Operators Taking the Summer Off!

Southwestern New Jersey seems somewhat devoid of N Scale model railroaders. Putting together a reliable operating crew is somewhat challenging. You want to find folks who are somewhat compatible in interests and behavior (ex: civilized, non-smoking, non-cussing, and semi-rational :-) ). (I am becoming more and more convinced that many model railroaders cross that last barrier.)

I found one of my regular crew of four from the Railwire forum, one from the Nscale.net forum (who brought a friend) and one locally. Two of them travel about 80 miles to join me and that is asking a lot. Another travels about 20 miles, the fourth is local. I have access to occasional substitutes but both come from distances across the Delaware River (on the Pennsylvania frontier).

I do seasonal work for a tax preparation company which wipes out my playtime schedule about 4 months (mid-January to mid-April) of every year and impacts another 2 months (mid-November to mid-January). That leaves 6 months, of which Summer consumes 3 months. One of my regulars lives at the Jersey shore and loves boating, another likes to ride his tricycle on sunny weekends, and a third seems to have disappeared from the face of the earth (probably dealing with family issues). One of the part-timers does teleprompting for corporations and politicians. That is his only income so trains, of necessity take a back seat.

So I am off and I can't put together an operating crew. Building kits is becoming less fun due to increasingly shaky hands. 

An idle mind finds ways to get into trouble. So a significant portion of the layout went from this:

To this:

Why you might ask (possibly remembering the "non-rational" quote above)? Many reasons:

* No operating crew and nothing to do

* Boredom (the layout was approaching that nearly completed state which leads to BOREDOM)

* The Millville/Deepwater ends needed staging and I had absolutely no way to squeeze it in.

* As I aged, the duck-under was becoming a pain in the neck back

* I wanted to start running 30-40 car coal drags, sand drags, and tanker trains (staging again) and yard capacity was limiting me to 20 or less.

* During operations, the Camden Pavonia yard was becoming overloaded and these changes will more evenly balance the workload between the two towers.

So left unattended I tore down several sections (Camden/Philly/Manayunk were not affected) and plan to make several changes which may or may not work.

* The Westville and Woodbury sections will be rearranged and placed back to back (and lowered)

* Staging for both ends will be along the wall Westville used to occupy.

There are costs to this attempt.

* I am at a standstill until I can get 3 more people to help me move the existing sections.

* Tighter curves (19" min radius to 15").

* The entrance end will have restricted aisle widths

* Westville will now fall under un-prototypical control of Brown Tower (Camden) instead of Red Oak Tower (Woodbury)

* A lot more work

I am uncharacteristically doing this without a detailed scaled plan. But if it doesn't work I'll change themes, do away with the Westville and Woodbury modules and just build a new non-PRSL railroad along the the other wall leaving the center of the room open. (The room certainly feels brighter and more friendly that way!)

The lesson from all this: "Never leave Rick alone with his idle (dangerous) mind."

Home Again!

The “family” has finally returned to home rails! Bob Neilson renumbered a few RS3s for me, relettered an Atlas VO-1000 to PRSL, and re-chassised an RS11.

Since we didn’t have a full operating crew available, the kids in us just decided to just string together (4) 25 to 40 car trains and run them together on 2 tracks for an hour. (Flawlessly except for a Bowser cabin that periodically decided to leave its train to become a snowplow on the following train.)

NTrainz1’s pair of U Boats (PC & Conrail) also won the pulling contest over my GP38s. Continuing the kid-in-us theme, the Fox Valley and Kato NS heritage units appeared pushing the layout’s time warp even further into the future.

(Now who is going to get those 100+ cars back where they belong (i.e. matching their car and waybill slots?))

Re-Weathering the Fleet

Spent a couple of days re-weathering part of the fleet.

When you are colorblind you stick to pastels with the adjective "grimy" in front of them and hope it turns out for the best.

That Neolube 2 works great at darkening the wheels on the steam engines and makes the drivers look better by hiding their oversized flanges.

The Atlas GP38s are the only mass market PRSL engines I know of.
I have 5 and need to get 2 of them renumbered.

A BS12 for the PRSL

One of my regular operators and friend, Bob Neilson) has renumbered (to non-duplicate numbers) several of my PRR RS3s AND turned an Atlas VO-1000 into a Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Lines ~BS12 for me. (The photo is from his layout.)

A real PRSL BS12:

Atlas produced 2 different versions of the VO-1000, one made in Korea and the other in China. Here is one of each:

Gloucester County Historical Society - Open House March 2018

The local County Historical Society had an open house featuring trains (mostly HO from the Tyler (Mantua Metals) family collection). I was disappointed at the N scale table. It consisted of loose, collapsing sectional track pieces which wouldn’t even permit their old Bachman engine to transverse a quarter of the loop. So I loaned them one of the 2’x4’ Christmas tree displays I made for each of my 4 adult kid’s families. Now all they need is for someone to donate some old equipment that they can run. (The layouts are set up to run 2 trains in opposite direction from a single power pack.)  I also left them a stack of old Model Railroader magazines to give to each child (chronological or behavioral) interested. Hopefully we can generate some new modelers.

Late 1950s - A kid with a new hobby!

It was in the late 1950s and I had just discovered Model Railroader magazines in a new small hobby shop in a local strip mall. There it was in a window, eye height to a pre-teen. I had just gotten into the hobby and I had no idea what the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad was but there stood an HO engine bearing their name in a beautiful multi-colored paint scheme. (Keep in mind I lived in PRSL territory with nothing but boxy, “black” Baldwin road switchers.) There was no way I could save up enough to afford it at the time but I always wanted one. Sixty years later I got the chance to acquire a used B&O geep in N scale. Ah Heaven!

Although I am downsizing my N & HO collections, I cannot resist a few beautiful engines that in no way fit my prototype. The WP geep I saw at a Rick Spano open house and fell in love with the look and I was always in love with GN & NP early paint schemes.

Wistful of the days long past!