Two Atlas HO (silver) Master NS GP38-2 (without ditch lights) arrived today and the ESU terror continues......

IMG_5847 by Reinhard Peters, on Flickr

The new drive (left front) has a PCB to short to be replaced with a Tsunami 2 decoder (left rear on top of drive). The older Trainman drive (left rear) has the space to house a Tsunami replacement easily AND it still fits the new shell (with micro modifications, remove all pegs from the shell botttom).
In front is an old Trainman drive with the new GP38-2 shell and tank.

I can not use the ESU specific PCB as it has no provisions to drive ditch lights I intend to install later. That excludes ESU and Tsunami 21 pin decoders. It is sad to see how ESU influences Atlas to ......

A great film about the end of steam in Canada. Lots of great shots. <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qg9_TnwrCXw">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qg9_TnwrCXw</a><!-- m -->
Charlie

The city buildings of freelance 2017-3 will get a save place in the basement. The white paper laminated foam boards that covered the rear parts of Freelance 2017-2 as a clean base are on their way to the trash can. I had a great time to build a city 4 meters long and 30 cm wide.


The tracks and switches survived the coverup time unharmed.



It's time for Freelance 2017-4 and make use of all tracks again
My initial thoughts are less buildings and more green served by NS and CSX (and may be CR with minor modifications). As usual no track modifications.

It seems like a lot of railroads are ordering new or rebuilt low emissions locomotives these days. I'm curious to know, with the exception of the Atlas gensets, are there other variations of low emissions options out there either resin kits or 3d printed shells that could fit on existing frames? It seems if I want to model the present day these should be considered, and I kind of like how ugly they are. Here's a few examples.
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I is a couple days late but time for a new Photo Fun. A little steam action on my layout this week.         Charlie

I realized my northern branch plan was all over the place and couldn't realistically fit all the industries and aspects of the branch that I would have liked to include without peninsulas jetting out everywhere. So, I'm going back to the drawing board and back to one of my first posts on this forum almost 6 years ago <!-- l --><a class="postlink-local" href="http://bigbluetrains.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=5883">viewtopic.php?f=17&t=5883</a><!-- l --> . I'm just annoyed that I sold off all my cross harbor engines

I think I've come up with a track plan that will depict bush terminal even after moving around some key features of the area. Although the duck under corner of the loft building is on 41st & 2nd it'll be on 1st and the car float bridge will be on the north end of the yard not the south. I'll probably come up with a freelance railroad with my own paint scheme and logos but that's still up for debate. It takes up much less space and I think this will be more fun to build and operate.
Here's what I drew up:

calling doctorwayne...

I have been enjoying the posts on here and elsewhere about GERN flux. That said I cannot find anywhere anyone has put together a central repository, website, or not even a facebook page for GERN. Does any of that exist? All I find are varied forum posts and they're often hard to follow. It would certainly be handy to have a specific place for others to find the details and learn about GERN and start their own franchise in a easy to read manner. This could go a long way to keeping Mr Gibson happy and may even create many more GERN affiliates.

Has doctorwayne ever considered immortalizing the GERN registry and company advertisements in another format or am I just not finding such? What I suggesting is simply a webpage, or even a sticky forum topic (searchable by Google, etc) that could even be on this website or elsewhere, describing exactly what GERN is and why and how to become part of it. You could also have the current rolling stock registry listed. It would also make a nice place for images to be easily found. And of course it would lead back to this forum for relevant discussion.

It is possible I just haven't found such a place yet, but that is exactly why I am suggesting such a thing. If I can't find it others can't. I only heard of such a thing by bumping into it reading another forum but then I found little bits and pieces strewn all over before I collected enough information to get the big picture of how many people and how far GERN has spread.

I recntly decided to take two Life-Like and Varney wood reefers that were in bad shape and to upgrade them drastically into 37ft GARX meat reefer. Yes, I had to scrap almost everything except the walls and everything else was rebuild from scratch. However, I really enjoyed the process. Brake gear was redone correctly, ice hatches made out of styrene and paper and several other details including a lot of hand punched rivets.

I certainly could have been less crazy about it, but I'm lately taking a lot of interest in doing freight car projects as correctly as I can. I have plenty of time to do so and find it extremely relaxing and rewarding. Once again the trick is to split the job into sub assemblies that can be done in one evening.









Matt