A fellow by the name of Joe Ross posted two youtube videos about the Eastern Loggers, the club I used to be active in. For many years now, the layout has been complete, but a few guys maintain in the home where it resides. Additionally, I found another video shot by member Mike Tener. I posted about my involvement with the eastern loggers in this post.
I hope you can enjoy the videos
PLW has announced S-scale double sheathed box cars (O-scale too). The MEC and NYC versions will have printed sides. Gary indicates he will produce them with any car number you request. So what numbers to get?
O-scale pilot model of PLW MEC Boxcar. The paint color is dupi color red primer. Same as one of my test paint colors for SR&RL cars
Honestly, I have no idea the date of the paint scheme.
I’m planning to model 1912-1914 time frame. So I took a look at the Official Railway Equipment Register (ORER) for 1912. (FYI: Many ORER’s were scanned in for google docs you can find them by searching and including google docs in the search string). Here is the ORER I found: https://books.google.com/books?id=tboMAQAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false
If you’ve never looked at an ORER, you will find a “Index of Railroads” in the first few pages (This was after the powers of attorney pages). It will list each railroad and a page number. One can than use that page number to find the page for the railroad. The page number does not correspond to the PDF’s digital page number. So it can take a bit of scrolling to find the proper page.
MEC listing in Index of Railroads (around page 15 in ORER)
The Maine Central pages seem to be 340 to 341. So I scrolled down to those pages. It’s hard to read the page numbers in the book as they are cut off in the scan.
First page MEC ORER entry for Dec 1912
First page MEC ORER entry for Dec 1912
According to PLW, the S-scale, box cars are roughly 6 5/8″ long, or roughly 35′. The number on the pilot model is 1897, but others are in the 8000 series. In the 1912 ORER, the 1800’s are used for coal hoppers, so that number does not seem appropriate for my time frame. Possibly it is correct for an earlier time frame. The 1912 ORER lists 8001-10400 as 36′ box cars (actually 36′ 9″ outside length and note that 9818 had an end door), so I’ll go with 8000 numbers. The length is off by a bit more than one foot, and I do not know if the lettering is accurate for 1912, but who cares, close enough.
So I’m picking 8015 and 8301 for my two cars. Hopefully no one else picks my numbers, that way I can pick up an additional car and not have a conflict.
Test cuts of NYC box car
Additionally, I’ll order an NYC car with number 53504
I plan to rotate standard gauge cars on and off the layout in Farmington. My hope is to have the waybills for the SR&RL cars have a specific standard gauge car to deliver to. 2-3 SR&RL cars will be billed to a standard gauge car. Think of each standard gauge car as a unique industry in Farmington and what’s even better, the industries in Farmington will change location between or even during an operating session. The Farmington switcher (SR&RL #7) will have to deliver to make multiple spots at a standard gauge car to fill it up (or unload). Then the standard gauge car will be moved off layout. This should make the Farmington switcher a full filling job to work.
In addition to the two MEC cars and the NYC car, I plan to order two undecorated cars. Looking through the SR&RL books, it seems that B&M, Erie, CV, and other boxcars game to Farmington.
Like most PLW offerings, I expect the standard gauge cars to have limited availability. Reruns would depend on demand.
In an earlier post this week, I stated I was jumping in with 2-feet! That’s true for my model railroad, but I have another project. The backyard 4.75″ Woodlark Central. It is a backyard railroad that I’m building with my Dad for me and my friends. Today, the grading began, you can read more about it on my back yard one inch scale blog. Take a look here: https://oneinchscale.wordpress.com/2017/03/26/cant-stop-now-grading-begins/
John Rogers may have been one of the most controversial, yet successful On2 SR&RL models ever. He stormed on the scene with radical ideas and ambitions, got a successful operating and mostly sceniced representation of the SR&RL, then exited the scene almost as quickly as he came in.
Some may call him brash, but I found him endearing, generous and passionate. Through him I got invited to a great OP’s weekend where I got to operate on his On2 SR&RL, Tony Koester’s HO NKP, and Craig Bisgeier’s HO Housatonic Railroad. It was a TT&TO enthusiasts dream operating weekend. John and I had met at the 2011 NNGC in Hickory, NC. At that time John was storming along on his On2 SR&RL. We had many conversations about the SR&RL, operations, TT&TO, On2, and Sn2. John was as enthusiastic for me as anyone else.
I do not think I’ve ever posted any photos of the time I operated on his now gone On2 layout. But I did find these links on youtube. Take a look:
Bigelow to Carrabasset overview
Train 10 leaving strong for Farmington
John has since moved on to bigger things. He is doing 2-foot outside and inside it seems. He has more youtube vidoes posted for his current adventures, checkout his youtube channel.
I was skimming through Al Churella’s website looking for inspiration and found a link to this video on youtube. I love Al’s modeling, take a look for yourself. Madrid is a site I plan to include on the Sn2 SR&RL.
Two feet in? No I’m not talking gauge…I’m talking about me…
This past weekend, I attended the Midwest NG Show put on by Gary Kohler (PLW/M2FQ/LITCo…) and met up with some of my long time 2-Foot enthusiasts. Including Gary White and Chris McChesney. I had a wonderful time, great to spend time with my long time (more than 20 year) 2 foot enthusiasts…Darry S, Mark H, Gary K, Jeff S, Tom H, etc… also to catch up with my other NG friends, including those from right around home…The most common question to me was something like this: “So how’s your layout going?” My answer tended to go something like this… “Well….not much progress, I’ve got one foot in Sn2, one foot in S-scale standard gauge, and a hand in HO DT&I of 1976” It’s an honest answer and I’d continue with, “I need to jump into something with two feet…oh yea, I have two other projects in play too. My dad and I are building 4.75″ gauge railroad in my backyard for my 50th birthday celebration and I’m working HAVOC, and 1923 HO modular layout with my model building friends”
Clearly I have lots of dreams, some will come to fruition, but none of them will be what I want if I keep shifting my energies and resources all around. So, I proclaim, I need to pick a home layout and jump in with two feet!
So what should I jump into?
So, step back…I’m about to take a running leap and jump all in!
Here is an HO K-27 with an Sn2 Big Forney. Do they look OK together? The domes are a bit small, but not tiny, the boiler is lower slung, but might be fatter, but lack the extension typical on 2-foot locos, the head light is a bit small. The tender is a bit short, but not terrible, clearly the CAB is the biggest problem. The cylinder might be too large. Anyway, good enough for a stand in…
The HOn3 K-27 does fit on the turntable, so no compromises there to make it run on the layout. A K-36 might look better, with it’s bigger drivers. Blackstone is taking orders for those now (No, I’m not going to order one)
I want to have a large fleet of SR&RL friend cars, and all of them will need to be painted. Much discussion related to model colors has occurred in M2FQ, and on the various Maine two foot yahoo groups. The On2 FAQ site has recorded some of the most valued content for modelers to read, read the post on Tin roofs and colour schemes. However many of the recommendations are for older obsolete painted and/or complex mixes. So I decided it was time to find paints acceptable to me. My preference is for acrylic paints in an airbrush or spray cans.
So, I decided to do a number of test shots for my own evaluation. To do the shots I cut styrene sheet into 1.5×4″ pieces around the size of a boxcar side. Then I primer them with krylon great primer and finally sprayed them with the candidate colors. Here are the results.
Candidate colors for freight car red
Which one do you like? Rendering may not be accurate. Upper left of unpainted. Next is primer grey. The image below has them all flipped over so you can read the names.
Names of paints
It was Gary Kohler’s recommendation to use the dupli-color primers. I do like the results they give and will likely go with one of them for my SR&RL freight car red. If for nothing else they are in a spray can. I’ll probably not stick to one color for all equipment, as the color likely varied some over time. I’ll choose a roof color from there’s too. It may be same car sides or vary, time will tell what I do.
The paints used in the test shots
