwise we might have to search on microfiche or wait to borrow from another library!
