In the Northeast

[faraway]

There was enough time to play around with the triangle area while I was waiting for the diner. It was natural for a ramp and a team track to place a truck with trailer in that area. I had to realize that there is simply no space and therefor no need for another building e.g. a diner. The truck and an ice cream dealer (right hand) easily filled that space up. The diner plan in the triangle has been dropped.


But the diner arrived and it is a nice one. And I have got the garbage dumpsters! That demands for a new home. The old plumber in the center background was exactly what I was looking for. So I did another building swap. Please see the garbage dumpster at the left hand of the property behind wood fences. The gates are open and waiting for the garbage truck. I will add some garbage during the next detailing session.

[faraway]

100 percent US garbage made from the last page of the Walthers June 2010 flyer

[Trucklover]

100 percent US garbage made from the last page of the Walthers June 2010 flyer

Too funny

Great work!

[Gary S]

Nice job Reinhard. Alot of restaurants get stuff in five gallon buckets - so there are usually some of them around the dumpsters. Also, some card board boxes a la Kurt would fit right in.

[Ralph]

The dumpster scene is terrific! I love the diner too.
Ralph

[mountaingoatgreg]

The dumpster looks great you need some stray cats or racoons patroling for scraps. Maybe even a poor employee out there with a broom trying to clean the mess up

[P5se Camelback]

And let us not forget the target of the feral cats and errant racoons ... the ubiquitous over-stuffed 30-gallon black plastic bags that fill the dumpster and pile up next to it.

Great work, Reinhard ... you ROCK!

...but the sign on that diner ... well ...

Maybe the diner will have "new management" in the near future ... owners who will name the place after the street or the town.

All of you "Shelf/Switching Layout" guys are are making me think about a change in philosophy ... but I have so many different wheel arrangements/classes of Camelbacks ... :?

[faraway]

Thanks for the friendly words.
I knew I have forgotten something important. The black garbage backs! They are as American as Cadillac and steaks. The problem is their shape. They are very round and like a bowl. The model bags available are flat like wheat bags.
The sign of the diner is just "out of the box". I should really invent something more appropriate.

Yesterday was a bad day for the open house. It has been torn down... It was to bothersome to have a long building in the immediate foreground blocking the view to the left side of the layout sitting in my chair.

That gives another open area. Together with the open areas next to blue whale and the triangle area is the overall impression of the layout changing. All brick buildings have been gone. The backdrop has been updated to light and flat buildings too. It is much lighter and open. I did therefor a big move and call it "In the south" now. Located somewhere in southern TX or CA (Two state trooper patrol cars are TX). The CSX is no longer serving the rails. The engines are mainly SP and some ATSF.
The reason for SP and ATSF is purely my taste. I like the bloody nose and blue bonnet. UP yellow is somewhat boring to me and the new BNSF colors are simply ugly. UP and BNSF are so sloppy in repainting there is no need to run dedicated UP and BNSF engines. Even BNSF is not putting it's "BNSF" label on all cabs of ATSF painted engines. That provides also the loophole of a not so precise defined date of the layout. Pre merger, during merge or somewhat later.
May be I should open a new thread named "In the South" and close this thread "In the North East"?

Another area I am thinking about is the GERN facility. The elevator and the silos are fine. The problem are the gray industry buildings. When I look in Google etc for larger grain/food processing plants i find huge very plain concrete structures (e.g. this Cargill facility http://web.userinstinct.com/7602885-cargill-inc.htm ). They look massive and have close to no openings, windows etc. I am afraid a styrene wall 20" * 5" will not represent such a structure. It will be styrene and nothing else. Most of this structures are not painted. It is plain concrete. That concrete has a very special structure It got when it has been made. I have no idea how to do that in a model. I am uncertain if color like I did it on the silos is good enough to make a sheet of styrene into a wall of concrete.

lots to do!

[Gary S]

Yesterday was a bad day for the open house. It has been torn down...

You about gave me a heart attack! :o

An "open house" is a term which commonly means having people visit to look at your home or something in your home such as a your layout. So, my first thought was that you had some people over to view your layout. Then you said it was a bad day so you tore it down... and I thought you meant the layout! I was thinking "You've got to be kidding me! Surely you didn't dismantle the layout!"

Then it dawned on me that you are talking about the open building!

The black garbage backs! The problem is their shape. They are very round and like a bowl.

I forgot about those too. Maybe some Sculpey clay could be used to make them? Use your fingers to shape the clay. I haven't used that stuff before, but I seem to remember you can put it in the oven at a low temperature to harden it once you have made the shape.

Located somewhere in southern TX

Woohoo!

The engines are mainly SP and some ATSF.

woohoo!

lots to do!

I've said it before, but your dedication for the hobby is amazing. I am thinking I need to stock up my layout building with a bunch of styrene and glue, buy you an airline ticket, fly you over to Texas, and lock you up in the building for a week- the layout would be populated with structures in no time!

[faraway]

... You about gave me a heart attack! :o
... Maybe some Sculpey clay could be used to make them? Use your fingers to shape the clay. I haven't used that stuff before, but I seem to remember you can put it in the oven at a low temperature to harden it once you have made the shape.
...

The engines are mainly SP and some ATSF.

woohoo!

Gary,
it was not my intention to force a heart attack. Just my careless use of your language
I know what kind of clay you mean. That is a good idea.
SP is no problem but ATSF... they may come from Galveston into Harris county...

[Russ Bellinis]

One thing to keep in mind which might make the ATSF easier to model is that by the time of the BNSF merger all of the CF7's were sold off to short lines, none left in Santa Fe. The only ones left in "Santa Fe" livery were those used by the LAJ. The LAJ pretty much stopped using the CF7's when the Santa Fe sent the cng units over in the 1990's. They just sent the last of the CF7's to Texas to be sold off this year. That is why I'm going to model the LAJ in the 1980's. I don't care for the CNG units, not nearly as much character as the CF7's.

[faraway]

One thing to keep in mind which might make the ATSF easier to model is that by the time of the BNSF merger all of the CF7's were sold off to short lines, none left in Santa Fe. The only ones left in "Santa Fe" livery were those used by the LAJ. The LAJ pretty much stopped using the CF7's when the Santa Fe sent the cng units over in the 1990's. They just sent the last of the CF7's to Texas to be sold off this year. That is why I'm going to model the LAJ in the 1980's. I don't care for the CNG units, not nearly as much character as the CF7's.

That is a dilemma for me. I like the CF7 and have a whole family of them (Indiana railroad, Florida Midland and Santa Fe). Santa Fa sold the last one in 1987. Therefor would 1980 the perfect year for my layout if there were not two other points
- I love high cube boxcars and all door boxcars
- I have extreme good years and hate old Athearn RTR drives but love Atlas drives
That does not match with the CF7. My bypass is the invention of the fictional CSTR class 3 railroad to run some CF7 after 1990. However, I prefer Atlas engines when ever possible and when I do a longer session. Athearn RTR is to noisy to be fun. I did convert the motors of a lot of the CF7 but not in the Santa Fe engines only the IND and Florida engines got an costly upgrade. It was also my fault mot to understand the LAJ and Santa Fe early enough to buy LAJ and no Santa Fe.

My layout needs 6 engines to be full operational (the staging yard has 6 tracks). I am currently running 2 P2K Santa Fe GP30, 1 Atlas Santa Fe GP38, 1 Atlas Santa Fe GE B23 and 2 -3 Santa Fe CF7 to fill up. I am waiting for three Atlas Santa Fe GP38 shells to be mounted on Trainman CSS drives to complete the Santa Fe conversion.

The NRE (expected soon...) are the next problem. I have to choose between UP and BNSF. BNSF would be the natural choice but I do not like the new BNSF colors.

ps. My free internet web space provider is adding new hardware and moving lots of data. He failed miserably with his plan and has major outages. His home page (http://rubpeters.ru.funpic.de/) says " Zugriff nicht möglich " / Access impossible... It is hard to complain if it is free....

[Gary S]

Reinhard, my CF7s are pretty noisy too when compared to the Atlas engines I have. For one of them, I took a Kato GP35 chassis and cut it and spliced it back together to the proper wheelbase for the CF7. That works out pretty good. The fuel tank is an issue though. I haven't taken the time to fabricate a new one, I just shortened the GP35 tank and use that. Not prototypical but perhaps someday...

On another CF7, I did a remotor but it still has some noise, I guess from the trucks. Perhaps I need to do the Pearl Drops trick to smooth the gears out. I've heard that doesn't always work however.

Back in the old days, RailPower Products made the CF7 shell and supposedly an Overland F7 chassis would fit it. I don't really know much about that, but you and I sure need to find out. Are there any quality F7 chassis that the CF7 body will fit on?

As for now, my sound-equipped Atlas GP38, P2K GP30 and P2K GP7 are at the forefront. I sure would like to get a silky smooth chassis for the remaining CF7s.

Anyone have any knowledge of what chassis was to be used for the old RailPower CF7 shells?

[faraway]

Gary, my key problem with Santa Fe are the missing switchers of the newer generations. All the nice models of SW1000/15000, MP15DC and MP15AC do not help at all with Santa Fe. Their last "switcher" was the CF-7 (with the lousy RTR motor). While it is prototypical to do switching this days with a GP38-2, for a small layout like mine the above mentioned switchers are a better fit. That is the reason why I am constantly switching forth and back with the rolling stock. I have a complete set of small UP/SP (SSW) engines that fit wonderful on my layout.
ebay in Germany has currently a nice selection of older Santa Fe switchers in the Zebra layout. But that would be a huge jump back I do not want to do. When Santa Fe started the CF-7 conversion in the early 1970'th those Zebra engines must be in active duty at least until 1975 may be 1980. And they did not have the Zebra layout until their end. Most of them got the blue/yellow design with the smaller yellow ends. How does my current layout fit into 1975? Do I have to do another set of buildings to fit on the time line in between "old brick" and "white shoe boxes" buildings? And I would have to sacrifice my Gunderson high cube cars and the wonderful all door boxcars; and some automobiles too (e.g. small U-Haul truck)
Putting CSTR decals on the CF-7 cabs and declaring the foundation of a fictional RR is not the real solution of that dilemma. It is a bad compromise to run CF-7 in Santa Fe colors after 1990.
There is no simple solution to have it all...

ps. I do not mention and ignored so far the UP/SP and the BN/ATSF mergers because in both cases lots of engines are still running in the old colors and/or road numbers. Only one of my Santa Fe GP30 has a BNSF patch. All other engines are pure UP, SP, SSW or Santa Fe. That is not totally correct with respect of the single engine that might have been patched or painted in the mean time but it is good enough to have a matching optical pattern until the early 200x'th.

[Russ Bellinis]

Reinhard, here are a couple of pages from a friend's web site that might help make the Athearns run better. His old Athearn blue box locomotives run almost as well as Kato & Atlas. The Athearn motors still draw a bit more power than can motors, but I did the mods he recommended and found that the amp draw on my Athearn motors dropped to less than 1/2 of what they were before I tuned them up. I also take the Athearn trucks apart, clean the gears, and put in a bit of tooth paste for brak in. I run them for about 15 minutes in both directions with the tooth paste, and then disassemble the trucks and clean out the tooth paste thoroughly and reassemble and relube the trucks.
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By the way, Jim has a lot of interresting information on his site so I'll also link to his home page:
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When the Santa Fe sold off the Cf7's, the most common switcher used by them were the chop nosed Gp7's & 9's with Topeka Cabs. They were about the same size as the Cf-7's and about the same power. The ones that had dynamic brakes, had the dynamics removed and the sheet metal installed over the resistor banks to make the dynamic brake blisters smooth instead of grilles. The only model that I know of of the Topeka cab is on the Cf7 in your avatar. I don't know if thearn offers Cf7 bodies. Before Horizon every part Athearn used in any model was available separately, but since Horizon, a lot of that has changed.