Modeller train: Winter

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Senin, 31 Juli 2017

Winter Layout Work Update Part 2

I think I promised this a long time ago, but I finally found some time to photograph and write about some more of the progress made on the layout in the last couple of weeks. Without further delay, onto the photos!

My brother Mark made quick work of installing rails in the Stelco rolling mill. As-designed, Walthers intended for cars to roll into the building on channels cast into the floor of the mill, not on actual rails. This meant that it was not possible to operate a locomotive in the building, as there was no way to supply power, nor actual rails to be powered. Mark carved channels into the floor large enough to lay some code 83 rail inside, secured by CA glue. At the moment, the end panels of the building are not installed, but will be once work on the interior is completed. Elsewhere, gaps in the ties are being filled with spare ties in preparation for painting and ballasting to be completed soon.

With the rails installed in the building, we can finally spot cars for loading inside!

CN 7203 lifts a pair of loads from the coil yard.

Additional work on the switches has been completed, exchanging the existing throw-bars with copper-foil covered ties (to isolate each half electrically). With the shop tracks to the shop building now installed, the only remaining track to be laid on the layout is the two tracks to the turntable and the four tracks to the roundhouse/RIP track. I’ll post a future update about the shop building and roundhouse, but for now I should mention that they will be essentially side-by-side, with the intent to separate steam and diesel servicing operations. The roundhouse is a modified three-stall Atlas kit that Mark extensively reworked to make the track angular separation suitable use with our turntable (larger than the Atlas version); the Atlas roundhouse is set up for 15° track spacing, whereas our turntable requires spacing of about 10°. The diesel shop is a scratchbuilt representation of the CN shop at Stuart street yard in Hamilton, Ontario, though I made my version longer than the prototype in order to fit an SD9043MAC inside.

Mark made a panel to hold electrical switches to isolate the shop tracks from the rest of the layout. The three installed are for the diesel shop tracks, and the other two are for the lead tracks to the turntable (and roundhouse).

Mark has also done some more electrical work on the layout. Some more feeders have helped improve operational reliability and the shop tracks have been isolated such that power can be stored on the layout without consuming power.

The newly-installed shop tracks with some of my modern-era CN power laying over between jobs. Zebra-stripes galore!

I hope to have another layout update in the next week or so, stay tuned!

Cheers,

Peter.

Readmore → Winter Layout Work Update Part 2

Rabu, 05 Juli 2017

Throwback Thursday 28 CP Winter Action at Galt 1972 2014

The low winter sun illuminates CP C424 #4238 as it is about to pass the depot at Galt with an extra westbound in February 1972. Chuck Begg photo, author's collection.

The same view as above, 42 years later (3 January 2014). The MLW's are long gone, replaced by an ES44AC and a SD40-2 (also now gone). No longer is this location Galt, but now the city of Cambridge - unless you're a railfan, in which case this will always be Galt!

Today’s Throwback Thursday takes us back to the Winter of 1972. We’re at Galt, ON, standing in front of the CP depot that still bears the name of its’ Scottish novelist namesake (John Galt). A year later, the civic merger of Galt, Preston, and Hespeler would result in the city of Cambridge, where the modern counterpart photo was taken (even though I’m standing essentially where photographer Chuck Begg did 42 years earlier, I’m in another city!).

In this view, we see a CP westbound extra lead by three MLW C424’s, with the lead unit #4238 still in it’s as-delivered classic Tuscan and grey paint scheme. The unit is seven years old, built in 1965, and would survive another three years before being repainted to CP’s attractive Action Red paint scheme in early 1975. The engine would serve its original owner for 33 years until a sale in 1998 to New Brunswick East Coast Railway took the unit to the Maritimes. As Alco/MLW technology faded from the shortline scene, the unit was sold for parts to sister railroad Ottawa Central before being scrapped in March 2004.

Not only are the Burlington Route boxcar and the head-end stock cars long gone, but the scene itself has changed substantially as well. Absent in Chuck’s photo is the #8 highway/Dundas St. bridge constructed over the Galt yard and Galt Sub mainline. Auto traffic now dominates activity in the yard with a Toyota manufacturing plant located on the old Grand River Railway line a few miles north of the yard (the line merges into the yard near the Burlington boxcar on the other side of Samuelson street).

Though the scene has changed, Galt is still a busy place with several through freights and a daily local passing through on the main line. A pair of locals based at Wolverton yard east of Woodstock also call on the yard, heading up the old GRR line (CP Waterloo spur) to serve the Toyota plant. Additionally, the station and freight shed still stand, so it’s still possible to relive the scene in Chuck’s photo – too bad the MLW’s are gone though!

‘Til next time,

Cheers,

Peter.

Readmore → Throwback Thursday 28 CP Winter Action at Galt 1972 2014