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!