To honour Canada's Veterans the Canadian Pacific has followed Norfolk Southern's Heritage fleet lead and have created this very special painted locomotive to remember D-Day---note the number 6644.I found this picture on the CP web-site,I'm hoping one day I might get a photo of my own.There are more special paint schemes to follow that I'll try to post as they become available.

God bless Veterans everywhere today and every day.

   

Hello,

long ago when i posted my last brass rebuilt. This time i like to start a new thread about the rebuildung of an second hand NJ Custom Brass model of an AT&SF 1800 Class Prairie. This rebuilt was done some years earlier, but still yet not posted here.


Several years ago i won a ebay auction, not too expensive, but the model was in rather rough condition.



Some was bent.









There was heavy damage by the detoriating foam. Especially on the driver's side.



And as you can see, the finish was still pristine on those areas where the foam did not touch the surface. It would be better if the preowner has had wrapped his model into the provided plastic foil to avoid contact with the foam. Then the loco would be still in pristine condition.

@ Brass Owners:
Gentlemen please wrap your preciousities into plastic sheet when you intend to store them in their own boxes to avoid future damage by detoriating foam.



And even a bump on the tender side.

But i got what i had paid for and the damaged loco was clearly visible onto the photos connected to the auction.
Until now nothing was done, just as it was bought and unpacked.




A preview when the loco was finished some years later.

WPMA-19 crossing the wetlands at Absecon.

Bruce

   

....with my thanks to Lutz for both leading the way, and for providing some useful info for my first foray into DCC.

I'm not going to provide a step-by-step  "how-to", as Lutz has already covered the topic rather well.  Instead, I'll merely offer some photos of my progress, with a few comments where they might be useful.  Questions and/or comments are, of course, welcomed.  The kit was donated by a friend, and I built it for another friend.

A couple photos of the running gear...





...and the all-wheel pick-up on the locomotive...



...and tender...



...along with a look inside the tender, where the power wiring is organised ....



...and routed to the decoder...



Here's the tender with its back-up light lit...






Here's the LED which provides the light....



...and a look with it, unlit, inserted into a small hole drilled into the back of an MV Products lense...



The kit came with an impressive amount of brass detail castings, but some were missing, so I used either similar parts which I had on-hand, or scratchbuilt something appropriate.

A few random views of the fireman's side of the loco...

 





...and tender...



On the engineer's side of the locomotive, I decided to alter the running board to match that shown in a prototype photo.  The bumped-up area allowed for the installation of a power-reverse, but it also required new mountings for the piping which forms the cooling coils for the air provided by the air pump...



Continued in next post.....

My home layout is still DC only and will remain that way because it was built mainly for switching, but my club of course is DCC. At the club, the Livingston Model Railroad Club in the basement of teh old Northern Pacific Depot in Livingston, MT, we have a pretty hefty grade of two and a half percent. I did pick up a few DCC locomotives, but they were real wimps when it came to pulling a decent train up the grade.

Finally managed to get a Walthers Mainline F-7 A&B unit. These are some real horses. The grade on my home layout is also around two and a half percent. My main DC fleet is the original Atlas Alco RS units with the Kato drive. They can easily handle 14 to 16 cars on the grade. An Atlas Gold DDC was lucky to be able to pull ten up the grade. The same holds true at the club. 

The Walthers F-7's easily pulled a 25 car train up the grade. We also like to pull a track cleaning car in all of the trains that are running and the Wlathers cars we use probably weigh as much as three standard cars. Here's a video of the F-7's running around the club layot.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvXXDzw6mLU

Since this video was taken, I managed to find an additional F-7A unit. Had 45 cars behind it and they handled the grade without a sweat. Here's a shorter train with the three power units.


https://imgur.com/a/wJdyQJ3

WPMA-19 at Absegami Plastics.

Bruce

   

Spruce/fir trees 2.0
Faller's fir trees are really not at all good looking, but they are cheap! With a few minutes of work their appearance can be much improved.
I use Polak model turf and some spray adhesive for this project.


They are very coarse as they are...


I trim the armatures to avoid the cone shape.


Less is more...


I applied some spray glue and two layers of turf.


This group of five trees took me 10 minutes to do, a time that can be reduced severely if made in a series.
I have over 1000 trees to do, so any savings of time and money are very welcome.

I am repainting a few passenger cars and I am wondering how to remove the window strips on AF passenger cars.  They are glued in real tight.  I was thinking of trying to pry them off with a hobby knife but I am afraid I may crack the car body.  Any suggestions? 

Has anyone had experience with the new fiber optic Dwarvin lighting system? I'm interested in your take on it and how it's performing for you.

Thanks!

I visited a fairly large club layout today in Palatka, FL. I noticed they were using lots of Pecos which has plastic frogs....insulfrog. I noticed they DID NOT use insulated jointers on their track. They run DCC, and all seemed to work fine.

It did appear that they had coated the frog area with something,...I believe someone may have  mentioned nail polish.
I think Bill's solution with the very thin vinyl sign shop tape is the most appealing to me. as a back up perhaps also utilize some insulated rail joiners on some of them, But where does one find some decent ones that aren't those big bulky soft plastic ones?

I also intend to add shims to the flangeway guides on a number of mine, particularly were I will run steam engines and where I will use smaller radi turnouts. I've experimented with both metal shim material and plastic by K&S. I'm leaning towards the plastic material. If one were shimming a fair number of these turnouts, can they suggest a good procedure for getting the shim bonded thoroughly to the guide plastic??...perhaps some sort of teflon shim that could hold the plastic shim tight against the stock guide while gluing it,...without have the whole mess glued together??