PROGRESS at last!

For the first time in a long time there's some news on the layout itself. The wiring for the new lights is up, and the frames to hold the scenery are installed from the north tunnel portal, past midway, and nearly all the way to the bridge! (of course, you have to think a little fourth-dimensionally to understand where these places are...)

The turntable has a pit, finally, and is visible in the yard. It needs some cosmetic help, and the table may need some reinforcement around it... but it's in, and turns!

There will be photos of all of this very soon, hopefully with some screen work completed too.

An Un-Update

It seems like forever since I've written anything here. Hopefully, that'll change soon, but for now, suffice it to say there's a lot in the works. There's an enginehouse in the design stage, Slate Creek #10 will soon undergo a ground-up rewiring and power / sound system change, I'm working out the final details of the turntable mounting (note that it NEEDS to be in place before the enginehouse arrives,) and oh, yes, the 2-6-6-2 is still awaiting some engineering rework as well.

Then, also, with any luck, we'll have new lights in the basement, so visitors can actually SEE the railroad....

Lots of new and interesting projects on the horizon! Now if I can just get some done enough to take photos, this will be a much more interesting blog to follow.


This photo is from a few years ago, when Gaetan Charette and Nicole came by, and we hit all of the local railroad hot spots... Tweetsie, Doe River Gorge, Spencer ... of course, Cass is something of a stretch to be considered "local," but that's not the point! Gaetan, as well as Bruce Chandler, Doug Matheson, and yours trule also make up a group of folks with a very special 1:20.3 project several years in the making that may turn up here very soon as well!

In any case, stay tuned!

Davenport Rollout

Those of you who saw the photo contest results on Durango Dan's One Twenty Point Me site have seen the first public appearance of Slate Creek Railway #2, the 10 Ton Davenport we've been talking about here since November. I particularly liked the engine that won second place, as I've been considering building something similar for some time now, but I was both pleased and surprised to discover I'd placed in the contest as well.

It's been quite a ride, as you can see in all of the previous posts, from delivery, to teardown, to sandwiching all that gear under the hood, to trying to get everything to function, this little engine has turned into a BIG project. But, even with the external detail changes being somewhat small, the difference is noteworthy, I think:

Before

After

While I still have some more weathering to do, and an antenna issue to work on, this is pretty much what the locomotive will look like from now on. For such a small locomotive, the hours it took to change everything were more than I ever would have guessed... here's a list of "projects" that went into this tiny unit:

a.) Removed factory electronics, and installed RCS radio control, Phoenix P5 sound, P5T interface, and 12 Ni-CD batteries under the hood, the radio under the rear frame, the speaker under the front frame, and the charge jack in the rear wall of the cab.

b.) Removed the Bachmann supplied seat, raised the control stand, and reworked its controls. Added a gear shift lever, clutch, and a new "fold down" style seat in the cab, as well as a pull and valve for the air horns. Also built and added a "sand box" on the fireman's side to match up with the sand fill cover made to cover up the charging jack in the back wall of the cab.

c.) Added the sand fill cover, air horns, and bell, and bell rope. Added the headlight in the rear wall of the cab, and wiring. Also removed the factory stack, and built a replacement one, and replaced the front headlight with a smaller one that looked more the right size for a loco this size. (The one that comes on it is the same as the electric headlight on the 2-8-0!) And, I rebuilt the front end of the locomotive, covering the radiator with HO scale aluminum siding so that the radiator fins would all be horizontal, and removed the handrail supports from the radiator. I made a new grill from brass angle and rod, and added bolts, and a screen to finish it up (the screen was actually some kind of brass decking in HO scale, I think, but it was available in sheets from the LHS!) Oh, and I'm particularly proud of the smokestack; after drawing out what I wanted to do with the front end several times, I was having trouble finding something that "looked right." I looked at toys and truck models, and nothing looked quite right... then I looked at the pen I was drawing with, and realized, if I cut it down, and pulled out the rubber grip....



d.) Finally a set of Slate Creek decals, and some weather treatment to take off the "shine" ... though I'm planning to do more in the weather department in the future.

I'm very pleased with how it came out, particularly since it's my first total conversion/bash/detail project. It will be interesting to see what's next!

I'll sign off with a couple of other photos...

We're Still Here!

It's been awhile!

Somewhere between the holidays and everything else that was going on since my last post, things on the railroad and in the shop have fallen seriously behind, but that's all changing rapidly.

Stay tuned for the "finished" posts on the Davenport (really, I mean it!) Just a little more tweaking and testing, and I'll be ready for a "rolling out!"

I've got to. Something BIG is headed for the Slate Creek shops, and it'll take up the whole shop once it arrives ... I have to make room!

Hopefully this will be a bit more exciting place to visit in the coming months!