Switcher Saturday! 1-9-21

Happy SWSAT to all.  Some Chesapeake and Ohio activity this morning.  

Good morning and happy Switcher Saturday.

Happy SwSat everyone!  A CP engine is leaving the station and pulling an excursion train this morning.

Yay SWSat is on!

Wow we are already off to an amazing start this week with a trip to Maine, A Canadian Excursion, Copper mines  and the hills and hollows of C&O country. Great stuff.

This week my new to me Kemtron 2 rail O scale Wabash F4 Mogul came off the local and got pressed into some yard work. I found it by the caboose track.

I see that one of the tender steps needs attention. I have been looking for a nice version of this turn of the century engine for a long time and am happy to have finally found one.

Well that’s it for me this week. As usual I can’t wait to see what you all post.

Hoping all here have a safe, healthy and HAPPY SWSAT!

The biggest, honkin' 0-6-0 I ever saw: Lehigh & New England 207.

Rusty

Happy SWSAT everyone!

As some already know I’m recovering from Covid and Pneumonia.  I’ll try to get some fresh pics next week but for now enjoy these pics from the past.

@lee drennen posted:

Happy SWSAT everyone!

As some already know I’m recovering from Covid and Pneumonia.  I’ll try to get some fresh pics next week but for now enjoy these pics from the past.

Lee, I am so sorry to hear this. Best wishes for a speedy and full recovery.

This picture is great.  It looks like a spur of the moment camera grab. In my mind the most realistic train shot.

@Silver Lake posted:

Lee, I am so sorry to hear this. Best wishes for a speedy and full recovery.

This picture is great.  It looks like a spur of the moment camera grab. In my mind the most realistic train shot.

Thank you. You don’t know how much I appreciate your comments at this time.

Lee, sorry you have to deal with covid pneumonia. Glad you are home running trains. As the days go by I think of our train hobby as life support!
safe passage to you, thanks for the cool footage.

Lee, great video and wonderful photos! I am glad you have them on hand to post them! You take care and things will get back to normal sooner then later! You know, I hear that model trains help in the recovery of all sorts of issues !

Lee I hope you do have a speedy recovery.

Penn Central SW8 8616 switches a cut of coal hoppers:

Tom

Andy, when you switched to two rail scale was that because the closest club to you was scale or were you attracted by other aspects of scale modeling?

Johan those scenes look so realistic.  Your backdrops, scenery and weathering are impeccable.

Happy SWSat!

Another great start this week. Looks like everybody got up early today.

@lee drennen- glad to hear you are on the mend. Either of those illnesses is bad enough, but both WOW!

I've been on self-quarantine since the 30th due to contact tracing. No symptoms fortunately so I'm just waiting for my test results so I can go back to work hopefully Monday.

I caught these guy's sleeping in the yard the other day. Traffic has been slow on the RSJ&B lately due to ROW work.

Everyone have a great weekend.

Bob

Lee, I hope that you have a speedy recovery. BTW I  live your IHB  switcher.  When I was a teenager,  we lived in Brookfield Illinois,  about a mile and a half from the 4 track BRC  main where the IHB had trackage rights, right behind the big EMD  plant. I would walk to the tracks and watch the transfer drags pass by, usually headed by 2 SW's. My high school was in Western Springs and at least once a week the bus would have to wait for a train to pass.

Morning guys, as some of you know my ES44AC went down and while it was down I needed to move the train around that was stuck back by the main station. I thought what the heck I will try this little switcher to see if i could just move it around where I could reach stuff. To my delight it had no problem. As you can see there is a engine there, but it is a nonpowered engine.

There were a total of 18 cars. The cool part was that the claw hooked right up with the Kadee on the front of the dummy engine!

Thanks you all for the well wishes.

Bill. I’m glad you like that old Switcher it one of my favorite pieces and thanks for sharing that store.

Mike. I think you are right I feel more relaxed running trains now to get the mojo to do it

Joe  thanks for the well wishes it means a lot and is uplifting

Bob  I hope you can dodge the bullet  and that a great pic

Tom. I always enjoy your PC stuff nice video  

@lee drennen please add me to your list of well wishers.   I hope this little thread brightens your day.

@mike g. Sorry about ES44AC.  However,  in the grand tradition of Switcher locomotives doing all duties as assigned,  yours just rescued a mainline train!! Very cool that the kadee did the job.  I have some kadee's on order for a project and hearing that makes me smile!

                                             American Flyer #21004 Pennsy B6 0-6-0 switcher from 1957.

@jhz563 posted:

@lee drennen please add me to your list of well wishers.   I hope this little thread brightens your day.

@mike g. Sorry about ES44AC.  However,  in the grand tradition of Switcher locomotives doing all duties as assigned,  yours just rescued a mainline train!! Very cool that the kadee did the job.  I have some kadee's on order for a project and hearing that makes me smile!

Thanks, I sent the board to GGG and everything is up and running just fine now! I have been working on switching everything over to Kadee but things have slowed, Now I know I will probably leave the auto couplers on my switchers alone! LOL Man those little switchers sure have some power behind them!

@Leroof posted:

Lee, sorry you have to deal with covid pneumonia. Glad you are home running trains. As the days go by I think of our train hobby as life support!
safe passage to you, thanks for the cool footage.

Thank you you are so right this Hobby is good therapy

John I will Thank you very much and you don’t know how much  I and the rest of the gang appreciate you taking the time every Saturday Morning out of your day to post this thread I really enjoy it.

@coach joe posted:

Johan those scenes look so realistic.  Your backdrops, scenery and weathering are impeccable.

Joe. Thank you. I have now had a good feeling about building.

Johan

@lee drennen posted:

Happy SWSAT everyone!

As some already know I’m recovering from Covid and Pneumonia.  I’ll try to get some fresh pics next week but for now enjoy these pics from the

Lee. Stay strong. Here in Finland, Covid-19 has not been released as badly as, for example, in our neighboring country, Sweden, where there are 20 times more deaths. Hopefully that terrible virus will soon be defeated.

Johan

Good afternoon fellow switcher fans!!  Great photos, videos, and info from all of you!  Thanks JHZ563 for notching  out the throttle and getting us rolling today  Welcome back Lee D. it's so wonderful to see your posts again!!  Wishing you total wellness!

Today on the Free State Junction Railway the company photographer has been out & about and snapped this photos of a B&O Docksider doing its thing.  Also a couple photos taken early this morning, at first light,  shots of a MA & PA SW1 heading up the main to a switching assignment destination.   Have a most wonderful weekend everyone!  Be safe = Be well!!

TALES OF THE DOCKSIDER

January 9, 2021 is a date the crew of NYC shop switcher X-8688 will always remember.  One of their worst fears came true; they struck an auto at grade crossing!

A VW Beetle stalled on the crossing and the driver was unable to restart it.  The Docksider, fortunately, is no speedster, so the beatniks occupying the VW were able to get out before the collision.  The fire dept and MA State Police responded as a precaution, but I’m happy to report there were no injuries.

X-8688’s crew has a story to tell when they get home tonight!

Lee, let me join the chorus in wishing you a speedy recovery!

John

@lee drennen posted:

Thanks you all for the well wishes.

Bill. I’m glad you like that old Switcher it one of my favorite pieces and thanks for sharing that store.

Mike. I think you are right I feel more relaxed running trains now to get the mojo to do it

Joe  thanks for the well wishes it means a lot and is uplifting

Bob  I hope you can dodge the bullet  and that a great pic

Tom. I always enjoy your PC stuff nice video  

Great to hear you are recovering, Lee. Covid is a killer; I have lost three friends to it. You are very lucky! Keep up the good work and stay on track!

Uh-oh, looks like X-8688's crew are in for a company mandated drug screening and a bit of paperwork. Hopefully they can scrape the guts of that beetle of the pilot beam and get back to their usual routine soon.

Remember if you drive trains long enough,  it's not if you will hit a car, it's when!  I used to run tourist trains with a 40 yr railroading veteran who liked to remind me that 1. We win all ties, 2. You really just need to watch out for those trucks with the flammable symbol on the sides

Fortunately,  I believe RR/motor vehicle accidents have continued to trend down.

Milk train !

@coach joe posted:

Andy, when you switched to two rail scale was that because the closest club to you was scale or were you attracted by other aspects of scale modeling?

Joe,

I had realized that living in the city I could never have the size of layout I wanted. I am very committed to O scale and the size is the one for me. I admit I started in HO in the late 80's but left it behind when I went to college in the early 1990's. I am on the younger end of the o scalers I know. The nostalgia I have for Lionel is really of the MPC era of it. The part most people don't like. For instance my holy grail set is the Black Cave Flyer set with all of the cardboard Dungeons and Dragons inspired back drop scenery from 1982.  I know I have the collecting/hording gene so I unsuccessfully fight that. The MPC scout sized boxcars is the one I let myself have.

I am a person who makes things and I want to refine my skills to be better at that. My AP Civics Teacher in High School was an O scaler who built non running display models in brass for the Smithsonian. The way I found this out was one time I went to visit him with a friend who had a late paper to hand in. He invited us in and showed us his machine shop. I had absolutely no idea that he was the guy who made some of the models I admired at the museum. So yes someday I want to at least be able to make my own operable scale model of an engine I choose.

I do really enjoy the club. I had not been in one before aside from a more collecting based one in So Cal. I can get there on a Port Authority bus and it is my big social outing for the week. That said it has been almost a year since I have been to my club and I have been enjoying researching and scratch building cars this year. I have not made an engine yet but taking them apart and refurbing them has taught me a lot. Also I have found an online group that is sharing CAD knowledge and doing 3D prints of them.

Sorry long winded answer. @coach joe

@taycotrains I currently live about a block from the former NYC Upper Westside milk yard. For whatever reason it is next to impossible to find much info on it.

Lionel tmcc 0-8-0. Love that whistle!

@jhz563 posted:

Remember if you drive trains long enough,  it's not if you will hit a car, it's when!  I used to run tourist trains with a 40 yr railroading veteran who liked to remind me that 1. We win all ties, 2. You really just need to watch out for those trucks with the flammable symbol on the sides

Fortunately,  I believe RR/motor vehicle accidents have continued to trend down.

Mr Z,

Interesting comment on the tourist railroad.  As I may have mentioned,  I was an engineer on the C and O in the 1970s all the while attending college.  After graduation, other employment opportunities ensued.  

I worked mainly in yards on switching crews, imagine that, or on locals with trains to other yards or industries.

Our local runs were at lower speeds than road crews but I still had many close calls at road crossings.  Fortunately, no accidents.  I still remember standing up pulling on the horn cord, as if to make it louder, for near collisions with automobiles.  It’s hard to believe what people would do to avoid waiting at railroad crossings.

i

I’ll play!

@Fendermain posted:

Mr Z,

Interesting comment on the tourist railroad.  As I may have mentioned,  I was an engineer on the C and O in the 1970s all the while attending college.  After graduation, other employment opportunities ensued.  

I worked mainly in yards on switching crews, imagine that, or on locals with trains to other yards or industries.

Our local runs were at lower speeds than road crews but I still had many close calls at road crossings.  Fortunately, no accidents.  I still remember standing up pulling on the whistle chord, as if to make it louder, for near collisions with automobiles.  It’s hard to believe what people would do avoid waiting at railroad crossings.

Omg, in the space of a few years I had a Winnebago pull out in front my train one time, and another time was coming uphill into a grade crossing with the safeties popping off and the whistle screaming and at the last second a car ran in front of me so close the rear corner of the auto had to have been in the space between the front of the coupler and the pilot beam. ( The car came from the opposite side of the cab.  The fireman and brakeman riding along had called all clear.  As I was getting into the crossing the guys started shouting.  Since I had one hand the whistle,  the other killed the throttle.  By the time I got my hand to the brake to try to slow down it was pretty much over as the car had emerged across the front of the engine and was exiting the crossing.   And I was not not slow with my hands!  I ended up barely touching the brakes and rolling through the crossing.   The passengers never knew how close it was.)

When backing up we had a conductor on the rear with a full size rr headlight,  air horn and an emergency brake.  As we got close to a crossing at night one time I remember hearing " four cars to crossings,  crossing clear all right back.", Soon the horn would start sounding and in between the first and second blast I heard " Two cars to crossing,  crossing clear,  alright back."  The horn would continue and the I heard the same thing for 1 car to crossing, and 1/2 car.

The last horn was longer than usual.

The next radio transmission I heard was " That guy had brown hair, brown eyes,  and an earring."  Apparently the car dashed in front as we were entering the crossing,  too fast for the conductor to dump the air anyway.

Unbelievably, I never actually had an accident.   There are some things I don't miss.

@jhz563

Unbelievably, I never actually had an accident.   There are some things I don't miss.

Mine is a little different story.  After I graduated from pharmacy school,  I did a 3 year stint at a hospital a little north of the Burlington's "racetrack ". One day a case came in to the emergency room.  A young woman got off a westbound commuter train and walked to the crossing.  After her train started to move,  she walked behind the last car .....and into the face of an eastbound train.  Witnesses said the gates were still down and the bells were ringing.  She failed to  heed the horn , and had the top of her skull split open.  At the time, pharmacists had to respond to the e/r to manage drug therapy during all "code" cases. I was on duty and assisted on her. Surprisingly she lasted nearly 2 hours after she was brought in.

Really gruesome site.

@mike g. posted:

.... LOL Man those little switchers sure have some power behind them!

In that regard,  here's that Kennicott Copper engine again.   The mess was cleaned up,  the cattle car was set off in a siding for transfer to a stock yard, and the crew and loco were pressed into service to finish the duties of the local.   The first 3 cars behind the crane are diecast and extremely heavy.  Despite a little growling the venerable K-line unit handled the duty without a problem.