Athearn Blue Box, New Power and other Labour Day Weekend Thoughts

This Labour Day weekend I've been "labouring" on the layout--doing some fine-tuning, finding and fixing bugs and cleaning the layout room. I've also enjoyed watching my new units run in their first "revenue" service, as in the photos above and below.

One thing I discovered is that my trusty old Athearn Blue Box SD40-2 units aren't quite up to it when it comes to mastering the new, steeper grade in my helix. (The result of changes to the layout; see Going, going, gone.) They can pull 12-14 cars no problem, but they really struggle with the 18-20 that is normal on the M & M Sub.

This is not the case for my Kato, Atlas, Proto or newer Athearn power. They have no trouble at all surmounting the grade.

One option is to replace my Athearn Blue Box with newer power--something I am slowly doing. But there are no easy-to-obtain replacements for CP Rail's SD40-2 units. (Atlas--are you listening?) In the meantime, I've decided to go back to the future, as it were.

Back when I started the layout, I didn't own enough powered units for all the trains I wanted to run. (Due to lack of funds.) I compensated by using non-powered units, which were much cheaper. I used two powered units to climb from one level to the other, but a powered and non-powered unit to come down.

I'm doing a variation on that theme again. This time, I'm using my Blue Box units for trains coming down from the upper level, and the newer power for going up. Locomotives are switched between levels by hand in the staging yards. (The upper and lower staging yards are located above each other.)

Once again, necessity is the mother of invention. Or maybe I found a labour saving device on this Labour Day weekend.

Unusual Non-Model Railroad Items For Your Layout

An old printer cartridge makes a unique load.

What's the most unusual or creative non-model railroad item you have used for your hobby?

For me it would be whiskers. One day--back when I still had black facial hair--I dumped out the contents of my electric razor and thought they sure looked like scale-size cinders. I collected subsequent emptyings and placed the contents trackside. They looked OK, even if the supply was a little limited. (With my gray hair today, this doesn't work as well.)

Then there was the time I tried dryer lint to make thick grass. I sprinkled on ground foam, thinking it might look half decent. Wrong! Too bad, though, since dryer lint comes in an almost limitless supply.

A less strange, but still unusual non-model railroad item is in the photo above--and old printer cartridge. In this case, it's really old; I think it comes from an old dot matrix printer. (Remember those?) I'm slowly adding bits and pieces to make it look more like a realistic load--a transformer, perhaps.

Other non-model railroad items I have tried include kitty litter for rip rap; tops off spray paint bans and other containers for roof vents and stacks; old-style artificial Christmas trees for fir trees; and straws for pipe loads.

A friend used the insider container of a Kinder Egg, the children's chocolate egg with a toy surprise inside, to make a unique large compressor-type load. Americans who want to try this will have to smuggle their Kinder Eggs in from Canada, though; they are illegal in the U.S.

When I posed this question about non-model railroad items on the Atlas HO forum, things people said they used included fake eyelashes for splash strips on trailers; Scotch tape rollers for tanks; and Grape Nuts cereal flakes spray painted black, silver and gray for a scrap metal load. (Just make sure you don't have mice!)

What are the most creative or unusual non-model railroad items you have employed?

Trains and Mountains: The Crowsnest Pass

UP freight in Crowsnest Pass.

   

The southernmost route through the mountains between Alberta and B.C. is the Crowsnest Pass.

The CPR built the line in 1897 to reach rich coal fields in the area and, not incidentally, to keep American railways—which were reaching north into Canada—out.

CPR consist at Cranbrook. 

In 1916 the line was completed to the Pacific Ocean, becoming the CPR’s second mainline to the coast. It was closed in 1959 due to washouts.

Today what remains of the line is still busy, mostly due to coal traffic out of the region, and to interchange traffic with the Union Pacific, which has run-through trains to Alberta from the border crossing at Eastport, Idaho/Kingsgate, B.C.

During a recent trip through the Crowsnest Pass, I got a few photos of UP and CPR trains.

UP train at Cranbrook.

A ballast train enters the yard.

And passes by.

Paint the Track!

Brown paint makes the rails look more realistic.

I recently visited a model railroad that was, by most any estimate, a pretty good layout—good looking scenery, interesting track plan, nice and varied scenes. Obviously, a lot of thought had gone into it.

Except in one crucial area: The track. It was silver. Although the owners had gone to some length to create a believable and credible model, they had failed to paint the track.

The result? No matter how good the overall impression, the layout looked toy-like. After all, everyone knows track isn’t silver!

Maybe I’m being too picky, but I don’t think so. And it’s not like my standards are so high—you won’t find any fine-scale models on my layout (and I still run Athearn blue box locomotives). But in this area I am pretty uncompromising.

For me, nothing detracts from a scene like unpainted track.

I don't claim to be an expert track painter. All I did was use brown and black latex paints, applied with a brush. I didn't worry about matching the exact shade of brown or grey as the prototype. All I wanted to do was to hide the silver sides.

Even Code 100 looks smaller when painted.

That said, I did try to match a bit of the prototype by using a lighter brown for yard or little-used tracks, and a darker brown, or almost black, for the mainline.

To paint the track, I simply put some brown and black paint on a piece of cardboard, then randomly mixed it together. A stiff modeller’s brush was used to apply the paint; after doing a few feet, I wiped the excess paint off the top of the rails.

I also added the brown-black mixture to the tops of the ties, to take off the uniform black plastic sheen.

Even though my track is all Code 100—much larger than on the prototype—I found that by painting the track it looked smaller (especially from three feet away).

Some might worry that painting the track makes flex-track harder to re-use if you ever have to pull it up. I didn’t find that to be the case, although you have to clean the ends if you clip a piece of painted track in mid-track to fit another space (to establish good electrical contact for the rail joiner).

Painting flex-track also stiffens it; you have to bend it a few times to break the paint so it will once again be able to curve.

But those are small things to consider when weighed against how good track looks when it is painted—and how bad it looks when it isn’t.

In my opinion, at least.

Private Owner's Train II

Modelling inspiration comes from various places. One source of inspiration for me came in 1992, during a visit to Cranbrook, B.C.

While there, I was lucky enough to catch a private owner's train in the yard. That chance encounter resulted in one of the more enjoyable aspects of model railroading for me--modelling a private owner's train on my layout.

I recently came across a couple of photos I took during that visit. I scanned them and have posted them above and below.

I don't know anything about that train--how it came to be there, or who owned the cars. All I know is that it set me on an enjoyable modelling path as I have collected colourful passengere cars from various railroads across North America to assemble my own private owner's train.

For more about my private owner's train, see Private Owner's Train on the CP Rail M & M Sub.