What's new on the Evergreen Railroad?

Brand spanking new SP FP7s handle a beautiful California Zephyr passenger train owned by member John Smith, not to be confused by new member Scotty Smith.

 

Here is the tail car that shows the quality of the current equipment available to us modelers and collectors of model railroad equipment.

 

Mike Baker had this Great Northern GP9 local delivering the goods to customers along the line.

 

Great Northern was represented with my 2 GE U25Bs pulling 4 World World 2 era troop cars given to me by Tom Jennings!

 

Tommy Frank had his 3 GE locos running most of the day.

 

What's this? Steve Welton has TWO Kansas City Southern SD70s and some of us have none! We need an investigation of this by a law firm or something! Anyone know any volunteers?

 

 

 

And now a glimpse of what's happening on the real railroad.

At risk of paying $200.fine to get this photo of a clone of a Steve Welton model that he runs on the Evergreen layout, this brute of a loco was on the point of a westbound in Yardley in the Spokane Valley last Saturday or Sunday. I hear the BNSF cop is a good friend of engineer Keith Wiles.

The best shot I could find of Steve's engine is this one in trail led by a UP SD70. I'll check to see if it is the same number!

The same fine would have also brought me this photo of an SD40-2 Remote Control 3000 horsepower switch engine attached to a GP 50 B unit. Not every long ago this was the backbone mainline power now relegated to yard service! The little label below the number indicates remote control from a guy on the ground!

Don Brereton brought in his dinner train last week and set it up on the Green Branch that normally restricts the long cars such as these but we are talking photo op!

Uncle Don shows us that they truly model trains, not the real thing! He didn't know I was shooting the picture.

Anyone for dinner? It looks like the dinner train made it up north to Canada as CP and CN locos gather with the lone F unit at Bakerville, BC.

The color of Orange

I was lucky enough to be around when the Milwaukee Road Little Joes were still running around Avery, Idaho and Montana. My first visit to Avery introduced me to Boxcabs and Little Joes ( named after Joe Stalin who was supposed to get them in 1948 but the Cold War put a stop to that ) in 1970 and lasted until June 8th, 1974, the last time I saw them run. My HO collection has 3 of them in inventory at the moment, 2 brass and 1 MTH brand.

Don't you just love the headlight glow? Its real.

My paint colors differ a little bit from MTH colors but so did the colors vary on the real ones, depending how much sun the engine got. The GN collection in the background in the Blue main yard reminds me of Hillyard, Washington when I arrived in Spokane in 1967. It was a different world back then.

GN's first diesels got the complete Empire Builder colors along with the yellow pin stripes. Later years (1964? ) they went to a simpler paint minus the stripes. In 1967 they switched to

the evil Big Sky Blue!

I got ambitious enough to put a number of locos in the Blue main yard for this overview of different power units  Someone asked me what my favorite railroad is and my answer ended with 6 railroad names.

The Spokane. Portland & Seattle was the smaller brother of the big guys around Spokane but it still had a warm spot in my heart as it had a lot of Alco power which made it different than the others. I am waiting the the Alco C-636 models promised last year and the wait goes on! In the meantime I will run the smaller C-424s and 425s as you see in this photo.  The RS-1 in the background does not count.

My final trivia message to all you modelers out there is to make your flat cars something special. This one has a commercial load I purchased at Sunset Junction and put on a 50 foot flat car. The deck is weathered, sure but without the chains holding the load in place it just didn't look right. I used CA glue to set the chain to the car and after it dried I took CA gel and went over the connection to better secure it the chain to the car. Regular CA does not have any shear strength except if you get it on your fingers! That switch in the background needs to get attention by the rust crew!

Random shots left over from the Open House

We have seen this loco set before and this time I used a softer touch to the smoke with a little extra exiting the tunnel.

Those cars on the upper track was what the steamers were pulling and the Alaska units don't have that ugly smoke belching out!

This past summer I acquired several used Shay locos but this one had all the gears and motor wore out.  So what does a benlovent railroad mogul like me do with retired steam locos but donate them to the local city park.

To me, the photos seem less without some indication of smoke and steam coming out of them.

Instead of all that Alco smoke belching I added some ground cover. I think I need to work on that technique.

Rolling around Spokane

I came upon this vehicle a day or 2 ago and it is Mr. Herzog's machine doing yard work for the BNSF. his end is the power car and it had about 5 well cars in tow along with a controller car on the other end.

It can be operated at either end  but the machine behind it has the ability to run on tracks on top of the well cars to pick up junk, branches, bushes, trespassers, etc. I am proud to say that I did not have to trespass on BNSF property to get either shot!

Playing with helpers

I have been not sending much the last week as my computer ate my Picasa program with all my photos on it!  I think I have recovered them but not in the order I like. Anyway here is a collection of stuff that would have never seen the light of day in real life! A Big Boy steam engine with Union Pacific markings on the point is not out of reason.

What is weird is that the train has a Southern Pacific Cab Forward doing the pasting on an SP&S caboose in the company of an NP coal car! Now I could tell you that I was pulling/pushing a 100 car train but then again I don't live in Washington, DC.

I gave these 4 SP&S Alcos some smoke because they are Alcos!

Allan had his good looking CP steamers working on the Green branch during the Open House last week pulling about 22 coal cars. I would guess we had about 180-200 people visit us. The newspaper had a 3 inch column on us and that helped from out the crowd.

Jimmy B. had his 3 Alaska F units doing a freight up the grade. Get those rings fixed before the EPA finds out!