GEC's Layout Progress

[Green_Elite_Cab]

Christmas as brought me quite a few model trains, which have definitely pressed my GG1 freight at the club to unquestionably the "longest train". It is parked on the longest available staging track, and it is nearly full. Of all the cars on the train, I've had to remove only one permanently, since it seems unable to stick to the track.

While my pair of BLI GG1s can still handle it, you can hear them struggle up the 4% grade on the layout. I need to speed match my MTH GG1 (which is slightly faster) but I have not gotten around to doing that. I might set up a double track loop of EZ track with a BLI GG1 running alongside the MTH one while I do this. I'm pretty sure the MTH GG1s need to be programmed on the main anyway, so this should be fine.

In the meantime, here is a few photos of new stuff and old stuff.

Once I replaced the Intermountain trucks with a modified pair of Athearn trucks, this Pillsbury hopper really ran quite well. I had to bump it out of service because the coupler pockets popped out in a hard stop (caused by a short elsewhere on the club layout), but I glued them in, and now it holds just fine. Given the time and frustration it took to get this thing together, I'm glad it runs so reliably!



Ironically, those 62' Beer boxcars were a little more problematic. Building the kit took some time as well (though not as much as the Pillsbury hopper). They even provided wire to do all the brake rigging and other under-car details (which are visible from the side when the car travels on the upper levels of the club layout).

The biggest problem was that they sat to high, no matter what. Even more frustratingly, the coupler gauges at the club must be off just a little, since they were showing an almost even coupler height, when in fact they didn't seem to match at all.

I ended up having to shave down the bolsters, shave off the tops of the trucks at the bolster, and then use Overset-shank couplers. Now the one ATSF car hangs a little low on one end, and will need a shim to counter my aggressive hacking of its bolster. However, its not very noticeable, and the couplers are now in vertical alignment.



I purchased this ATSF reefer at our club's flee market for $4. It was intact, weighed down, and had kadee couplers. All it needed were metal wheelsets (also for sale at our club), and it was ready to go. Really, a no brainer!



This is one of the boxcars I got for Christmas. Technically, this would become a Conrail X73 class boxcar (the same as the yellow Conrail car you see in my other photos). However, many of these Ex EL boxcars stayed in blue in the early years, though I'm not sure how many were returned to the Fruit Growers Express in EL Blue. It was ready to go with metal couplers and wheels right out of the box, and so I was able to add it to my train without trouble.





In the meantime, I've been trying to get my Arrow III to run more reliably. Apparently, the only major issue was that the pilots were hanging low. This would cause the car wheels to lift off the rails and stall the train. As it turns out, the pilot was mounted to the coupler box, and the coupler box on the lead car (with the NJ DOT logos) was too thick. By removing the "cover" of the box, and using the pilot casting to hold the coupler in, I was able to raise pilots to a proper height. The couplers seem well supported, so I'm thinking this train is a go. I gave it three laps around the mainline, which it was able to do. The only tracks it can't handle are the club's "Reading" line, which really needs to be rebuilt.



The Reading Ling is seen below. I'm going to try and get the Walthers Stemman Pantographs for these models. The brass one on the RTR Arrow III is too small in reality.




This was my other big railroad related Christmas Gift, a Pennsylvania Reading Seashore Lines RDC-1, # M-403. My girlfriend bought it for me in secret, and then put it inside of a box for a coffee pot! When I opened it up, i was thinking "what am I going to do with another coffee pot?" She told me to open it and check that it worked, and sure enough, there is an RDC in there!

This one has the new metal finish, and it also had a DCC plug (unlike earlier RDCs), so I popped a decoder out of one of my other engines, and let it run. Its a fantastic model! I'm thinking about "updating" it with some PRSL tiger stripes, but for now, I will enjoy it as it is!



The day after Chrismas, these arrived in the mail-

An Arrow II number board off an "A" car-



An E60CH number board!



Both of these were off NJ Transit equipment, but the "961" is probably the original Amtrak numberboard from the 1970s! Indeed, 961 was ever fully repainted for NJ transit, as here it sits in 1993, awaiting the scrap heap after almost a decade of service on NJ Transit. -