I have been a modeler in HO scale off and on for a good number of years. Most of my stuff is from the athearn blue box era. I started out with undecorated kits and applying my own paint and graphics. I put it all away and many moves later, not much of it survives in unbroken condition. We now have a 2-year old who LOVES trains, (perhaps dad is partial to them too) and each year I browse ebay listings for a "cool" locomotive to run around the tree. This year I started looking at a O-scale stuff. I bought a boxcar, just because I like boxcars. WOW! This scale is awesome. It is nothing too fancy, K-line PS-1 in WP's orange with silver feather scheme.
Anyway, I bought some of the old All-nation boxcar kits to see what I can do to improve those. I also just ordered a P&D GP9 repower kit and a red caboose undecorated shell, and plan to add a lot of brass detail parts. I want to paint it in the SP black widow scheme. I live in Oregon and used to live in Eugene/Springfield back in the mid 90s, (pre-UP merger) and my job involved driving a shuttle van taking SP crews to work, so I frequently got to drive to the Eugene terminal/hump yard.
I might need some help with part recommendations in doing this. Online parts catalogs for the detailers are not very good, I have noticed.
My background: I mainly like to build cars, but it would be nice to have a hobby I can do indoors since my garage is neither heated, nor insulated. I am currently finishing up a 1968 GTO 4-speed ragtop and just recently bought a 1962 pontiac catalina ragtop. I work from home and when it is not our busy season, I have extra time during the days sometimes. I also worked for UP for a brief stint as a conductor. The job was fine but I hired on right before the recession of 2008 and being that I was 2nd to the bottom of the seniority roster in the whole district, my phone rarely rang. I still talk to others in my hiring class and it was 3 years before they had steady work. No way could I have stuck that out financially. Oh well, it got me out of the Willamette valley!