Leaving west yard for the days work.      Charlie

I purchased the rail joiners, so I guess I'll start with them:

   

The center package is the rail clamps that need to be installed.

There are a bunch of the standard Aristo joiners on the layout that need to be replaced.
For example:

   
The top line is the main and was done about 3 years ago.
The lower line is the trolley line that I want to update.

   
The right line is the updated area, the left is what i need to remove.  This section is about 10 ft. long under a 5ft tunnel.

Like most of you, I have been cooped up the past year, and need a little encouragement to get out more.  For this challenge, I am going to try and take photos of anything train related found at non-obvious locations.  That means I am not going to take pictures of trains near train tracks or at train museums, but rather when I see something related to trains at a restaurant, store, etc, I will take a photo and post it here.

This will be my "cover-my-backside" thread, to increase my chances of at least finishing one Challenge.  It will involve modifying some old steam locomotive tenders  into tool & water cars for MoW service.  They were started some time ago, and then put on the back burner, but like the passenger and head-end cars in Part I of my Challenge, I wanna get 'em done, and off my "to-do" list. 
As with the cars in part one, two friends will each get a car, while the other two are for my layout.

Wayne

I've had very little time for model railroading since the kids were born 4 years ago.  And to top it off my eyes started going bad a couple of years ago, and I don't have quite the eye for detail I once had.  So I thought I would pick something not too complicated that I can finish up just to say that I started and finished something.

Years ago I bought a Model Die Casting Harriman Observation car kit in HO scale, probably at a train show.  My thought was that my fictional railroad bought it as car for railroad dignitaries and other wealthy folks to go at the end of a train of mostly older open platform wooden coaches.  It has never looked right as the only closed vestibule steel car on the train.  So, I dug out an old round-roof Athearn coach from my youth that will mate well with the Harriman observation car.  I am fixing that one up right now.  I figure the coach will be for the common folk.  To round out my short train, I figure I need some kind of baggage or RPO.  

So, I won an unstarted MDC baggage car of ebay for a reasonable price.  My challenge will be to build the kit mostly as-is without fussing to much over added details.  I will try to utilize the parts of the kit rather than try to fix the various errors and lack of details because I know once I jump down that hole it will join the heap of other projects that are 90% complete but lack this or that.  I just want to get something done and feel good about that.

The town of Santa Maria was built along the rail lines with the promise of rail service. My challenge is to provide both passenger and freight stations so these poor folks don't have to stand alongside the rails hoping a train will stop. The town council had generously donated land for both adjacent to the highway.

...where I hope to finish my to-do list of passenger and head-end cars, with some for me and a few for a couple of friends, too.  Some will be kitbashes and/or upgrades to existing cars, while others will be scratchbuilds, using commercially available parts.

Wayne

After a 15 year plus hiatus from this hobby I'm jumping back in.  No layout plans as yet, but I model the NWP, SP and WP in HO scale.  I'm old school, and plan to stay with straight DC, especially since my collection is mostly blue box Athearn, and some older Kato. My favorite part of the hobby is locomotive re-powering and detailing. When I finally build a layout it will be based upon operations in Northern California...mostly north of Sacramento and Santa Rosa. Glad to have found this forum...

These are the rules for our “do something, anything” challenge:

1.    Pick something that you want to do, build a kit, scratchbuild or kitbash something, rebuild a loco, finish off or start something new on your layout, paint a picture, do a photo challenge, document a railroad journey, just do something railroad-related, define what you are going to do, then document your progress to completion. If you have the wherewithal and want to do more than one project, bless your enthusiasm, you may do as many as you like assuming that you can finish them all.

2.    Start a thread in this forum, "Your Screen Name, 2021 do something challenge," and describe the project  in your first post. If you are doing more than one project, start separate threads for each one, adding a number or a name to keep them separate.

3.    You can open your thread at any time before the official starting date, which gives you enough time to decide on what you want to do. You are also free to enter a project at any time before the end of this challenge but please do not start posting progress reports until the starting date of the challenge.

4.     If your project is scale related, let us know what scale you are working in, it gives us a better prospective on what you are doing. As usual, provide us with lots of pictures of your progress.

5.    Because we never give anything of value away, this challenge is open to all registered members of the Big Blue Train Forum, including the staff. Let’s face it, we all need to work off those kinks of winter and do something that we want to do rather than have to do.
 
6.    This challenge is all about your project, you can have help, but you should do a substantial amount of the work yourself. You or someone else can take the photos. The intent is to get us all to do something we might normally just put off doing, or maybe not even think about doing.

7.    The challenge starts on April 1, and will run until the first day of Summer, June 20. A poll will open after that date, so that we can pick a winner of the challenge.

8.    As usual, there are no real prizes, just bragging rights and a certificate from Big Blue.

9.    Please post any questions or comments regarding this challenge only in this thread and we will attempt to resolve any issues here before the challenge starts. Do not post your challenges here, please start an individual new thread (see rule #2) for each one that you enter.

10.    And lastly, everybody should feel free to comment in someone’s challenge thread since everyone likes to know if what they’re heading down the right track, but please avoid hijacking the thread. After all, it is about the challenger’s project, not yours.

WPMA-19 working the South Shore Distributors warehouse.

Bruce