Modutrak at TrainFest

I had a fun run to Milwaukee to hang out with my Modutrak friends. I came in straight from San Diego, so I was lent a variety of trains to run.

Jordan at Rapido Trains lent me their Turbo Liner. What a dream! It ran flawlessly for hours and looked beautiful doing it!

Mike Skibbe lent me a monster freight, the 4 IM F-Units pulled it no problem. It is nice having broad curves to glide around. At a reasonable speed this train took an hour to navigate the layout. Here you can see it passing between the CNW and MILW tunnels at Tunnel City, WI. I built these modules before the St. Louis RPM and drove them 2300 miles for the show!

I also got to run some Southern Alberta Rail units. These are Grant Eastman creations owned by Mike.

BC Rail Cars

I have been wanting to increase the volume of BC Rail cars in White Pine. I added a mix of brands this week to bulk up the fleet. These cars hauled copper anodes from the Flin Flon mine in Manitoba to the White Pine Refinery for refining into copper cathodes. I made sure the cars all had metal wheels, were weighted correctly, and were weathered before they hit the layout.

The Kaslo kits I built and painted:

Athearn:

PWRS:

PWRS WC car… this was an absolute mess from the factory. Underweight, and it had fingerprints in the factory paint… I’m still waiting for PWRS to fix this.

More MOW

Okay… I got on a bit of a kick. I ended up building not one, but two N Scale tie gangs. One will stay with me, and the other will head to a beautiful Afton Canyon layout.

Some pics of my progress:

Tie Cranes

Spikers

Spike Pullers

OTM Retriever

TRIPP

TR1 Tie Inserter

Ballast Regulator