I dragged out the early power for my Sunset Limited. Back in 1994, the only PAs available in N scale were from Con Cor which were imported from Kato. I started out with the very first iteration that had an early open frame motor. First thing I did was remove the truck mounted pilots and mount them directly to the frames with a body mounted couplers. I shaved off the stock nose number boards and replaced them with SP style number boards, one locomotive displaying train numer 1 and the other train 2 so that I could just reverse the order for west or east bound. I made them from rectangular brass tubing with clear plastic inserts that could be decaled and lighted. Replaced the horns with 5 chime units. Painted them with Floquil and then added decals. I don’t recal why one uses SP lettering gray while the other has black outlined silver lettering. I gave them T&NO numbers for the locomotives that ran between New Orleans and El Paso. Somewhere along the way I replace the chassis with the newer model that had more modern motors and added DCC at that time. Also added window glazing. These put in many miles on NTRAK layouts until they were replaced with newer Kato PAs.
Good morning from mostly sunny and cool Northeast Ohio! First, another Stewart 14 Panel hopper car, painted with Scalecoat II Black Paint and lettered with decals from PDC decals. The NYC in the late 50's were replacing their worn out 50 ton two bay hoppers with new 70 ton three bay hoppers that were used in the Indiana, Ohio and West Virgina coal fields. Now another IMRC R70-20 Reefer Kit, painted with Scalecoat II White and Black Paints, then lettered with Microscale Decals. These cars were originally ordered by PFE in the mid 60's later PFE was broken up between the SP and UP railroads and the SP cars were repainted into white paint and SPFE reporting marks, the SP logo was done in various colors and styles, in this case I picked the staggered Blue logo. A pair of Athearn SD45's hauling a few other of my fleet of R70-20 reefers on the Strongsville Club Layout. Thanks for looking! Rick Jesionowski
Heavy traffic around OPS !!! Want to learn more about OPS? Check here: https://www.trainboard.com/highball/index.php?threads/the-old-port-shop.125242/page-19 Happy Easter! Sven
For Athearn's 75th anniversary they produced three Rio Grande cupola cabooses. The preproduction shots looked very good, and I ordered all three. When they arrived, I was very disappointed in the color. So after about a year of them languishing on a shelf, I decided to do something about it. On the left, in the photo below, is the as delivered ORANGE. On the right, is my repainted model. And the second photo is the stripped model.
