With the backdrop done, I started renovating the track in El Dorado. The main and siding are completely installed. I removed all the turnouts on the south end (under the last four cars) that lead to the siding and two A/D tracks and moved the single south siding switch around to the corner , just about where 10th car from the caboose is at. I flipped the house track to the south end of the depot. I did this to balance out the trailing point switching moves. That'll make three moves for the NB local and two moves for the SB local. The long track to the left of the train is the spur for Dr Pepper. The next short track I'm thinking will be an oil/fuel dealer. I may install it so it follows the angled track? The track that angles across is the spur for the Maytag warehouse. The track in the foreground, left of the siding, will be the lead to the abandoned branchline and through truss bridge. It will remain intact but weeded over and I may park some MOW equipment there? I just want to see some old stuff sitting around... The short spur will be the for the mill. That's how I have it now, but will see how things layout once I get the buildings out. I've already changed the plan from what I had drawn up a few days ago, but I expected that would happen...
Here's where I'm at now. I virtually cleaned up the mess. All the spurs are just tacked into place so I can make adjustments as I move along. The mill track and the (soon to be) abandoned section are just roughly laid in place. The Maytag spur might be a little difficult to reach and will more than likely moved closer to the south end so it's easier to reach when uncoupling. Looking South. Looking North.
I haven't given up on the layout or my trains, but I have fallen into a very deep rabbit hole from which I recently emerged. A few months ago some friends and I were on our monthly zoom meeting and talk turned to operations on our layouts. Two of the four were using JMRI Ops for their layouts. When asked, I said I was using a home made spreadsheet and Tab on Cars forwarding method but said I had been kind of looking around for something else. One of my friends said he's been using JMRI Ops for the last 20+ years and offered to help me set my layout up with it. He said he enjoys puzzles like this. So we dove in and over the last few months we worked on it and I think we finally have it ready to go? I'm in the process of running digital trains and testing it and deciding what needs to be tweaked to make it run smoother. So far, I'm impressed. It's a very powerful and flexible system, but it does take a bit to get things up and running. Since Dave knew it very well, the steep learning curve was flattened quite a bit. Now I just need to remember all the settings! But I'm learning it. I was planning to use car types instead of car numbers, but it didn't take me long to switch over to numbers. Yeah, I know, I'm gonna have to get me some stronger reading glasses in time, but I don't think it'll be tall that bad? Anyway during all this time, I was also going through all my rolling stock and started culling out duplicate numbered cars, cars that were out of era and cars that I have replaced with nicer versions as they came out. This all took time. Now I've got over 200 cars that will go on the chopping block shortly. Once that was all done, we had to come up with a way deal with my vast rolling stock collection. Since I rebuilt the yard several years ago, there was no way in hell that I was going to put all my rolling stock on the layout. Years ago I built 6 wooden cases that have 9 drawers each for a total of 54 drawers. Each draw can hold roughly 35-45 cars (depending on the size and type of each car). These were used to store my cars and locos when we still had out Bend Track modules which made it easy to transport them to and from the shows. The next step was to sort all the cars in specific drawers and then label them with the car types and number each drawer. As of right now I only have 45 of the 54 filled with car types that will be used on the layout. The rest have coal, intermodal and passenger equipment. The 6 cabinets were designated to my off layout yard, which we called the "Drawer Yard". Each drawer is set to be a Spur track within the software, each track is specified to hold a specific car type. I then sub sorted them into like roads such as ROCK, BN , MILW, private roads and leased reporting marks. Now the software knows exactly where the cars are at within the cabinets and in which drawer. With all this done, I was also able to clear off a shelf that I had placed newer cars that I picked up over time and get them added to the list and placed into the proper drawers. Some of these newer cars were picked up for paint and decal fodder. Two of these were a couple of BLMA GA Dry Flo hoppers in the Pennsy scheme. I removed the lettering on them and applied new decals. They are not a perfect match due the size of the decals I had, but they are close enough for my books. The decal lettering is a little bolder than the proto. While looking for ideas on lettering I actually came across this image, the accompanying info stated that Rock Island actually had 5 of these cars and were renumbered shortly after entering revenue service, but not why? I also found this MoPac version. Again the decals were not small enough to match the prototype so I made a plaque for the decal. I had the color matched very well but it dried a little darker and a tinge on the blueish side. Nothing that a little weathering won't fix. I'm hoping to have some actual car movements on the layout here soon. It's been over 5 years since I've held my last full Ops session.
Could this renumbering be due to something as simple as an error? Where someone accidentally was assigning numbers to a series already in use? Photos of that next operating session would be good fun to see!
Many renumberings occur to make room for a new number series on other equipment. Locomotives are classic examples of this. When new, though? That seems odd.
The renumbering could be due to anything at this point without sufficient info. Once I get things working Boxcab, I will do my best to get pics if not videos.
Foobies......love'em or hate'em Years back I picked up some Wheels Of Time insulated boxcars that were released as Data Only cars. I always planned to decal them for Rock Island versions even though Rock never had them in their roster, but thought they'd make reasonable looking foobies. I finally got around to getting them finished. I chose decals from Micro Scales and applied them to these cars following examples of how each scheme was applied to the prototype of earlier cars.
What was their motivation for using the green scheme? There must be a story. Perhaps some joint activity with another RR?
Thanks Hemi! I think that is what it was supposed to be, a BN car, but knowing Rock had those 40' green boxcars, I thought I'd play my modelers license.
I found this on Train Orders: The rock island series # 47402-47449 boxcars where reconditioned second hand ex- reading cars that were leased to rock island in 1969 by the United States Railway Equipment leasing. Most lasted to the end and where returned to the lessors. I also thought I read that some were from the PC, hence the green paint, but seeing this, Reading makes sense as well. The one green one is BN green, but it's Foobie to start with anyway.
A couple more converted airslides join the fleet. I've been wanting to replace a couple of Milwaukee Road Delaware Valley or Bowser hoppers with the newer Atlas versions. These started out as FRISCO hoppers because they had most of the smaller lettering on them and also had the black undercarriage. I removed the large lettering, reporting marks and car numbers with 91% alcohol and a toothpick and reapplied the Microscale Milwaukee decals. I'm still trying to tweak some bugs out of my JMRI Ops plan but have been trying to get a few smaller projects like these done in between times.
