12-16-2008, 10:29 AM
iis612 Wrote:Oh yeah, I almost forgot to mention... Barney has quite the set of stones on him...
I didn't see an ashpit in your engine servicing area. How do you incorporate that into operations?
Matt
Dutch courage, Matt.
Unfortunately, there was no room for an ashpit, at least none where it would look even half-plausible. While the entire service area is about 10' long, it's quite narrow (15" at the turntable). The railroad owns only five locomotives of its own, but there's not even a roundhouse for them - the two major buildings in the scene are shop buildings, meant for repairs to cars and locos. Even fitting a loco into the shop is a tight squeeze, and the one track isn't really practical for use at all. In the very first photo in this thread, all the locos to the left of the picture shouldn't even be there: the one at the extreme left is on the track meant for snowplows and the wreck crane, and the line of locos on the adjacent track is blocking access to the Shop Stores Department. In the fifth picture, the loco at the centre of the frame is sitting on the only really useable table track, and it's normally used by the Bee, the Northshore's gas-electric car. While the area is great for staging pictures, it's not really a useable terminal area. As the sole operator, though, I generally park the locos, with their trains, wherever they happen to be when I'm finished operating for the day. Even when the second level is built, the roundhouse will have a lot of stalls that will be too short (it'll be placed in a corner, with most of the back of it lopped off) to hold a loco. Even though almost all of my diesels are gone, I'll still probably have more locos than I need to sustain operations, and some may have to go.
When I build the engine terminal on the second level, there'll be an ashpit incorporated into the coaling tower area and it will include a track for cinder cars, too. Perhaps I should convert to oil burners on the Erie Northshore? Nah!
Wayne