Back On Track

My wife and I recently returned from a trip to attend my sister's wedding in Illinois (explaining the lack of progress in the Train Room last week.)

The "forgotten turntable" picture from last week was taken along the northern edge of Freeport, IL, down the hill near Don's Oasis Restaurant.

It was good to see lots of family and friends in Illinois, and also help out at the wedding. A bonus of driving there and back meant that I was able to bring many more model trains back with me. Amber safely puzzled them into our backseat and trunk, and they all arrived in one piece.

I also purchased two more freight cars on the Trainz Auction since the last blog update. The cars are pictured further below.

I did make a wee bit of progress on the Train Room floor last night. The main part of the room is now 28% done.

The fourth in this series of future passenger train talks is the "Challenger". The real-life train ran between Chicago and Los Angeles, beginning service in 1936. It was a joint venture between the Chicago & North Western and Union Pacific railroads, and thus a variety of equipment was used. My "Challenger" is an all-C&NW train, and is pulled by an E-4 class hudson steam locomotive. The real-life E-4 was a huge, streamlined engine that weighed nearly 400 tons and sported driving wheels that were 7 feet tall. According to Montgomery Scott, this locomotive weighs as much as two adult humpback whales and their surrounding water. Nine of these locomotives were built, but sadly none of them have survived. Fortunately, a bit of their memory can live on through my train sets. The Challenger is a 7-car, streamlined passenger set pulled by a matching E-4 hudson. A hudson steam locomotive has a 4-6-4 wheel arrangement, and were designed for a lot of power at high speeds. At the time I purchased this train set, it was the most expensive single item I had ever acquired on my own. The entire set was built by MTH Electric Trains, and was the first set I obtained with an advanced sound system. The locomotive is able to play a few tricks thanks to the onboard computer. Currently, the Challenger is waiting for its turn in the roundhouse, where it will require a bit of repair work. The engine sat unused and if the battery is left inside of it, it leads to a condition that requires a special re-set. I believe this can be fixed by purchasing a MTH ProtoSounds reset kit, but that is to be determined. Hopefully I can get it up and running quickly, so that visitors can experience the sound and light show it provides on track. On the train layout of the future, the Challenger will be one of the premiere long-distance passenger trains, taking vacationers to all corners of the layout. Keep your rails shiny ~

Two new additions to the rolling stock fleet: A semi-scale Lionel C&NW Reefer, and a scale K-Line Pure Oil Tank car

I'm packing up a few more trains for the trip to Montana

A rear-view of my C&NW hudson locomotive (on the outer-most track)

A real C&NW hudson

A painting of a C&NW hudson by Mark Karvon

Twenty Percent

Being rather busy with other events this week, I've been unable to work in the Train Room. However, I've now scraped 20% of the tiles in the main part of the room, so if I can put a few more hours in then I should be just about ready for painting...

I was able to get away and do a brief bit of railroad archeology this week - does anyone know where this picture was taken?

A forgotten turntable

Bonus Coat

My lovely and generous wife volunteered to paint one more additional coat of white on the Train Room walls! The third picture below shows the results of the nice, even paint job she provided - thank you Amber!
This week I gave the bottoms of the walls a nice blue racing stripe - seems like the room is going faster now, doesn't it? I also started the process of scraping the black tar-like glue from the concrete floor. I purchased a few tools from Harbor Freight to help assist with the effort, but it will still take quite a while. Thank you to Bill for letting me borrow the shop vac! Thus far, I've managed to about a quarter of the floor, which requires scraping every inch of material. Some of it comes up easily, but most of it doesn't. This will push back the project a bit, but it is a necessary step. It is dirty work, but it is worth it!
Some good news is that the floor passed the first "moisture test". Before painting a concrete floor, a thin piece of transparent plastic (a Ziploc bag will do) is taped to the floor. After about 18 hours, the bag is removed and checked for moisture on the bottom and top surfaces. If moisture is present, then there are problems that have to be resolved before painting the floor. My test results were completely dry. I will do the test once more before the painting begins, but first the surface must be fully prepped.

The third in this series of future passenger train talks is the Chicago North Shore & Milwaukee "Electroliner". It is an articulated unit train that was designed to navigate the sharp curves of the Chicago Loop, and also travel at 90mph between Chicago and Milwaukee. One of the two Electroliners was restored and is now available for viewing at the Illinois Railway Museum. I was fortunate enough to be able to ride on it a few times at the museum before it was taken out of service for repairs. Hopefully it will be operational one day again. My Electroliner is a brass model built by Third Rail (a division of Sunset Models). I ran it a few times before it developed some electrical problems. So, this one will require some time on the work bench before I can put it back into service (kind of like the real one I suppose.) Once it has a clean bill of health, it will operate on the current semi-scale layout, and later on the train layout of the future, it will handle interurban routes between Silver Falls and Red Stone, and between downtown and the industrial district. The "Electroliner" is the only brass unit in the fleet at the moment.

New racing stripe

View of the room looking south from the window

Third coat of white paint, and the scraping has begun on the floor

Floor view

The Electroliner in service in Chicago

Amber, Mark, and the Electroliner at IRM in May of 2013

White Walls

During the past week, I cut in the room twice with white paint, and rolled it twice as well. Of course, it was later on in the process that I found that the two cans of paint I got were slightly different tints of white! That plus my relatively poor wall painting skills presented a less than perfect result. But, since I plan to cover most of the walls with various railroad art and memorabilia, I'm ok with it! At least it isn't neon green and blue anymore! Last night, I pulled most of the items out of the room to prepare for the next project, which is prepping the floor for painting. We purchased some floor paint and concrete etcher last weekend. I have to completely remove all of the black "stuff" from the floor that you see in the pictures below before I can apply the etcher. So that is what I'll hopefully be up to this weekend...

The second in this series of future passenger train talks is the "Bozeman Zephyr". This is a Chicago, Burlington and Quincy train from my own imagination, which runs from Chicago, IL to Bozeman, MT. It travels across Illinois to Burlington, IA, and then heads along the southern border of Iowa to Lincoln, NE. Then it sets course diagonally across the state for Alliance, NE, and then barely clips South Dakota on its way to Sheridan, WY. Finally, it stops in Billings, MT and heads over Bozeman Pass to its namesake city. It consists of 5 silver streamlined cars, and is pulled by matching E8 diesel locomotives. All components of this set have been purchased, so all we have to do is wait until they are all in Billings and we have an operational layout for them to ride on. The locomotives were a limited edition run available only through "K-Line Superstores" at various spots around the country. I purchased them through Chicagoland Hobby. The passenger cars were a relatively inexpensive Williams Electric Trains purchase through an online retailer. Despite this, the whole train is O-Scale and thus will run on the train layout of the future, taking passengers between Silver Falls, Red Stone, Cedar Valley, and Juniper Peak. Special runs may see it head further into the wilderness near Iron Horse National Park.

The room is now white!

A better view of the floor and the projects to come...

Bozeman, MT

These are my CB&Q E8's, which will pilot the Bozeman Zephyr.

This is a real CB&Q E8, leading the Denver Zephyr into Chicago. This neat picture was taken by Bob Krone and was retrieved from RailPictures.Net

Prime Condition

This week, the room was taped, and then I cut in all the wall corners with Kilz Primer. I proceeded to roll the rest of the walls with Kilz as well. The former wacky colors can still be seen through the primer, but that is a temporary situation. I have the white paint ready, so hopefully you will see some finished walls pretty soon! Thank you to Amber for providing some good painting advice.

Now lets have some fun and talk about some future passenger trains. These will be O-Scale sets, but you can be sure that the smaller O-27 trains will still be around. The first is called "The Northern Range", and is named after the mountainous region of Yellowstone National Park north of the Blacktail Deer Plateau. I hiked through this area in May of 2008. It is home to many buffalo, some waterfalls, and beautiful vistas. The passenger train will be a relatively small, four-car consist, pulled by matching F3 A-A diesels. I purchased the passenger cars a few years ago; they were manufactured in 2005 and are rather sought after by collectors. Before K-Line Electric Trains was purchased by Lionel, they created a series of trains based on the Santa Fe "warbonnet" paint scheme, but with the silver coloring replaced with deep black. Lionel has continued to manufacture trains with this striking paint scheme, but as of yet they haven't made any O-Scale offerings (they have all been semi-scale). This paint scheme is called "Black Bonnet" or "Midnight Chief". For the yet-to-be-purchased locomotives, I can choose between the K-Line engines originally made for this set, or the more common Williams (by Bachmann) locomotive set. If I go the Williams route, I will want to inspect the paint job first to insure a good match with my passenger set. This train would also look spiffy being pulled by any of the larger O-Scale steam locomotives in the fleet. "The Northern Range" will run between Silver Falls and Iron Horse National Park on the train layout of the future, and will soon be seen on the semi-scale layout I am in the process of building.

Primed and ready for painting

The northern range of Yellowstone National Park

Three buffalo

One of the cars of "The Northern Range" passenger train