More Holiday Railfanning Part 2

 Greetings All,

More Holiday Railfanning Part 2

Happy Holidays!!!

It's the Holiday Season and Freight, mail, express and passenger traffic remain heavy in and around Empire City, NY. 

NYC Sharks get the green signal coming off the High Line.

GP7 5756 brings a shoppers special into Empire City Station.

Alcos and Baldwin-Lima-Hamilton cab units pose on the mainline.

Fairbanks-Morse Erie Builts lead a hotshot train!!!

And wait for the Alco RS2-EMD GP7-Alco RS2 led freight train!!!

The trains are on the move!!!

Thanks for reading and watching!!!

 

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukah and Happy Holidays to all!!!

See you soon!!!

Holiday Railfanning In and Around Empire City Part 1

 Greetings All,

Holiday Railfanning In and Around Empire City Part 1

Starting in early November I started adding Holiday decorations to Empire City Station and the surrounding commercial establishments to give the area the holiday spirit. The era of operations was backdated to the New York Central era (in most cases!) 

I dug deep under the layout to provide enough motive power and rolling stock in order to handle the anticipation of a holiday surge in both passenger and freight traffic.

Freight Traffic included Alco FAs, Fairbanks Morse C-Liners.

Lightning striped RS2s with an EMD GP7 .

A trio of Sharks swimming past an Alco FA-FB consist.

C-Liners with heavy tonnage cross the High Line.

Passenger trains featured lots of head end traffic. 

The REA equipment around the station and in the trains was plentiful to handle Holiday express parcels.

Several railfans set up shop near RA Tower to watch the parade of trains in and out of Empire City Station. 

Two Alco PAs bring Train # 78 The Mercury past the tower towards the station.

NYC Lightning Stripes and varnish were the order of the week!!

NYC E8s, the pride of the passenger locomotive fleet easily handled the increase in passenger traffic.

An E7A-E8A combo with a long train sit on track 2 while and Alco PA with plenty of mail and express traffic is on track 1.

See the trains in action!!!

Thanks for reading and watching!!!

Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!

Let it Snow!!! / HO Scale Russell Snow Plows Ready For Service

 Greetings All,

Let it Snow!!!

HO Scale Russell Snow Plows Ready For Service

Two Walthers 1:87 scale Russell Snowplows that have been part of my imagined snow fighting equipment for about seven plus years are now (finally!!) ready for service and movement around the layout.

Prototype Information

Railroad snow plows may be some of the least used pieces of maintenance equipment a railroad owns.  However, they are also some of the most important when called upon to open a rail line that is buried in several inches or feet of snow. Note the coupler on the plow end.

"Straburg RR 66, Russell Size 2 Snowplow, Built 1890 ; Railroad Musuem of Pennslyvania, Lancaster PA; Undated" by San Diego Model Railroad Museum is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/?ref=openverse.

One of the most common types of wedge plows were those built by the Russell Snow Plow Company, which began manufacturing the machines after World War I. 

"Snow Plow Engine" by johnwilliamsphd is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/?ref=openverse.

The Russell wedge type all-steel snowplow used by railroads since the 1920s to clear snow from rail lines are pushed by a locomotive because they don't have their own power. 

"Russell Single-Track Snow Plow" by johnwilliamsphd is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/?ref=openverse.

A Russell Snowplow at work.

Developed with a bit of versatility, Russell's were equipped with wings attached to the outside of what was known as the "tongue" (the wedge device that actually plowed the snow clear of the track), which could be adjusted.

The Russell snow plow itself was usually attached to the front of either a customized railcar of some type with a pilot house attached to the top for the spotting crew.

Model Information

My first Russell snowplow was a Walthers kit that was a Christmas gift from my late mother in law in 2017. She loved shopping for trains and other things that she thought would look good on the layout. I built and painted it as part of the New York Central snow fighting equipment. Look closely you can see the in-laws in the cab.

One issue that quickly reared up was the Walthers snow plows did not come with front coupler pockets. This made moving them around the layout limited and awkward. 

Six years later I came across this after market coupler pocket kit designed to fit the Walthers Russell Snowplows. 

The coupler pocket however is very narrow and calls for a Kadee #4 coupler. Good luck trying to find one, it looks like they are no longer produced. This stalled the project for about a year. Finally, in early November with 1/87 scale snow on the horizon I came up with an alternate way to install a Kadee #158 scale coupler.

I ended up placing the #158 in front of the coupler pocket post and securing it in place with CA. Then I secured the lid, my fingers and the whole assembly to the plow. The coupler matched the Kadee Height Gauge perfectly.

Look at that!! Both snowplows are coupled together!!! The PC 60007 is a ready to run model that was a birthday gift from the mother in law in 2022. Note the coupler box is now painted yellow to match the plow.

The PC plow can now pull this GM&O boxcar out of the shop so it can be placed inside for final snow fighting set up. The coupler pocket is now painted black to match the plow.

The shop switcher places both snowplows on the ready track.

The two snowplows pass RA Tower on their first run to test the newly installed couplers. Happily there were zero issues and the plows performed flawlessly.

After the test run the snowplow Extra holds on the Water Street lead for several passenger trains before heading back to Terminal Yard. 

You Don't See This Everyday!!!

A NYC passenger train derailed in the Bedford Station tunnel due to a McHenry coupler coupler coming off its post on an IHC car derailing the car behind it. After the train arrived at Terminal Station, the passengers were put off, the offending car removed and the plow was coupled onto the Pullman car at left to be shoved back into to the tunnel to clear the coupler off the tracks. That done it coupled onto the Pullman car at right and the train arrived back in Terminal Yard.

The 236 did clear the line however I still had open the tunnel and use a long pair of tweezers to remove the offending coupler. I had been hoping the plow would shove the coupler out of the tunnel but true to its design it plowed the coupler off to the side.

Final Thoughts and Comments

I was worried that by securing the couplers into the box with CA would limit their use on curves but that proved to not be the case. The #158 attached in this manner protrudes more than if I was able to secure it around the post in the coupler pocket. Since it is attached to a snow plow that extra length may be a good thing.

Some of the above prototype comes courtesy of Adam Burns and the American Rails website. For more on the RR snowplows click here.

Thanks for reading!!!

See you soon!!! 

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

 Happy Thanksgiving All!!!

The NYCTL once again experienced a surge of passenger, express and mail traffic.  

Have a great day everyone!!!

Another Big Sale and More Freight Cars Join The Fleet

 Greetings All,

Another Big Sale and More Freight Cars Join The Fleet

There I was innocently looking at my emails when what should appear, a notice of a 50% off used merchandise from Trainmaster

Models in Auburn, GA which is my not so local hobby shop. I needed to get some Kadee #26 long center shank couplers anyway so Thursday the opening day of the sale was the perfect day to go.

Or maybe it wasn't!!! I did get the couplers and a little bit more. 

The yellow Athearn BB Frisco boxcar caught my eye and for four dollars it was an easy decision to nab it. Interestingly there is a lot of real good Soo Line rolling stock in the used section of Trainmaster Models in Georgia and the Soo Line PS-2 hopper was part of it.

Another Soo Line freight car I found was this MDC/Roundhouse 60' flatcar with a Mitsubishi scraper load. The car definitely needs some straightening out.

An Athearn BB 86' Wabash Auto Parts boxcar with Kadee couplers and metal wheels was quickly scoffed up. Note how high the car is sitting when first taken out of the box and the couplers are still way too low.

An MDC/Roundhouse 50' PGE (Pacific Great Eastern) boxcar for paper loading only and an Accurail CNW 40' boxcar kit that was already built with metal wheels and knuckle couplers.

Another BB kit, this one a Clinchfield 50' sliding door boxcar. The lettering in the yellow states "For Explosives Loading Only. When Empty Return to CRR Agent at Kingsport, TN."

I seldom buy private road cars but I liked the look of this Libby's 50' reefer from Athearn that already had Kadee #5s installed.

Getting The New Freight Cars Into Revenue Service

A noted in a previous blog post all freight cars from this purchase received basically the same treatments that included a blast of Testor's Dullcote, metal wheels with their faces painted either black or burnt umber where required, additional weight, Kadee couplers, confirmation of coupler heights meeting the Kadee gauge, painted trucks and underframes.

As I wrote before by keeping to the above minimum standards every locomotive and piece of rolling stock can couple up with each other for reliable operation and provide a somewhat uniform non toy like look for equipment that is running on the layout.

Libby's Famous Foods 50 Reefer

TLDX 37 leased to Libby's Foods in Chicago, Illinois. TLDX is the reporting marks for General Electric Rail Services. Libby's Famous Foods was founded in 1859 by Archibald McNeil, Arthur Libby and Charles Libby. Libby's produced canned foods, beverages and frozen foods. After WWII Libby's had canning plants across Europe and in the USA. In 1970 Libby's was purchased by Nestle.

Check out a Libby's boxcar 

SOO LINE 60' Flatcar

The Soo Line 5005 now with the deck painted "territorial beige" and the Mitsubishi scraper with several coats of Testor's Dullcote. The SOO LINE was formed in 1961 as the Minneapolis, Saint Paul and Sault Saint Marie (MNStP&SSM) and became known as the Soo after the phonetic spelling of Sault. The SOO LINE is now part of the CPKC.

The Soo Line did roster the 5000 series 60' flatcars. Check out the 5006. I'm not sure if Mitsubishi built a scraper.

SOO LINE PS Covered Hopper

The Soo Line PS2 covered hopper was an easy add as I only needed to swap out the Accumate couplers for Kadee#5s in addition to the standard practices described above. I'm not sure what this car hauled but I'm looking to put it in sugar service.

Check out Soo Line 69590.

Wabash 86' Boxcar

The Wabash RR gets its name from the Wabash River and dates back to 1865 and as of 1982 is now a Norfolk Southern property. The RR became somewhat famous for the song about its Cannonball passenger train. 

The RR served major industries in Michigan, Illinois, and Missouri that included five Ford Plants. It will now serve six when it handles traffic between Ford Plants in Detroit, Chicago, St Louis, Kansas City, Toledo and my Bedford Park NY Ford Plant.

The Low Rider

The Wabash 86'er has been lowered but the couplers now meet the Kadee height gauge thanks to Kadee underset shank couplers and attaching the underframe to the steel weight with PL600. The long plastic chassis' on these 86' cars have a tendency to droop at the ends which causes the couplers to droop as well. Securing the chassis to the weight will correct this problem.

Check out WAB 55045 

CNW 40' Boxcar

The Chicago & North Western Railroad was chartered in 1859 and served eleven upper mid-west states during it's heyday. As the company struggled it was sold to it's employees in 1972. In 1995 the Union Pacific RR took over the CNW operations.

Accurail CNW 57728 was another easy add with the removal of the Accumate couplers, replacing them with Kadee #5s and doing the above basic layout prep for the car.  

Check out CNW 57702 

SLSF 50' Boxcar

The Saint Louis & San Francisco Railway commonly known as the Frisco, operated in the mid west and south central United Staes from 1876 thru 1980. Despite its name the SLSF never came close to San Francisco nor did it enter California. The Frisco was merged into the Burlington Northern RR in November, 1980.

Possibly my favorite car from this purchase was the SLSF 6243. I just like the way it looks and quickly added it to my shopping basket. 

Ship it on the Frisco! Three Frisco boxcars in three paint schemes.

"3/31/78, three Frisco boxcars" by OHFalcon72 is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/?ref=openverse.

Clinchfield 50' Boxcar

The Clinchfield RR was the last class 1 railroad built in the United States starting as the Carolina, Clinchfield & Ohio. The RR began operations in 1924 with a 266 mile mainline from Spartanburg, SC to Elkhorn City, KY. In 1972 the Clinchfield became part of the Family Lines System. In 1983 the CRR became part of the Seaboard System when when the Family Lines merged with the Seaboard. The Seaboard would merge with the Chessie System in 1986 to form the CSX RR.

The Athearn BB boxcar has joined the fleet. The car is for explosives loading only and appears to be in assigned service to the Holston Army Ammunition Plant in Kingsport, TN.

Carrying explosives will obviously require careful handling.

This Penn Central book on Hazardous Materials Regulations that was a gift from PC Ralph details the appropriate loading, handling and placement of freight cars carrying hazardous materials. 

Boxcars carrying explosives must have a wooden floor which the CRR boxcar has. The CRR wood floor is painted with gray primer and any car with a metal floor would need a wood overlay.

Here is a similar 1:1 scale CRR 5874.

"Boxcar, Clinchfield" by Gary Lee Todd, Ph.D. is marked with CC0 1.0. To view the terms, visit https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed.en/?ref=openverse.

PGE Boxcar #4505

The Pacific Great Eastern Railway was chartered as a private railroad in 1912 and became a crown corporation in 1918. The PGE would become the British Columbia Railway in 1972 and then took on the BC Rail name in 1984.

The 4505 is "For Paper Loading Only" and will deliver these high value loads to several on layout consignees and and the Long Island Newsday served by my LIRR interchange partner.

Final Thoughts and Comments

Another buying spree has come and gone with some nice additions to the roster. Finding used rolling stock and motive power at very reasonable prices keeps the hobby affordable for me and working to add the cars to the fleet is one of the aspects of the hobby that I enjoy. Researching car routes for each of the cars has become a hobby within the hobby.

Thanks for reading!!!

See you soon!!!