New York Central EMD GP9 #6001 is an MTH Premier model (20-20549-1 with PS3) listed in the 2015 Volume 2 catalog at MSRP $479.95 and shown here on my 12’-by-8’ model railroad.

The New York Central Railroad rostered 176 GP9 locomotives in class DRS-9. They were built between 1954 and 1957 and had a 16-cylinder 567C turbocharged diesel engine with 1750 horsepower. Locomotive weight was 259,500 pounds and tractive effort was 64,750 pounds with a maximum speed of 65 miles-per hour. 3,626 were built by EMD at LaGrange, Illinois between 1954 through 1959.

MELGAR

Good morning to all my fellow Switcher Saturday fans, and thanks, Patrick, for getting us off to our usual great start in the wee hours of the morning.

These videos show an MTH PS3 Pennsylvania RS1 road switcher hauling a long mixed freight:

Arnold

A NYO&W 44 tonner delivers a load of coal to a customer in Middletown……

Have a great and safe weekend, folks…….and safe travel to all who are making the journey to York.

Peter

Good morning to all you folks out there in Switcherland!  Let us give thanks we’re not among the people harmed by the recent storms and can participate in our favorite Forum topic.

Patrick, thanks for “saving” me.  I didn’t have a chance to prepare some new material this week, but I just happen to have a large and small switcher comparison on hand.  The subjects of my post are my Lionel MPC era Southern Pacific Fairbanks Morse H-24-66 Trainmaster and my Williams Denver and Rio Grande General Electric 44 tonner.

The FM was a gift from a friend who never ran it.  After lubing some very dry gears, I found it’s a prodigious puller with its two Pullmor motors.  Strangely, for a loco that was probably near the top of the Lionel lineup, it’s not equipped with a horn.

My 44 tonner, Patrick, like yours, isn’t a good low speed runner and is prone to jerky starts and stops.  I learned you can mitigate this problem by pulling heavy cars or a longer train.  My DR&GW model pulls ten cars with ease around my O31 curves.

John

Here is a Rock Island road switcher made by Weaver.

MTH - Santa Fe Railking FM H10-44

Lionel's new 0-4-0 A5 pushing some cars around.

Good morning SwSat!  My switchers range from Lionel 0-4-0, MTH 44 ton, Marx 70 ton to MTH H10-44.  Also in the yard waiting for work are an 0-6-0, Alco S2, SW900, SW1500 & an MP15.

Have a great day!

And a good switcher Saturday to all!  Here is my 44 tonner moving some freight into the sidetrack -

@PRR Shawn posted:

Lionel's new 0-4-0 A5 pushing some cars around.

She looks gorgeous. How’s she run?  I was thinking about picking up the LIRR model.

@Strap Hanger posted:

She looks gorgeous. How’s she run?  I was thinking about picking up the LIRR model.

She runs great, nice and smooth. I'm very happy with it.

Happy SWSat!

Still having fun running my new NYC 0-6-0. So much so, that I pulled all of my diesels off the layout and I'm running just steam. Not all shown today but I have a K-line PRR 0-4-0, Lionel Reading LC+2.0 0-6-0t, Lionel PRR PWC 0-6-0, and a MTH NYC 0-4-0t.

Have a great weekend!

Bob

The switchers on my Christmas layout seem to like over and under

- walt

@Dave Ripp. posted:

Here is a Rock Island road switcher made by Weaver.

Nice one Dave thanks for sharing

Happy SWSAT everyone. Running late this morning after feeding the Sheep and the other animals so I thought I would make a quick video for SWSAT. Sorry about my Rooster crowing in the back ground. Enjoy your weekend.

@walt rapp posted:

The switchers on my Christmas layout seem to like over and under

- walt

Walt I like that first pic thanks for sharing

@RSJB18 posted:

Happy SWSat!

Still having fun running my new NYC 0-6-0. So much so, that I pulled all of my diesels off the layout and I'm running just steam. Not all shown today but I have a K-line PRR 0-4-0, Lionel Reading LC+2.0 0-6-0t, Lionel PRR PWC 0-6-0, and a MTH NYC 0-4-0t.

Have a great weekend!

Bob

Bob neat little Steam Switchers. Thanks for sharing

@Putnam Division posted:

A NYO&W 44 tonner delivers a load of coal to a customer in Middletown……

Have a great and safe weekend, folks…….and safe travel to all who are making the journey to York.

Peter

Peter that’s a nice looking Hopper. Glad you shared it.

Today I have a Railking Chessie SW9 switcher with calf unit being tested on the layout before heading to York this week.  Will also have its sister two units in C&O available at York.

@MELGAR posted:

New York Central EMD GP9 #6001 is an MTH Premier model (20-20549-1 with PS3) listed in the 2015 Volume 2 catalog at MSRP $479.95 and shown here on my 12’-by-8’ model railroad.

The New York Central Railroad rostered 176 GP9 locomotives in class DRS-9. They were built between 1954 and 1957 and had a 16-cylinder 567C turbocharged diesel engine with 1750 horsepower. Locomotive weight was 259,500 pounds and tractive effort was 64,750 pounds with a maximum speed of 65 miles-per hour. 3,626 were built by EMD at LaGrange, Illinois between 1954 through 1959.

MELGAR

Mel always enjoy your post. I especially like the first pic looks like it’s in the Eastern states some where. Thanks for sharing.

@Arnold D. Cribari posted:

Good morning to all my fellow Switcher Saturday fans, and thanks, Patrick, for getting us off to our usual great start in the wee hours of the morning.

These videos show an MTH PS3 Pennsylvania RS1 road switcher hauling a long mixed freight:

Arnold

Arnold enjoyed your videos thanks for sharing.

Thought I would wait this Saturday before I posted anything! LOL

Sitting here just waiting for orders!

@lee drennen -  Lee I just wanted to say how cool it is for me to know someone who feeds sheep, plays with Lionel and has a rooster crowing in the background.  I am a lifetime "city boy" and the closest I ever got to a farm was the Children's zoo and the picture of a cow on the milk carton. I love it!!  

Now for today, my switcher is the Williams 44 Ton center cab , this one in the livery of Southern Railway.  Southern is a common visitor to my railroad since I set it in Savannah, Ga where we have a family summer place.  Here we see the brakeman helping to get the locomotive ready for the day's chores.

Here she is working the mornings switching assignment in the industrial area near the "Door and Sash" factory

Best Wishes everyone

Don

My wife and I took a trip up to Honesdale, PA to take a ride the Stourbridge Line fall foliage train. I was surprised at one of the engines being used - an ugly duckling - an EMD BL2. The former Bangor & Maine #54. I had never seen a real one. The BL2 brought us back to Honesdale while an EMD FP7 took us down to Hawley.

Charlie

Here's a photo of the FP7.

Lionel Pennsy GP-9 picking up some tank cars

I was trying to decide what to run today; and then UPS dropped off this giraffe car. So I decided to add it to the other cars waiting to go to the Christmas ready room.  So here’s my WBB PRR 44 tonner with a reindeer, elephant and giraffe in tow. Engineer Burt is hoping that he isn’t switched off the main; then he would have. to handle a watering stop.

@Don McErlean posted:

@lee drennen -  Lee I just wanted to say how cool it is for me to know someone who feeds sheep, plays with Lionel and has a rooster crowing in the background.  I am a lifetime "city boy" and the closest I ever got to a farm was the Children's zoo and the picture of a cow on the milk carton. I love it!!  

Now for today, my switcher is the Williams 44 Ton center cab , this one in the livery of Southern Railway.  Southern is a common visitor to my railroad since I set it in Savannah, Ga where we have a family summer place.  Here we see the brakeman helping to get the locomotive ready for the day's chores.

Here she is working the mornings switching assignment in the industrial area near the "Door and Sash" factory

Best Wishes everyone

Don

Thanks Don for your complement. It was a beautiful Early morning so I left the door open to the garage but I forgot about the Rooster going to crow while recording. The 44 tonner looks great your really getting good capturing some great scenes. Thanks for sharing.

Posted on here many times over the last few weeks, but my newest and close to oldest locomotive in a Walther's two rail 0-6-0 locomotive from circa 1941.

@cpowell posted:

My wife and I took a trip up to Honesdale, PA to take a ride the Stourbridge Line fall foliage train. I was surprised at one of the engines being used - an ugly duckling - an EMD BL2. The former Bangor & Maine #54. I had never seen a real one. The BL2 brought us back to Honesdale while an EMD FP7 took us down to Hawley.

Charlie

Here's a photo of the FP7.

Hard to pass up a F body diesel but as a dedicated BL-2 fan I'm all in

Thanks for sharing Charlie.

My Atlas RS-1 is heading out to do some track cleaning.

@cpowell posted:

My wife and I took a trip up to Honesdale, PA to take a ride the Stourbridge Line fall foliage train. I was surprised at one of the engines being used - an ugly duckling - an EMD BL2. The former Bangor & Maine #54. I had never seen a real one. The BL2 brought us back to Honesdale while an EMD FP7 took us down to Hawley.

Charlie

Here's a photo of the FP7.

Charlie - Thanks for posting these pics .. especially the BL2!!!   As the old saying goes " beauty is in the eye of the beholder" and when I laid eyes on  your pic of the BL2 pulling the Stourbridge Lion I saw nothing but pure beauty!!!  I love the EMD BL2!!!!  Now I have a fantastic reason to revisit Honesdale, Pa.!  

By the way, I have a very good friend whose  great great great grandfather was the engineer on the original Stourbridge Lion.  

I like the "large and small" theme for today, Patrick, and I'm going "large" for today's SWSAT Sunday supplement. Though I featured my MTH PS-1 Train Master last week, I'm featuring her again because she's gotten "new and improved" LED headlights. Here she is pulling a "Blue Comet" excursion featuring beer for the lounge car and various stops along the way:

The new headlamps are, once again, Evan Designs 5mm solid "bulb" LED 7-19V universal kits, originally suggested to me by @Sitka and @WesternPacific2217. I'm not sure why MTH set the lighting up as they did on this loco, but the original headlights consisted of GOW bulbs that, supplied with less than 1.5VDC, were the dimmest of all the lights on the loco. This had always bothered me. Before and after:

It took some doing to find a good power source on the "motherboard" which turned out to be an open socket associated with the battery charging system allowing me to avoid cutting any wires. An added bonus is that the 20 mA headlight LEDs serve to monitor the BCR charging without affecting its performance. The only downside is that the LEDs are not directional, but the far more realistic intensity is well worth both headlights being on while the locomotive is in operation, especially when running at night. I also had to adjust the lighting mounts on the chassis to get the LED's perfectly aligned with the headlight openings on the shell from which I removed the lenses. I stayed with chassis-mount for the LEDs so that the shell could still be lifted completely off for routine maintenance.

Bottom line, though, is that I'm even happier with my Train Master now!

@cpowell posted:

Unless I saw one as a child in KC MO/KS and just didn't know what I was seeing... I've never seen a BL2 in reality. Pictures only.

They are a very interesting engine and historically significant. (The transition engine between EMD's car body F types and their hood GP types.)

I would like to see one up close and personal "one of these days".

I've read in railroad mags that the crews that ran them thought of the BL2 as "kept everything bad about a covered wagon, and made it worse.".

LOL!

I can see how they would think that!

Andre