UP SD40-2's NEW Layout

[FiatFan]

Both ideas are great - museum and the spotlight. I'll be looking forward to future editions.

Tom

[Charlie B]

And now you can operate a Big Boy without any qualms. 
Charlie

[Steve]

I love it!!! The museum is a great idea and the area spotlight is also. Where’s the popcorn??

[UP SD40-2]

WOW!!!  Thanks so much guys for ALL the very positive, and SO MANY responses   , really, glad you guys liked it, thank you!
I'll do an "area spotlight" every so often, hey, every area has a story to tell  

My first two YouTube vids were "roll-by's" that I put up four years ago, before I am unable to run trains do to working on a large area of the layout I decided to put up another Run-by, I hope you guys like it  .

The link is Here: https://youtu.be/1L8j4uEq5NA

[Steve]

Deano....sent ya a PM
Great roll by!!!!!!!!!!!!

[doctorwayne]

Great run-by, Deano, and I like the scenery, too!  

Wayne

[ezdays]

Yup, watched the video, great shot. In N scale, it would take me at least eight hours to just set up a consist like that. An yes, the details of the scenery is outstanding as well.

[UP SD40-2]

BIG LAYOUT UPDATE....on someones layout, not here...yet  .
HOWEVER, i did do a little work on my yard, I wanted to do more but have been doing a bunch of overtime in case we shut down for a bit.

I pulled all the cars out of my yard and was going to finish it, sadly the hobby shops here are not open, and I really needed the coal type ground cover for that area. I have some, but not enough for both the engine yard and the freight yard, since the freight yard is mostly unseen, I opted to save what I had for the engine yard, you'll be able to easily see all of that. 
 What I ended up doing was taking a big jar of black "wash" I use to weather stuff and just coated the whole yard with it. I think for 90% of the yard it will be fine, this saved me time and money and I should have enough ground cover to do the areas of the yard you'll actually see. 


While putting the cars back in the yard I was noticing all the broken hand rails and ladders that needed to be fixed, railing and sunshades etc. on many of my engines too, I really was overwhelmed by it, wow, so much to do. A lot of my stuff is getting old now, and has been moved and stored again several times, it has really taken a toll on the models I have. I bought a bunch of Kadee #5's to put on my engines/cars when their factory couplers break, this year I have replaced so many couplers it isnt even funny, everything is breaking. I will take "fix it" breaks from time to time and start making the repairs needed to get my stuff back in shape.

So anyways, I got my yard "washed", and put all the cars and my UP Executive train put in there. 
 After that I ran some trains, was very pleased to find all my passenger trains ran very well, no problems, that was a plus   .
I also took a bunch of random pics, I'll post them below...yes two of them I posted in other threads, but I put them in here too because they are taken here on my layout   .






I can never get a good shot of this area, its to bad because i really like the RR crossing and it took some work to get this area right, cant tell how nice it is from this pic though. UP #16 in all her faded glory rolls though the grade crossing, she has seen better days...


I put this pic in for Steve, we were talking about Kato engines, I told him I had two of them and they were really top notch engines, they ran GREAT. I have a Kato SD40-2, SD90/43MAC, and I totally forgot about the SD38-2 I also have. This shot has the SD40-2 snoot nose on the point with yard engine SD38-2 trailing running a local....


Thats it, till next time...

[Charlie B]

Deano, if you are looking for the black cinder type ballast and covering I have used this, and most tractor supply stores are open, and the price is not bad either. I think Wayne even used some. https://www.tractorsupply.com/tsc/produc..._vc=-10005

This was taken when I was building my yard in 2011.     
It does a great job and holds up well. There are several different sizes and usually enough leaked at the store so you can feel it. I still have a half gallon jug left and I used it to ballast all of my branch lines. 
Charlie

[Steve]

Deano, you have bigger problems than ballasting the yard.....somebody parked a pickup truck on the yard office roof!!!

All of your work is sweet, and that pic you don't think came out good is great!. The road, signals, engine....all great!!!

Thank you for that last pic! Kato is calling to me...

[Tyson Rayles]

Those are some nice pics!

[UP SD40-2]

Charlie, WOW!  , AWESOME IDEA!! The next time I go to Menards here in Beloit, or Farm&Fleet in Janesville I am checking for that, it looks GREAT on your layout, you sold me, Thank you!

Thanks Steve, but I just am not happy with closeups in that area. The problem is there is no background distance on that area since its out in the open, no wall on one side of it. As far as good pics go on that area, not gonna happen, just wasted space for that...but looks good if your standing there  .




Thanks so much for the kind words Mike, its the work of you and the others here that drives me to do better  .

.......................................................................................................................
So I was watching one of MANY of the UP layout channels I subscribe to on YouTube today, and out of the blue I decided "hey, I'm going to paint clouds on my backdrop...NOW"    , well, I have been thinking about it for the last week, but my basement has no ventilation, and I have always airbrushed the clouds on if i didnt go the way of photo realistic back drops. Photo backdrops are just to darn expensive, (for me at least at this time) for the size of layout that I have.

So I ended up trying to brush/wash the clouds in, didnt finish it, but proved to myself I could do a fairly decent job of it. My main problem is the blue I used for the sky is already pretty darn light, so it was a bit hard to get the clouds looking light, didnt want them to look like rain, I have seen that before and it looked Awesome, but i didnt want to go there. I got about 20' done. I was going to take pics of it but ya really cant see it in the pics from afar, I am sure that will show up on closeup shots. 

After I finish the clouds I am thinking about painting in some trees and brush, just to get the back ground out of the way....now that I have started that WAAAAYYY past the time I should have   ....ahhh yes, leave it to me to do everything backwards   , I do it to myself on EVERY layout I do, just never learn  .

[UP SD40-2]

OK, as I mentioned in my last post, I put clouds on my backdrop, pretty much finished it up last night, could always go back into the higher ones for a bit more detail if I wanted. What stinks is in person looking at it I am quite pleased, they show up good, but in pics, wow, you can hardly see them  . I am happy with how they are looking at them so I am not going to worry about it now. 

I ALSO painted in some background trees, a deciduous type, and Pines. The trees were done like the clouds, with a sponge. I mixed a couple different greens to get the trees to color, and took the lightest green I had and added black to it to get the color for the pines, WOW, the pines were so close in color you could hardly tell the trees I have up from the background painted pines...at first glace. In time, most of the trees I paint will hardly be seen as "real" trees I put on the layout as I get them will cover most all the painted ones I did last night. 

I decided to run a couple engines after I was done painting last night, I decided on my GP30 as one of them, the sound in that engine is spectacular. I have sound in a lot of my engines, but the GP30's is easily in the top 5 I have as far as sound goes, runs great too!.
 The other engine I decided to run was my DL-109, I always loved those Alco Passenger engines, Its a Proto engine, sold as a DL-109, I seen pics of them before I bought it, CNW and the Milwaukee Road had them....except they were REALLY DL-107's  , YET THE BOX SAYS THEY ARE 109'S.
Anyways, I really liked the looks of them, I have the CNW, and it really runs great. 

All the pics below are random, and taken after my painting....

[doctorwayne]

Those are some great looking photos, Deano, and I really like those painted-on trees, especially the deciduous ones.  I'll have to give that technique a try, as I have a few areas which could use something other than a very low horizon.

Wayne

[UP SD40-2]

Thanks so much Wayne!  You'll notice i didnt put in any trunks or branches, those are only meant to blend in with the "real" trees I put on the layout, just to make it appear like there is much more then there is  . I am going to try my luck at making some "homemade" trees, hopefully they will look good and be cheaper.

Did a little more research on the DL-109's, seems CNW had one of them, The Milwaukee Road had two, both were A units. I seen pics of all three online, two sets of pics were the Milwaukee's, they were taken in Milwaukee. Oddly, the only pic I could find of the CNW one was taken in Appleton WI. The CNW and the Milwaukee BOTH had mainlines that ran right through Beloit here, wonder if any of those DL 109's ever ran through here?

Speaking of prototype pics, I found a gold mine....well, perhaps a silver mine of them here this weekend!!! What I mean is, most all you guys here remember when I used to railfan all the time, I took TONS of pics, and posted TONS of them through the years. Sadly through all the moves and all the updated computers(I'm a big computer gamer, have been since about 98, but that another story) , I have lost so much of my railfan pics, I did however have a few external hard drives through the years. Well, This weekend I came across one of them in a box!! SADLY, most of the "raw" pics I took were NOT on it, seems it mostly contains the edited pics, the "finished" pics for posting on it. 
 The good thing is they are already edited by me, the bad thing is remember when we had to make all the pics a certain size, and it was SMALL to post them on the forums, I think it was during the Zealot days? I checked the properties on them to find the dates I took them and 95% of them were "modified" between 2006-8 . BTW, I DID NOT find ALL my pics, I had TONS of rail car pics and cant find but about 5 of them, a lot of engines though. 

So Yeah!, I have SOME of my old railfan Pics!!, but BOO, now that I can post them bigger, I cant, they are set at the low pic size, and thats like 95-98% of them....cries....well, not really but....

I have NO IDEA how much space I can use at Imgur? , hope its a lot. 
ANYWAYS, In another thread I posted I had seen A GP30 in WC colors, RUNNING in Janesville's WSOR yard, I know, I know, big woup Deano, hey it was to me, I loved the look of the GP30's, and to see it RUNNING, AWESOME! Then a week later just by luck railfanning in South Beloit's ICE yard i find it there as it broke down and was headed back to where ever WSOR leased it from. Got pics of the whole thing, DEC 2008 ENJOY!!!...







EDIT: WOW, SMALL PICS