Guys,I have to share this.. While in hospital for excessive fluids my daughter bought me a care package with the current issues of MR,Trains,Classic Trains and Railfan plus a Western Novel. Needless to say my seven day stay was much better.

I never knew she remembered the magazines I read.

Just watched this one and wanted to share the link with all of you. It touches on signals, work in the shops and on the road, even a glance at how mechanical reefers work.
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I seem to be rebuilding a number of diesel models lately so instead of separate threads for each I thought I'd just consolidate them in one.
First a bit of a photo album of what I've built.

This is a Mantua (yes that's right) F-7 with a detail associates F-unit detail kit, Miniatures by Eric winter hatch and icicle breakers. It runs on a Bachmann Plus chassis.

And the matching Mantua B with most of the same parts. I still have to touch up some of the details with Tuscan paint and add some weathering .


A Proto2000 SD-7 in a fantasy Canadian National Scheme. CN never had them or any other 6 axle first gen diesel for that matter.


My wreck damaged F-7.


Proto2000 SW1200rs that I added some details to and painted. This started as a basket case at a swap meet that I paid 5$ for.


Bachmann spectrum GE 44tonner. I modelled it after the same engine that was used as a yard switcher in my hometown in the 50's-60's


Proto1000 F-3a. I added some details to it, weathered it and it's one of my best runners.


Bachmann Plus F-7 a&b I used the detail associates F-unit detail kits on them, as well as some other parts, painted and weathered them. I'm not entirely happy with how the paint came out as I misplaced the yellow stipe too high. I recently painted another B unit with the proper placement and I'm looking for another Bachmann plus A unit shell to paint properly.

With the exception of a Proto1000 C-liner, all my B units are dummys, mostly running on a modified Athearn F-unit chassis.


Cary F-3b. Detail associates F-unit detail set. Drilling through the cast metal is a challenge! I'm on the lookout for the matching A unit


Of course I can't forget my Doodlebug. Not a diesel per se but why not include it here. It's a highly kitbashed Rivarossi combine with 1/2 of an Athearn F-7 drive. The link to the build:
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Finally my two Cary S-2 models.

Well, I've procrastinated long enough dabbling in the Horribly Overscale, and I've sold my entire HO collection and my layout to make space for a new N scale project.

I've tentatively called it James River, after the waterway in Virginia, but I wanted to make a rail/marine layout for a while, and figured why not? I've also been gawping at video and pictures of George Selios' Fanklin and South Manchester, and figured why not set this one in the transition era, to allow me to run my growing collection of steam locomotives?

On top of that, my wonderful wife Laura has allowed me to make use of some of the unused space in one corner of her crafting/computer room, so I've been able to set up my St. Charles, VA. layout up in there. This will allow me to expand on the operations of both layouts, with the St. Charles layout being the source of coal and lumber being delivered to suitable industries on the new project, and vice versa.

Here's St. Charles in it's new home:





A nice bonus here is that I can now get access to the unscenicked coal mine scene on St. Charles to progress the build on that part of the layout.

So, I had a tentative plan for the James River layout by combining a couple of Iain Rice plans, as you can see here:



As it stands, I'm thinking of going back over the long section of the plan and completely re-doing it to put it all on a curve that comes out of the board at the front, like a mini-peninsula, to give me a bit of space at the back for some F&SM style city scenery. I think what I'll do there is build the benchwork to the space I actually have available, then figure out a trackplan that will actually fit into the space I have, rather than the space I THINK I have!

In the mean time, I've been working on some structures and the basic land forms for the harbour area, and I'm getting to a rough mock up that I really like.



Ignore the woodland scenics riser supporting the underneath of the truss bridges, I put that there temporarily so I could confirm that the gradient would actually clear the lower level tracks enough to not foul them if I ever wanted to run high cubes or autoracks.

Some of the buildings I've been working on will be posted whenever I am able in this thread, but here are a couple to get the ball rolling...

Scalescenes Stone Mill:

WOW, I got to start off this weeks thread too :mrgreen:

I was running my Aero Train last night, though in real life they were not so great a ride but they sure looked cool. You know I would have the UP version 8-) , though UP didn't have it long and it ended up with the Rock Island .

Have any of you been experiencing delays between the time you click on a link to Big Blue and when you actually get on the forum? I'm not talking a few seconds, but sometimes minutes. Packey and I have noticed that it can take minutes to get to Big Blue and sometime it results in a 500 error message and sometimes the delay is so long that we give up trying. Sometimes the access is normal, in any case, when on the forum, it appears that you can move around without delays.

We are concerned since it appears that it is a server issue and we have a few other sites on the same server that act about the same way.

Just let us know if you've seen this happen or not. It's been happening now for about a week for us.

The Tsunami 2 EMD PNP sound decoder is a nice replacement for the Athearn PCB. You can fix it with one screw at the front right and Katon tape in the rear. Two layers of Kapton tape at the front and rear are a nice layer of electric isolation. They are also helpful to keep the 1k5 LED resistors off the PCB.
The speaker is a trimmed down sugar cube. Two stiff wires fomr a simple but sufficient support. The front gear box cover is lightly touched but still swings freely (I use a similar approach successful over the rear gear box at GP38 etc.).
The LEDs are pairs of SMD mounted LEDs soldered to tiny PCB to form front and rear light units. The magnificent Kapton tape is my friend again. It is simple to use and can be removed easy if some repair is needed.
It is a very similar approach as described by Coos. Just the implementation is more sloppy and the LED wires re adjusted to my eyes and hands

ps. The knots in the wires are my standard marker for plus (blue)
pps. Soundtraxx has an installation description on the web page for the Atlas Tsunami 1 with the large capacitor and a standard speaker requiring milling etc. The Tsunami 2 solves all that hassle.



Did it four times to get the little blue gang on the rails. They are the prototypical power for the Oak Point yard,