Look what you made me do John C... ;-) NEW VIDEO

Big_Boy_4005 posted:

Let's start at the beginning. A very long time ago I saw a print by railroad artist Larry Fisher entitled "The Rainbow". I located a copy of the print, and had it framed.

John C and I had started talking when he started a topic asking if anyone was interested in a possible special run of passenger cars in GN Big Sky Blue. I said I could be talked into buying a set if they were made, but what I was really interested in was building a Rainbow.

There was a set of the three K-line BSB cars on eBay. The price seemed a little crazy. I had them on my watch list for quite a while, but so had John. John's layout is Montana based GN themed, and he already had a set of BSB FP45's. One day, he broke down and pulled the trigger, buying the three cars.

He posted a video of his new cars going around his layout behind the FP's. They looked sharp. The talking continued until John said he knew of another forum member that had the two blue domes for sale, for the spectacular price of $200. It was time to put up or shut up, so I bought them, knowing full well I had just opened a huge can of worms.

The floodgates opened, and eight more cars, two powered Atlas F7's and a K-line dummy B quickly followed.

Today I finally got around to programming the engines. I put the powered A and B on the same TMCC channel, because I have no intention of ever breaking them apart.

The Pennsylvania baggage and combine are scheduled for repaint and body modification, and will be turned into an NP baggage and a BN baggage/dorm with the "hockey stick" stripe. My apologies to all you Pennsy fans.

Here's a short video I shot of its maiden voyage. The two powered units pulled the K-line GN dummy B and ten 21" cars (6 K-line, 2 Atlas and 2 GGD) up the 2% grade of the helix to reach the upper deck. Enjoy!

Elliott:  You Da Man!  Thank you for posting!  :-)  I love these cars.  I just wish there would have been a baggage and RPO.  You can't have it all, but you can want it.  :-)

Thanks John, I couldn't have done it without you and the gauntlet you threw my way. I was a little bummed with the baggage / combo situation, so I just grabbed what I could find that was close, and will do the modifications and paint fairly soon.

Nice.    You need a couple of NP cars.

suzukovich posted:

Nice.    You need a couple of NP cars.

Thanks. The baggage car will be NP.  I have the paint for it on my workbench. I also plan to remove the center skirts and move the doors toward the center, to look like this:

The combo will be BN. More work on this car, changing the windows and doors to make it look like this:

I've heard of a lot of mixed freights, but that's about as "mixed" a passenger consist as I've ever seen!

"The Pennsylvania baggage and combine are scheduled for repaint and body modification, and will be turned into an NP baggage and a BN baggage/dorm with the "hockey stick" stripe. My apologies to all you Pennsy fans."

No problem at all since those cars are not prototypical for the PRR.  They had no lightweight baggage cars.  Early Amtrak trains and early Conrail motive power are certainly interesting for their rainbows of colors. 

gunrunnerjohn posted:

I've heard of a lot of mixed freights, but that's about as "mixed" a passenger consist as I've ever seen!

Well John, that's early Amtrak for you. Anything and everything was possible. That's why I found this train to be so fun and interesting to put together. The Fisher print was done from a photo taken in 1973. By that time some of the cars had been repainted with Amtrak markings, but there were still more that hadn't.

I took a lot of my cues for this train from a couple of DVD's from Pentrex. Early Amtrak Across Wisconsin and Empire Builders to Milwaukee, served as great reference material and were fun to watch.

I like it! The mixed car livery was cool, something I would do. And, the layout is also very cool and well built. It shows a lot of planning as well as talented execution.

I for one look forward to many pictures in the future as the empire grows. 

Yep, early Amtrak did have some "variety", it was a fun exercise.  Of course, it has an impressive layout to run on as well.

Thank you Bob! That makes me feel much better taking Dremel, sandpaper and paint to those two now. There's always a stigma buying something new and then "attacking" it. Knowing that it wasn't that special in the first place helps. I'll post about the process when I get around to doing it.

Big_Boy_4005 posted:

suzukovich posted:

Nice.    You need a couple of NP cars.

Thanks. The baggage car will be NP.  I have the paint for it on my workbench. I also plan to remove the center skirts and move the doors toward the center, to look like this:

The combo will be BN. More work on this car, changing the windows and doors to make it look like this:

 

I was going to say also some Burlington hockey stick cars too. I came across a video of early BN merger and Early Amtrak filmed in and around the Chicago Area. Empire builder ( no UP cars) and California Zephr (with UP Cars). It seams the only thing Amtrak left pure was the Super Chief ( All Santa Fe equipment to include engines.) Also the video really brings out your layout that pics just don't show.  

Yeah Doug, I love Cascade Green. One of my all time favorite colors. This train really is going to be a rainbow, with four shades of green, two shades of blue and red, some orange, gold and silver. Then there's the UP Armour yellow of the late Milwaukee Road diner. I couldn't find a good diner for this train, and the Builders did use some ex Milwaukee equipment early on. Of course I bought that car before the new Lionel catalog came out. Now I've ordered the new BN executive train, with the diner. Oh well.

I think the rainbow is really cool!  And it's prototypical as well.

I rode that era of Amtrak. That's why I painted a WbB FP-45 Amtrak to stand in for SDP-45 (IIRC that's what they were)  You can see a train that looks a lot alike this every Fall when the New River Train runs.....sometimes 20 cars or more....LOTS of different roads....many fallen flags. 

GGD Slumber coach, Atlas CZ cars, K-Line 21 inch cars all headed up by a brand new set of Atlas F7's, that train is worth more than your whole loco fleet

Matt Makens posted:

GGD Slumber coach, Atlas CZ cars, K-Line 21 inch cars all headed up by a brand new set of Atlas F7's, that train is worth more than your whole loco fleet

Matt, that's a bit of a stretch, but I get your drift. Engines were $840, and cars averaged about $160. Got the two GGD's right when Scott started his sale, so I saved 10% plus free shipping. Toss in the GN B unit for $100, and cha-ching right around $2600.

Is it really that much for all that in this day and age? Paying the premium for brand new engines does not guarantee that they will run perfectly on my layout. You proved that. Some of my bargain basement stuff runs just fine. 

BTW, this train has only gone a third of the way around the layout so far. Good news they are Atlas engines. Bad news is they haven't been through the known trouble spots yet.

AMCDAVE, is this the same model with a later paint job as yours? Don