Winter Additions

Welcome back for more ferroequinological fun! No advancements were made this week in the Train Room per se, but great progress was made in the downstairs hall. Once the southern part of the downstairs hall is complete, the majority of the hallway items in the Train Room can move back to their rightful place, and then work can progress in the Train Room again. In the hall, I painted the ceiling white, and painted the walls brown (using more free paint from the Restore!) I also place boxcar wood baseboards along the southern walls and into the stairway. My wife helped us come up with some really nifty decor ideas for the north wall of the hallway - it will take a bit, but it will look really cool. (Of course, pictures will come when completed.) While working on the hallway, I got to watch/listen to some really neat steam locomotive DVDs playing from the Train Room. Also this week, arrangements for the visiting HO train collection were finalized - I'll have more on that in the next update, but I think it is a great scenario that will help promote the fun of model railroading to a new generation! 

So, this week I'll talk about 6 new additions to the O-Scale fleet in January 2014. These were all purchased through on-line auctions via eBay or Trainz. 

American View

For some time, I've been looking for an O-Scale Union Pacific vista dome passenger car from the City of Los Angeles passenger train. Now, why would such a pro-C&NW anti-UP fellow like me want to do that? Well, in 1956, my mother and my uncle took a trip with my grandfather on the City of Los Angeles from California to Illinois. My Mom recalled the fun she had on the train, especially in the vista dome car. My Mom has been very encouraging to my railroading hobby, and her help was a great boon to the first scenic'd train set I developed in Illinois. (She was the Scenery Engineer of the SDCR&GC RR.) She also enjoys the wonders of the rails, although probably not to the same extent as me! My uncle is a fellow O-Scale model railroader, gifting my first Lionel train when I was 3, nominating me to join the TCA later on, and continually inspiring me with the massive layout he built in Illinois. (My father has always, and continues to enjoy the railroading hobby as well - he just wasn't on the City of Los Angeles, so I'll have to find something else to commemorate him with in a future entry!) ANYway... this model is a fancy aluminum 20" car made by Weaver Models. It is in like-new condition, but is boxless. Now in real-life, American View was never part of the City of Los Angeles. Actually, it never was a vista dome either. It was actually a sleeper car on the Union Pacific Butte Special, which ran between Denver, CO and Butte, MT (pictured at the top of today's blog entry.) So, this car also gets to commemorate the home city of our friends Darren and Patti: Butte, MT. Darren enjoys railroading as well, and we've even gone on a ferroequinological-archeological adventure in Forsyth, MT, but that is a tale for another time... Anyway, back to the American View - I also acquired it because it has a nifty patriotic name, and although I am not a fan of the UP, I really look forward to running this car on the layout. Since it is a bit of a conglomeration, the car could technically be based out of Chicago, Denver, Butte, AND Los Angeles, which opens up a variety of fun match-ups. It would be right at home amongst the C&NW passenger cars on The Challenger, since that train was a joint operation between the C&NW and UP. It would also work on the NP North Coast Vista Dome Limited, which connected with Butte. It would be a fun guest on the RI Rocky Mountain Rocket too, which connected Chicago and Denver. So, lots of fun is ahead for the American View, not just because of new opportunities, but also because of the journey it memorializes. On another happy note, a real-life "American View" car still survives today. There are some conflicting reports as to it's original heritage, but there is an "American View" dining car on display at the museum in little ole' Mendota, IL. 

Another new addition this month is a boxless Dubuque Packing Company reefer made by Canadian Model Trains (CMT). This is the only CMT car in the collection thus far. This past Fall, my sister got married and now lives in Dubuque, IA. There are not many O-Scale cars dealing with Iowa, let alone Dubuque! Another neat connection is that my sister's husband works for a meat processing/preparation company, so this car has some fun meaning to me! 

The rest of the entries are great new members of the fleet, but most likely lack the commemorative-ness of the first two! Next is a sleekly painted boxless Weaver Models Great Northern storage mail express car. This car will proudly ride behind the head-end of the yet-to-be acquired Empire Builder passenger train. Also joining the collection is an MTH/Railking Milwaukee Road gondola. This is from MTH's early days, when the Railking logo was purple with yellow accents. Although Railking is not necessarily O-Scale, I've found from experience that this particular gondola is (or really really close).A red O-Scale Texaco two-dome tank car from K-line joined the roster, and a smaller K-line single-dome Milwaukee Road tank joined as well. I'm not quite sure about the scale-ness of this one, but the detailing looks very good, and I recently acquired another O-Scale tank car that was smaller, but authentic. Tank cars seem to have been built in a range of sizes in real-life, so I'm hoping this one fits right in on the O-Scale layout of the future!

Until next time, enjoy the food, commercials, and football on Sunday (but mostly the food), and keep your rails shiny ~ 

UP "American View" Vista Dome

Great Northern storage mail express car

Dubuque Packing Company reefer

Milwaukee Road tank car, Texaco tank car, and Milwaukee Road gondola