White Pine Roster

The new WC White Pine roster has been taking shape.

WC GP35 #2557

WC GP40 #3005

WC Radio Control Car #14. This was an experiment the WC tried for one man control on this remote branch. 

WC GP30 #700. I had the fortune of riding in the locomotive in Duluth, MN where it wears SOOcolors again. 

450 Ton Flat Cars

I bought a couple of NScaleKits.com 450T depressed center flatcars. The kits were a hot mess. I had to rebuild every bolster to the correct length. The decks were the wrong shape and had to be rebuilt. The details were poor castings, so I swapped in parts from other kits. I scratch built the loads from some prototype pics I found. I figured these were more visually appealing than the normal grey transformer loads. Finally I have something I like… 

Massive Update

I know it has been a long time since I’ve posted here. For those still following, I’ll get you up to speed. I did sell the Skally Line to a friend locally and in early 2020 I started a new layout. It it based on the WC White Pine Sub in 1996. More news on that soon. Last week I took the new layout to a large FreemoN meet in Evanston, WY, where it became part of a large (100’ x 150’) FreemoN layout. Here are some highlights:

Utah Railway power visiting White Pine

Utah Railway power crossing my Afton Canyon module (Stephen Henderson photo)

White Pine in all its glory!

Joe Fehr switching the White Pine yard.

The layout, 1200’ of modules.

We rented the Evanston enginehouse  for this private event.

A Long Overdue Progress Update

So much going on... I’ve finally been making some progress after a little hiatus. I added a dozen new 2 Bay Intermountain covered hoppers. The couplers are all body mounted, so all I had to do was weather them and they were ready for unit train service.

 I finished up my 1956 RPM project cars.

 I made some progress on my UB project cars.

 I’ve started 3D printing on my new Anycubic Photon.

 I finished a Clinchfield MOW boom car.

I hope I can keep this pace up for a couple more weeks. It feels good to be getting things done!

Vehicles

I'm still working on populating my roads. I've added another couple of Semis. One was a Showcase Miniatures Kit, the other was a TrainWorx semi with a Showcase Miniatures trailer. You'll get to see the new load later.

Winter Progress

Progress is always good. I've been working on a series of HD flat cars, and wile doing that I decided to finish off some other fun projects. 

The first was a Reefer Kit I got at the Chicagoland RPM. This was a great event filled with like minded modelers. I'm planning on using this car in some vintage Skally Line photo shoots. I just need to build a corresponding NP W-3 and caboose.

I also wanted to build a BNSF Scale Test Car. This was a 3D print I had to detail out and build a frame for.

With the scale test car done, I decided I needed to finish the scale at Ardent Mill in Rush City. I poured concrete in the North ends of Track 4 (right track in the photo), 5 (center), and 6 (left side and home of the Mills scale). It felt good to finally finish that up. I do need to add the concrete pad for the car puller on track 4, as well as detail the interior of the building. I have plenty of time to get that done.

Lots of Writing Work

I'm on a bit of a writing streak. I've had a few big articles hit the pages of N Scale Railroading magazine.

You may have seen my Schnabel car on the cover of the Nov/Dec issue of NSR. This monster build was my third cover, but it was only Part 1 of the Schnabel build.

The Jan/Feb issue brought Part 2 of the build, as well as an article I did on building a little scenic truck. This was the first time I've had two articles printed in the same issue, and it brings me to 18 articles printed so far. I have more articles in queue and will have more done as soon as I get a little more layout progress done. I'll post some updates as soon as I get the work done.