North Coast Limited

[Chet]

Having grown up in Montana, we took the North Coast Limited to the twin cities in order to transfer to another railroad to Chicago and then the South Shore to visit relatives in Indiana. Walthers has offered numerous passenger trains but not an entire North Coast Limited. I had picked up an Athearn Genisis F-7 years ago painted in the Lowey paint scheme that I grew up with. Walthers had come out with some generic passenger cars in the NP colors. After getting a number of them, the little F-7 couldn't pull what I had up the two and a half percent grade on my layout. I managed to fin a Stewart F-3A and and F-7B, but they were un numbered and lacked the proper details. The Stewart units were custom painted because the color ws way off with the proper details added.



Here's a video of it dropping down grade on my layout.

<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0x5_04fZKw0">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0x5_04fZKw0</a><!-- m -->

[doctorwayne]

Nice video, Chet, and some good-looking scenery, too.

Wayne

[gna]

Nice work on the F units and the passenger cars. I liked your videos of your Limited.

[Chet]

Here's a slightly different angle. Thanks for the reply. Yearts ago I used to do a lot of custom painting and detailing and this was my first attempt in probably 20 years.

[gna]

Here's a slightly different angle. Thanks for the reply. Yearts ago I used to do a lot of custom painting and detailing and this was my first attempt in probably 20 years.

Oddly enough, I took my daughter to the dentist Tuesday afternoon at Bandana Square, which is what the NP Como Shops are called now. They have been converted to office space/medical facilities, but that is where the NP repaired and maintained the Limited and other passenger trains.

On a different forum, several people were commenting on what railroads are overrated/underrated (must be March Madness spillover), and the NP consistently comes up as underrated and undermodeled. NIce to see the Loewy scheme in action.

[Chet]

I saw that under rated railroad posting. For it's size and the history behind the railroad, it is quite under rated. Back in the 70's, I had a large N scale layout with over 11 scale miles of main line alone, but the locomotives at that time were crude compared to what we have today. The layout was torn down and I moved on to HO scale. Eveb then, Northern Pacific locomotives were scarce and many not even painted correctly. I had to custom paint an few and detail them properly so I could have them show up on my layout.

As I mentioned, I had relatives working on the railroad, both the Northern Pacific and the Milwaukee Road, but I didn't have the room to do justice to even a subdivision of either railroad, so I decided to freelance, and build a short line railroad right in the area where I live, connecting to both the Northern Pacific and the Milwaukee Road. This was I could have power from both railroad show up on my railroad.

In recent years, manufacturers have started to introduce more power painted for the NP. There are a few of them producing the A and B units painted for the NP, but talk about pricey. Also, most of them were DCC only. Along with that, no one offered a correct set of passenger cars for the NCL. I was able to acquire a number of Walthers cars having generic cars painted in the Lowey scheme.

The North Coast Limited would never had shown up on my branch line railroad, but having ridden on the NCL numerous times growing up, I couldn't resist trying to assemble my version using what cars were available. Where I live, the NP has a lot of history. The model railroad club I go to is ion the basement of the old Northern Pacific depot in Livingston, MT, about 50 miles away, which is now a museum. Every one in a while I'll roll it out of my hidden staging tracks and run it for a while just to see the cars in that Lowey paint scheme I remember so well.

Unfortunately, I am unable to run it at the model railroad club. They had a limited space for their layout and due to this, there are a few places where the tighter radius can cause derailments due to the diaphragms on the cars. One member picked up the entire Empire Builder that Walthers offered and he had to change all of the couplers to ones with a bit longer shank to have them run on the club layout. I like the close coupling on the cars I have and am not willing to do this.

They do have a beautiful layout at the club. Of course, they do operate DCC as there are times when we can have as many as 10 trains running at the same time.

Here's one of my very few DCC locomotives, an Atlas Gold RS-1 painted for the Northern Pacific. I am a big fan of early Alcos and couldn't pass it up. I have a fleet of Alco RS-1, RS-3's, RS-11's and RSD-4/5 all custom painted for my freelance Logan Valley railroad.





It is nice to see more locomotives coming out properly painted for the Northern Pacific, but I really have more power than I really need for my layout so no more purchases of locomotives is planned.

[cn nutbar]

Beautiful work Chet---thank you for sharing