GEC's Layout Progress

[Green_Elite_Cab]

Well, i got my E44A 4465 painted and decaled, just needs number boards. I'm doing a little work on 4456, the blue E44A, only because i think i can improve the paint, and i have additional decals to add to it (such as the sand fill and fire extinguisher stickers). those additional stickers are usually backed by highly visible read fields with the white letters over them, so i figure they would be good to add.

All the E44s also have DCC in them now, and they appear to work OK. i'm having some problems with the crossovers on the club's layout, not doubt due to the ridiculous power pick-up setups, so i'm going to have find a way to pick power up on the opposite sides of the trucks as well. they can pull a relatively heavy train all together, so it doesn't seem bad (it had about 11 coal cars filled with actual crushed coal or so up a 4% grade, which is one of the heaviest trains on the layout).

I also bought a 2'X4' sheet of plywood to fiddle with. Not sure if i'll be building that addition just yet, but i just wanted to see what i can fit on a small piece of wood. It looks like i might buy a 4'x4' section to mate with my current layout, and use the 2'x4' as a little branches off from there.


I've hit a lull in the model building. Now that the E44s are taken care of, i really have no other projects that i want to work on other than the catenary, which i'll be getting back to soon. on that note, i found actual PRR papers on the catenary that give exact dimensions which are actually larger in some ways than what i built. That said, i went and sketched the structure to HO scale on a sheet of paper, but it didn't look right.

While the basic dimensions were the same (catenary height, cross-beam height, sag brace locations and height), the transmission and signal arms were both larger and spread farther apart than suggested in many of the catenary articles i've read, such as Andy Rubbo's three part series in the Keystone modeler. For example, the PRR document says that the transmission arms should be 18 feet across, while i think it is 13 feet in the Rubbo article. I wonder if it is because we often view the catenary from the ground, and not up close, appearing smaller, making the 13' distance appear more correct.