Sorry Guys , its been a while and I forgot the one video per thread, so my apologies if I'm a "Thread Hog"!!

Gidday All, They're not the greatest quality but I'd like to share some videos that I took on  Her-in-Doors and me on our long overdue holiday.



Cheers, the Bear.

Howdy folks,

It's been a little while. I started a new job not terribly much longer after my last post and I life has been pretty crazy since then, but most notably I just don't have internet access to my laptop terribly often these days which makes it hard to keep up with online forums.

The last time I was on here I was making plans to acquire locomotives and rolling stock to build my HO Faire & Middlin RR. I did end up buying some of the locomotives that were discussed for the project in my thread (from years back, I know, y'all have likely forgotten lol) about selecting diesels for my short line. I ended up focusing on GP10s and an SD35 for that, with no switcher. The concept for it really got carried away with time, but I put together a paint scheme for them and was preparing to send them off for painting when I had the sudden, honest realization that my heart just wasn't really in it and I wanted to do something else. I was going through old issues of Model Railroader magazine that I still have from growing up and an article in one of the issues ended up reminding me of what originally got me so interested and fascinated by trains in the first place, a trip on the East Broad Top Railroad when I was very little. I road it many times growing up, and the news last year that the railroad would be coming back to life after sleeping for most of the last decade inspired me to start diving in to modeling the East Broad Top instead of my runaway proto-freelance short line. The skills developed making models for that short line certainly won't go to waste, nor will at least some of the equipment already bought for it. I have been working on the development of an HOn3 East Broad Top set during the fall of the years 1937-1942, years of some of the greatest variety on the railroad in terms of equipment, operations, and trackage.

I'm starting with a 2 foot by 10 foot switching layout of the Mount Union yard, running from the interchange with the Pennsylvania RR down to the southern end of the yard, leading to the three foot gauge railroad's mainline. The layout will include the three refractories plants (Harbison-Walker, General Refractories, and North American Refractories) which during this time were all powered by Broad Top coal (though that would soon change). NARCo also received its gannister rock (silica rock) from quarries as online industries, and all three shipped out finished product by boxcar. In addition, there was a local delivery coal trestle here, a trestle for dumping away coal impurities from the Chance process coal washing plant, a transfer shed for hand transferring of freight from local cars on to standard gauge ones and vice versa, as well as the famous Timber Transfer which retrucked standard gauge cars on to special narrow gauge trucks and back. Operations will focus on processing inbound loaded hoppers through the unloading shed, and then processing outbound loaded hoppers under the coal washout, with some going to local industries and industries on the East Broad Top, and the majority being shipped out via the PRR (at its height the EBT was shipping out around 4-500,000 tons of coal per year, so there is plenty of work to do). The yard switcher's job also encompasses switching the other industries. There was a wye located at Mt Union which will be modeled, though due to space the majority of the wye will fold down when not in use. The trackage at Mt Union is largely dual gauge and standard gauge, and the switchers there were steam switchers (0-6-0s) fitted with dual couplers at each end (one for standard gauge, one for narrow gauge). Given my current living situation and the general unavailability of East Broad Top locomotives in HOn3, a shelf layout modeling the standard gauge/dual gauge section seemed like the most reasonable place to start.
I will do my best to give regular updates on my progress with posts in the appropriate categories, but saying hi and giving an update and rundown like this seemed like a good use of The Upper Berth section. Of course, if that judgement was incorrect I will leave the moving of this thread to the discretion of the moderators.

I would love any input or advice any of you have, and would certainly love to answer any questions if you guys have any. I've been researching the East Broad Top with some degree of regularity and frequency for many years as a labour of love and a passion, and as a result have become quite knowledgeable about it within the confines of what I've been able to read and see with my own eyes.

Regards,
Amanda (exohead)

I will start off things with something unusual.

PRR DD1 by GHB International



PRR RPO by Athearn Blue Box kit



PRR ACF 70’ Heavyweight Baggage Car by Walthers RTR Heavyweights



PRR Heavyweight Paired Window Coach by Walthers RTR Heavyweights





Video

https://youtu.be/a87etKjR-tw

I recently received a picture from Charles Cooper who has a website "Charles Cooper's Railway Pages" showing a beautiful wall mural located in Southampton Ontario---it reminded me of other wall paintings I photographed in Palmerston.Hopefully other members on BigBlue may have come across wall paintings that they would care to share.

The first picture is from Charles Cooper---the next one is mine were taken in Palmerston.




       

To start off a late weekly photo here is a New York Ontario & Western 2-6-0 Mogul by IHC pulling a coal drag past the Water Tower.

Has anyone had good luck on stripping  paint off old AHM cars made in Austria so far the tried and true 90% alcohol has not done it  and I'm out of potassium hydroxide  (pot ash ) . has anyone tried Mr. clean on these cars ? what I'm trying to strip is several helium cars .

A little action in town tonight.     Charlie

WPMA-29 at Lubbers Run.

Bruce

   

Hello,

there are still possibilities of activities of normal social life in a Covid19 afflicted world. Here in Germany lockdown and assembly ban was suspended and so it was the chance to have a modular convention. The Fremo Southwest Division took the chance and organized it' first convention since October 2019. We had to comply with hygenical and offical orders, but at least we had our modular convention.


Wednesday teh first packets of modules arriving in the hall, some of them were also already built up.





This is Loop Yard just loaded out of the car. Some survival assets of the owner too.







That is what i call planning!





Thursday afternoon the Loop Yard was pretty full of trains. In the foreground the Zepyhr in full length, on the track behind a 12 metres (39.4 ft) through train of covered hoppers.





One of the locos to move those trains.



My partipication of this convention was the reason because i was not active here.


Lutz