Weekend Photo Fun 1-29-25-??

Working the farm fields.

Rail service to the North Pole.

The city zoo.

Photos and video show my Railking Imperial model (30-1866-1) of Raritan River Rail Road #20, a USRA 0-6-0 steam switcher with PS3 priced at $479.95. The train is passing through the narrow cut on the O-36 inner loop of my 12’-by-8’ model railroad.

The layout was originally built with an open area in the middle of the table but I didn’t like the way it looked, so I filled in the center area. Since the O-36 loop is so small, I tried to fill it with interesting scenery (the rock cut) to make the small size of the loop less apparent. I run small locomotives and short slow trains on it.

MELGAR

Some cabooses I custom built and painted;  Top photo a MTH caboose that I painted to match a custom run engine and freight cars by the CTTA club. Other cabooses are ones that I have custom built from the original plans for real cabooses that were custom designed and built locally by a local short line railway, they still use these cabooses in active service (though a different paint scheme now). I cut out the cabooses from sheet styrene with bracing. The blue caboose I built on an old 1960's O scale atlas frame and the yellow one I just finished; I built on a MTH caboose frame. The wood piece photo 3 showing the saw is a jig design I used for cutting vertical blind pieces for curved roof pieces, at an angle to fit the sloped cupola. Photo 5 finished caboose with our CTTA club custom run engine. Last photo peanut and jam stickers I made for box cars for my grandson for his trainset, guess what his favorite sandwich is!

I swapped some Williams trucks under an MTH E unit to get away from the blind rear axle plastic wheels. It was a bit windy and got a little camera shake, sorry about that.