When Freight Cars Battle!

Sometimes cars just don't see coupler to coupler. A few weeks back I photographed a couple that had done just that. It looks like the MNNR set them out for the CN to try and fix at New Brighton. The cars were coupled together, but you could see where the opposing ends had "bumped". Someone didn't quite clear the foul zone. The coupler for the reefer is actually strapped to the deck of the center beam flat. I bet that made one heck of a boom!

Tiller Part 3

I wish I had a ton of great things to tell everyone, but progress has been slow on Tiller. I did get about half the cork down. Looking through photos I realized I had one switch facing the wrong direction.

Seeing that my plans were in error, I changed my plans. The cork is down to match this plan:

This actually gains me a little room on the loadout track, maybe enough for 1-2 more 2 bay hoppers. I did photograph some of the 2 Bays for Tiller over Easter weekend in North Branch and in Hinckley. 

There were also some older 3 Bays getting used. I have captured more than a few ATSF hoppers in sand duty over the years...

Tiller Progress

I've managed to fit in a little time to start on benchwork for Tiller Corp. and Zinpro in North Branch. The main portions are constructed. I need to do a little fine tuning. The black line you see is the main line. Next week I'll lay out the trackage in both industries and start laying down cork.

The pink half will be all Tiller, which will spill over onto the yellow side, which will contain about a foot of the Tiller site as well as Zinpro. The 6" offset will allow me to use these in FreemoN layouts, but also gives me more room for trackage and the large buildings for both industries. I'm guessing scratchbuilding those buildings will take me all summer.

Here is another angle...

The Mainstreeter

The Skally Line is in talks with a local farmers co-op about building a shuttle loading facility. The BNSF will use their power to run the trains to the proposed facility in North Branch.These unit trains will be the G-HINSUP/DUL and X-SUP/DULHIN, known on the Skally as the Mainstreeter (a little nod to the NP heritage of the line). We hope the shuttle service will start early 2014.

I like Earthworms (BNSF Unit Grain Trains), what can I say. I've got the cars and I started collecting the motive power. I have 2 Dash 9's I am detailing right now. The beautiful BNSF ES44DC 7768 came to me as a gift from my friend HK, he did all the detailing for me on this one. All I have to do is paint the trucks, add a little handrail and go (A big thanks to HK for this one!). I already have the Digitrax decoder installed, it just needs to be programmed.

BNSF 9370 is the EMD in my grain power fleet. As I finally was able to secure a Trainworx SD70 detail set, this one will be getting stripped down, detailed, repainted and renumbered. It will probably re-emerge later this year as BNSF 9284, but that isn't set in stone yet.