Happy New Year!!! / What's coming in 2023

 Greetings All,

Happy New Year to Everyone!!!

I hope everyone enjoyed the ringing in of the New Year and the Holiday Season. It's now 2023 and this is the 12th year of this blog. Time sure flies when running and working on model trains!!!

Without further adieu let's take a look at what I'm planning for 2023.

Have Fun

This is the ultimate goal for 2023. With the train room becoming a clean comfortable place, motive power and rolling stock running well, the layout in good shape and recently cleaned I plan to have much fun with my model trains.

Upgrading the Train Room Environment

This became a top priority at the end of 2022 after I visited a half dozen layouts during the 2022 Piedmont Pilgrimage layout open houses. This included painting the fascia black as seen below and installing a new floor over that tired looking cement.

Freight Car Spotlights

New freight cars started to arrive at the end of 2022  and into early 2023. Some with an interesting prototypical and/or model history will be presented in this series that I find fun to research and present.

Is there anything more exciting for a model railroader than to receive a new train or trains? The thrill of opening the box and admiring the train and running it for the first time on the layout is one of model railroading and life's simple pleasures.

Freight Car Focus

In 2023 I plan to focus more on my gondola and flatcar fleet. I'll be adding a few more gondolas as pictured above and some new flatcars coming in early 2023. Appropriate and realistic loads will be part of adding these cars to my model railroad railfanning running and operations.

Day to Day Operations

I plan to continue to run and refine my Car Card & Waybill model railroad operations as the new year progresses. The new freight cars mentioned above will be worked into these operations.

Operations Special Interest Group

I've renewed my membership for 2023. Joining the Opsig has greatly increased my knowledge about railroad freight car operations. From handing empties, to Car Service Directives, Record Rights and more I can now more realistically route the freight cars on the layout.  

Virtual Operations

I'm hoping our three layout Penn Central Car Movements with my layout interchanging freight cars with PC Ralph's Kings Port Division and Sir Neal's Atlantic Pacific RR will continue in 2023. It's been a lot of fun to be a participant during the past seven years. For the record we've completed 97 PCCMs since our first virtual op opened up on February3rd, 2016.

Scenic Enhancements

I also want to focus on some areas of the layout that can be improved for better photography and videos. The fascia has been painted, EB Tower has been repositioned but the retaining wall can use an upgrade.

The bulletin board paper stone wall might work well for the above retaining wall and may be added to some other areas on the lower level.

Locomotive Spotlights

I plan to present some more posts as part of this series. This is another fun series to research and present. The NYS&W B40-8s aka Dash 8-40Bs will be among those presented. 

Paint Shop

I have a couple of track cleaning and regular freight cars that are in need of new paint and decals to improve their availability in both passenger and freight operations. These escaped repainting 2022 so I'll need to refocus on this.

Maintaining Locomotive & Rolling Stock Standards

This beautiful Schaefer Beer 40' RBL came my way for Christmas 2022 from 1:1 ATJOE. The car comes with Accumate split knuckle couplers that I'm not a fan of. The car is now layout ready with newly installed Kadee #5 couplers set to the Kadee height gauge, additional weight and the wheel faces painted flat black.

One thing I did do in late 2022 during the Holiday Trackage Rights series was apply Plastruct Bondene to my Accurail cars with press pin coupler boxes. Over time these will come loose and sag leading to derailments. Trust me they do!!

Instead of cutting the press pins, drilling a new hole and adding a 2-56 screw I took a quick way to secure the lids by sevuring the seam with the Bondene. It's been working very well. If I need to replace the coupler I can use a razor to open the seam.

Repair Shop

Running trains comes with maintenance and repair. Passenger cars and freight cars will continue to be upgraded with metal wheels as needed. Kadee couplers will be substituted for other brands of knuckle couplers on new cars entering service and existing cars as these non Kadee couplers fail, which they do in the push and pull of model railroad operations. My aim is to keep the RIP Track and repair shop from getting too crowded.

This Bachmann Spectrum Dash 8-40CW was pulled from the Holiday Trackage Rights due to some bearing and coupling issues. It was quickly on the workbench receiving the attention needed.

Reminder To Have Fun!!

One more time! This is the ultimate goal for 2023. With the train room becoming a clean comfortable place, motive power and rolling stock running well, the layout in good shape and recently cleaned I plan to have much fun with my model trains.

I'm was having much fun on the day after Christmas with this seven unit lash up pulling fifty freight cars and PC caboose #18423. 

Enjoy the train!!!

Thanks for reading and watching!!!

See you soon!!!