Great Northern railway

FYI,

For the most part, not much will be posted until Fall as, during the summer, I switch over to my summer hobby of RC airplanes.

later.

have fun with your planes and have a great summer flying !!

great photos Sam, awesome layout            really like your ore dock !

hopefully able to get down there sometime !!

New delivery:

A 200' single track and double track bridges from Central Valley and some solder/paste combo.

The boxes are very heavy.

Micromark has real good prices on these plus they had a Memorial day weekend discount.

While on a canoe trip with my daughter, a few railroad items in Morrow, Ohio.

Div 7 monthly meeting.

Got back from a Warbird flyin at Lansing, Michigan (8:30 this morning) in time to attend our Sunday's 2 PM meeting.

650 mile trip:

John Listerman's layout.

Peter Weiglin's layout.

Unfortunately, only 3 of my pictures were not blurry  

Makes his own turnouts.

Only 1/2 blurry!

New delivery (kind of)

After 12 weeks, BLI returned my GN S-2 4-8-4.

I tried to clean the wheels just using dc power as one would on a brass engine and it stopped working.  I sent the engine to them on the last day of warranty and they fixed it, no charge.  Nice of them to do so.

Div 3 (Dayton area) layout visit.

Joe Becker's layout.  Models those railroads that served Cincinnati.

My kind of neighborhood: all ranches. 

Silly me, and I thought 'puff ball' trees didn't exist in the 'real' world !

On the way home from an RC meet.

New delivery:

More 'Lionel' type enhancements to the layout.  Got a lightning and thunder set from BLI. 

Comes with a speaker, power reducer, start button, two sets of LED strips and hook up wire.  

Will be putting it behind one corner where the back drop is about 3 feet from the 8' curved radius of the layout where the speaker and LED's can easily be hidden behind the mountains. 

Bought a 'skeeter' killer for 4 bucks from harbor freight.

Will get a wire sifter from households and make a cheap static grass maker.

Ken Patterson has the instructions (about 7 minutes into the video):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2i4LGf4EmYE

FYI:

A fellow modeler sent me this email about the homemade static grass maker:

A couple guys in our group built the static grass applicators from Patterson’s article. They work OK on the really short static grass, but if you do a side by side comparison with a ‘real’ applicator, like the one from Noch, the difference is staggering. For starters, the Noch unit has 10x the power, and will easily make ½” fibres stand straight up. Because it is more powerful, it is also much faster. I guess you get what you pay for…

The Lightning and Thunder will be a nice addition.

I have heard the same "warning" but I still plan to build a static applicator just like yours, to get started.  It is a good cheap way to see if I really want to go that far.  There are also youtube videos about DIY ways using an ion generator that would be as good as a Noch or better.

Gene Anstine

New delivery:

12 new 20' brass logging cars from Far East Distributors.

Originally, they were imported around the 70's and just the brass car (4 per box) without trucks or couplers.  They need a little TLC but have trucks/kadees and for less than 18 bucks each (including shipping), I couldn't pass them up.  I needed some short logging cars for the logging railroad. 

Nice find there Sam! I can't wait to see them behind your logging train!

A nice non-UP video done by a couple visiting the UP Big Boy restoration with nice descriptions of what some parts do.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imOrv7cQG8Y

New delivery.

With around 650 cars, just what I need, more cars!...but I'm a 'sucker' for old metal Athearn and Varney freight cars!  Also, they were reasonably priced at $11.80 each (including shipping).

Kadees and all metal wheels.

Four are Athearn and the last one is a Varney.  

Truck broke loose. I usually expect some minor mishap on shipping.

Couplers came off.

Varney

Only one correct vintage box (bottom) but two others are old version of Athearn boxes. 

New delivery:

Bought two Quality Craft Models Marlinton station #104. 

Very nice quality wood. Main walls are a good 3/32" thick, nice metal castings for doors, windows, trim, etc.  All wood, no cardboard stock.  Has instructions and nice multi-view of all sides.

Definitely worth the 30 bucks each.

Today, we had our div 7 meeting and visited Bob Lawson's layout after the meeting. 

I've showed some pictures in the past and here are some more.  

Showing this same layout in such a short period of time is like having the Swedish female Olympic volley ball team knock on your door, every year, and ask if they can stay at your place for the week because all the hotels are booked: it never gets old!

These pictures are, probably, about 10% of his buildings.

Most of the models are built at the workbench as a group setting.

Overall view of layout.

Bob is on the left.

Close up views:

About 90% of the buildings are scratch built.

Bob's layout (cont).

No matter how many times you've been there, you'll find something new.

Bob's layout (cont)

Latest section added: river scenes.

What a great Looking Layout! Just amazing!

Bob's layout (cont)

Excellent layout!  Thank you for the photographs!!

Great photos,  amazing detailed work on that layout.   Thanks for posting all the photos.  Some great ideas here that I'll come back and use for reference.    

Local chapter of garden railways had 'open houses' this past Saturday so I visited a few.  

It was a rainy day so pictures are limited and on some, the shutter didn't open all the way.

Oxford, Ohio

Allen had a lot of large engines.

Many by MTH.

Located in West Chester, just a few miles from me.

Two large loops.

Thanks for all the photos of Bob's layout. Each one is unique. He has done a remarkable job of capturing each scene. ....Paul

New delivery.

Bought 4 books (3 hard bound and 1 paper back).

With a few exceptions, it seems books can be bought at very inexpensive prices.

I paid 55 bucks, including shipping, for these four from the same seller.

New delivery.

Very nicely done.

Very detailed and delicate mechanism.

I could see someone powering the 'wings'

Some solvaset should remove that GNSF for a GNRW!

That is beautiful.

Gene Anstine

new delivery:

Replacement circuit boards for my two Walther's 130' turntables.

Comes with instructions.  Can replace them while installed on layout, assuming easy access from 'below'.

No charges from Walthers.

As previously mentioned, initial power to the turntable always needed initialization of 'base' before operating correctly but all existing track locations were always available after initialization. 

Unbelievable!

Coming back from flying RC planes, another pilot said there's a great place to get ice cream.  

Stopped there in Franklin, Ohio and there's not only an old freight station there but tracks that run through the street.

With weeds growing between the rails, I'm figuring, abandoned a long time ago.

Walking to the other side, there's 3 bridges and I'm looking at the top of the rail and there's no rust.  

Turns out the track is still used to deliver tank cars for a roofing plant.

Tracks being used and down the middle of the street has to be, as they used to say, rarer than hen's teeth.

Trains at Henry Ford's museum in Dearborn, Michigan.

This month's NMRA Div 7 after meeting layout tour:

G scale:

'dead rail': battery operated engines.

HO layout:

Full size bridge spanning intersection while en route to layouts.

Presentations made at the meeting:

New deliver:

GN sign by Miller.

NMRA Div 7 (MCR region) after meeting layout visits.

Large HO layout modeling the southwest, UP/SP.

Super elevated track.

Second layout is also HO.

Had several blurry pictures and these are the best of them.

Also an N gauge layout.

It only took 38 years!

Found this semaphore around 1980 along an abandoned track that was converted to a bike trail.  Strange how they left an old rusted signal and removed all the tracks, etc.

Anyway, I relieved the structure of it's semaphore and only took 38 years to get some nice lenses for it.

A little difficult removing the bolts that hold the metal rims that secure the lenses.  One lens doesn't have a rim so I caulked it to the semaphore (can't get too picky when it's free!).

No restoration: just left it as I found it.

          AWESOME

New delivery.

Micromark had some sales so I bought some 'needed' stuff.

Woodland light and hub set: just bought the 'controller' and will provide my own power and LED's (set comes with two of them) to check out setting up lighting for buildings, etc.

A small, accurate, digital scale.

Some 'plastic welder': will test this to see if same as MEK, acetone or lacquer thinner.

The thin tube has a 'touch N flow' applicator for applying thin glue, ie 'plastic welder'.

A very small miter box: A cutting saw is sold separately but I thought a razor saw would work but it's too wide so I'm just going to 'run' the razor saw through it to enlarge the slots.

Brass bar clamps.  These things are, usually, very expensive but they had 2 for 10 bucks so I bought 4 more.  

You get what you pay for:

I thought the new clamps were the same as my old ones.

They are shorter by an inch over my old bar clamps (right in picture).  Also, not as heavy stock and just a dial type handle versus my old wing nut type on the old clamps.

Should be good enough, though, for securing some building sides during assembly.  

New delivery:

100 sets of intermountain brass 33" wheels and 6 sets (3 female, 3 male, 50 pins per set)) of connectors for DCC.   These connectors are great: can make an 8 pin connector in only a 1/2 inch width.

New delivery:

Got 5 more TCS WOW 1517 steam decoders with sound and 'keep alive'.

With the present 6 to install gives 11 more engines to work on this winter.

Presently, 13 engines are DCC which will get me to 24 DCC engines out of 99.

Also, bought some 560 canopy glue (RC airplane clear drying) for windows.