Inspiration

[Gary S]

Oh yeah! Now that is a great fleet of locos. Like you, the CF7 is my favorite. What did you do to install the beacon lights on them? What other mods did you do?

I rebuilt one of my Athearn CF7s as follows... first, i ditched the Athearn chassis. Second, I took a Kato GP35 and shortened the chassis to fit the Atheran Shell. Third, I added a digitrax sound decoder, and put the speaker in the cab. Only thing is, the sound decoder needs to be reprogramed with more accurate sound software. right now, it is of a modern diesel. Only thing is, i don't have the hardware needed for reprogamming it.

Reinhard, I also would like to see a photo of that boxcar in the background.

[faraway]

...What did you do to install the beacon lights on them? What other mods did you do?...

The CF-7s are "out of the box". The beacon is from Athearn. I did install a ZIMO MX630 DCC decoder. Zimo is a small company from Vienna/Austria. They have the best motor handling I know required to tame the Athearn bronco motor. Only the beacon needs to be rewired to be attached to F3 with a resistor of 1kOhm.
They will get some weathering and at least break and MU hoses at the ends.
The round cab is without a beacon. I will have to check the documentation what would be the right road number to add one. A yellow LED is simple to install.

I did not install the A-Line motors in the Santa Fe CF-7 as they have all the same noise characteristics and run alone on the layout. This noise is not acceptable if the CF-7 are mixed with silent e.g. Altas engines. As I run the Florida Central CF-7 together with Altas CSX MP15DC, GP38-2 and Athearn CSX SW1500 those CF-7 engines had to be made silent to match the Atlas engines. They got the A-Line motors.

The Santa Fe engines have a history from the last layout. I did play around with the Indiana Railroad. Athearn has a nice painted CF-7 of the INRD (and GP38-2). One engine is fine but not enough. INRD hat the funny idea to run most of their CF-7 unchanged with the original ATSF paint and even ATSF road numbers. So I got some more CF-7 in ATSF paint for use on the INRD layout.
When I build this current layout the ATSF CF-7 were of no use anymore. That's when the idea of an alternate use of the Florida layout for ATSF CF-7 was born to keep the ATSF CF-7 running.

... a photo of that boxcar in the background.

Here is a closeup of the boxcar in the background.

[Gary S]

Are you saying that the locos came from Athearn with the beacon already installed? I haven't seen any that had them installed. of course, it has been about 4 years since I bought any.

As for the boxcar, I like that shade of faded blue. What did you do to achieve that?

[faraway]

Are you saying that the locos came from Athearn with the beacon already installed? I haven't seen any that had them installed. of course, it has been about 4 years since I bought any.

As for the boxcar, I like that shade of faded blue. What did you do to achieve that?

Yes, the Santa Fe CF-7 with the angeled cab have the beacon already installed. All other CF-7 have no beacon installed by Athearn (Santa Fe round cab. INRD, FCEN).
The boxcar got a "white wash" first. Highly deluded white TAMIYA color will do fine. Very fine sandpaper has been used on lettering.

[Sumpter250]

That box car is very nicely weathered! And......the weeds along the track are excellently done!

[bnsffan]

Hello faraway,

Your layout is a real inspiration for me as I'm looking for something similar in N or in HO. I also had a look on your homepage but I did'nt found any track plan.

Do you have one on hand?

Thanks

[doctorwayne]

Hi bnsffan, and to Big Blue.

Wayne

[faraway]

... I did'nt found any track plan. Do you have one on hand?...

Hello bnsffan,

welcome in the forum.
I did never draw a "nice and clean" plan but I did a quick draft later on.



The left side is the layout you see on the photos. The right side is a staging yard hidden behind my working desk. On top is a balcony door and window. On the bottom side is a hatch in front of the room door.

[Ralph]

That box car is very nicely weathered! And......the weeds along the track are excellently done!

Very nicely done!
Ralph

[faraway]

to install a safety switch at the hatch to interrupt the current about 2 feet before the "Grand Canyon".
I learned it the hard way on my first layout that had a hatch... You do feel really miserable when you see an engine falling down but it is too far away to catch it



A small detail you will hopefully never need or use. It is a simple micro switch with an extended lever.

[Gary S]

Everything is looking good, Reinhard. And good idea on the microswitch... did you really have a loco take the big drop?

Even though my layout will be designed as a point-to-point, I will have a removable bridge across the door of the building just in case I want to simply sit back and watch a train go round. or, if I am on the layout tour, the continuous run would be good. I'll follow your lead and install a switch for when the bridge is not there.

[faraway]

... did you really have a loco take the big drop?...

Yes, is was a Bachmann On30 Consolidation. It was two days old. The external damage was minor but the weight of the motor crushed inside the motor cradle causing more damage to the gear box.

Thank you and all the other posters for the kind words. It is a pleasure to be in this friendly forum.

[Gary S]

And it is a pleasure having you here too!

[bnsffan]

Thanks for your quick reply, faraway.

Your drawing gives me now an idea of the arrangement of the tracks. Could you also give the length and the width of the left part of your layout?

Otherwise, I can imagine your disarray because I lost a new ExactRail Hopper a few weeks ago when it rolled down from the table. It really hurts.

[faraway]

Thanks for your quick reply, faraway.

Your drawing gives me now an idea of the arrangement of the tracks. Could you also give the length and the width of the left part of your layout?

Otherwise, I can imagine your disarray because I lost a new ExactRail Hopper a few weeks ago when it rolled down from the table. It really hurts.

The room and therefor the layout is 4,20m * 2,75m. The left part of the layout is 0,65m and the right part is 0,28m deep (left and right with respect to my drawing).
Here are four photos into each corner done right after the bench work had been completed and my first train did the very first run around.






Btw. The furniture in the room that is actual my home office are kitchen cabinets from Ikea. Kitchen furniture has the perfect basic design to enable a run around layout at an reasonable price.