I post this with tears in my eyes, but our good friend Mike Goad, known to us all as, Tyson Rayles, passed away Nov. 7th. We all know that Mike has been sick for some time and he did keep in touch as to how he was doing, basically saying that this was inevitable. His stepson Vince just sent me the news.

Mike was a good modeler, a downright good person and a mentor to many of us modelers. The last that we heard from him, he had dodged the ravages of a recent hurricane, this illness he could not dodge.

RIP my friend.....

Mannheim Yard YPMA-02 classifying cars.

Bruce

   

Ok so let's bring this classic LifeLike Proto 2000 into the 21st century by adding an NCE SW9-SR decoder for Walthers / Life Like SW8/9/1200 and LED lighting front and rear.

Hey, all I'd like to refinish a set of Athearn Streamliner, and I'd like to give them a natural metal finish. Has anyone here used MR Metal metal finish.

Well, I dug out one of my favorite engines to do a decoder install but sadly the sound decoder I wanted to install seem to be out of stock at this time, so we put in this Digitrax DH126.

I just saw the Skateboard Art stamps, so I got the idea that if cut correctly postage stamps could be used for railroad graffiti.
   

I imagine it would work well in O scale too.
Here are a few stamps and a Scooby Doo and a BB-1 from Star Wars on a few cars:

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Micro-Trains and Accurail have come out with a series of weathered covered hoppers.  The sides are nicely done but you will need to do some additional weathering on the car ends and underside to blend the weathering in.  I also added metal wheel sets and Kadee couplers.
On the Southern car I painted out the yellow conspicuity striping and added some more weathering to roof hatches , car ends and the underside.  The CSXT car had some additional weathering to the side sills, roof, car ends and underside to blend in. 
If your interested check out the website at https://micro-trains.com>product .
Bruce

   

   

   

   

Here we go and do an install of a Soundtraxx MC1H102P8 Plug& Play decoder that wasn't quite plug and play but we got r done. There was some major  motherboard rework done to make this fit under the shell nicely

https://youtu.be/TulhseHIHlE?si=BdE-E230JUdgvPJt

Almost 9 days in and no new posts. 
Here is a Conrail transfer caboose that was on the Kiski for 20+ years.     
Charlie

OK guys I told you I'd show you the good the bad and the ugly. Well, here's how I installed the Digitrax SDXH167D sound decoder and ESU 50321 LokSound Sugar Cube Speaker with Sound Chamber in my 20-year-old PROTO 2000 SD-9 that I pulled out of the Bachmann Spectrum N&W J that I could not get the sound file to load correctly.

This was a simple, quick and satisfying install that really make this engine pretty damn nice.




What do you guys think.