Needles Division Santa Fe RR N Scale

Sunday, November 10, 2013

1981 Eastbound TOFC led by F45 5929

1981 Eastbound TOFC.

Athearn F45 5929, medium weathering.

Athearn F45 5935 This model is weathered with a rust haze that does not show up well in this photo.

A close up magnifies the weathering to a higher degree.

Atlas SD26 4644 with paint job updated at rebuild. Heavily weathered, with blue paint weathered to a lighter blue by repeated spray applications of Model Maker, thinned, sand paint.

SD26 close up, heavily weathering on side sill.

BLMA F89-J flat trailer in black and yellow; equipped for both 40 and 45 foot trailers. Here we have new releases by both Trainworx (TWX) and Athearn. RI from TWX and Santa Fe from Athearn.

All the BLMA flats weathered to some extent, whether in the original brown paint scheme as delivered in the sixties, or the yellow and black which was introduced in the early seventies.

Athearn UP trailer and Micro Trains (MT) Soo 45 footer.

Athearn 40 Santa Fe exterior post trailer and TWX Rio Grande 40'.

Yet another F89-J flat with Athearn CNW 40 foot trailer and a TWX Western Pacific 40 footer.

MT Vermont Ry. and TWX Santa Fe "Piggy-Back Service".

Couple of TWX trailers, one side door GN and a drop frame ICG. First TWX trailer, an 85" yellow and black Trailer Train. This flat was originally designed and built by Pullman Standard (PS) in the 1960's

TWX trailers and TWX flat car (UP). The second trailer is a side door trailer from Atlantic Coast Line.

Two TWX trailers on a TWX flat car. I custom painted and decaled all the TWX flat as I missed out on the first run of these Trailer Train cars. Mildly weathered.

Two Athearn trailers on TWX 84" flat car. Also custom painted and decaled. Mildly weathered.

A caboose hop on the rear of this TOFC train. The dark red is from Centralia and the weathered waycar is of unknown origin, but highly modified from its original configuration with many MT parts.

A video of this train can be found on YouTube at:

http://youtu.be/pT5x9g18tNs

1981 Manifest Freight led by FP45 5943

1981 Manifest Freight on the Needles Division

This FP45 is a very interesting unit. It was remanufactured in April of 1980, and became the prototype for FP45 rebuilding program. It retained its number until early 1982, when it joined its fellow FP45's in the 5990 class as 5993. It did receive a roof mounted air conditioner, but did not get the smoke deflectors (yuk!) which were installed just forward of the dynamic brake fans on most of the remainder of the 5990 class.

A close up view of the BLMA fans I installed on this FP45 shell, taken from an old Lima manufactured model built in the late 70's. (I described all the modifications in my April 1st, 2013 blog.) The model is not weathered, as it was kept very clean for a long time post rebuild, traveling as the lead unit on some of Santa Fe's premium trains.

Nicely weathered SD45 no. 5622. Santa Fe purchased more SD45 locomotives than any other railroad, purchasing 90 of these 3600 h.p., 20 cylinder behemoths from EMD. They continued their 20 cylinder fascination by buying an equal number of its successor, the SD45-2.

Heavily weathered GE unit B23-7 6390. The B23-7 was an upgrade by General Electric of the U23B model. It retained 2300 h.p. from its 12 cylinder diesel engine, but got upgrades in the electrical modules and improved floating bolster "B" trucks.

One of two 60 foot Bx-101 boxcars on my Needles division. This custom painted and weathered car had originally had deep Indian red paint, which has faded over time into a pinkish red. When painting, I added white to the red to represent the fading.

I love this car. I saw a few like this in Cajon Pass in the early eighties. The were holdovers from the mid-fifties. The model is a Micro Trains 50 foot box, custom painted and decaled, modified with roller bearing trucks and with roofwalk removed. Heavily weathered, but with recently applied U-1 stencil (black and yellow emblem noting wheel inspection) and black and white consolidated stencil (maintenance records).

Very cool modernized 40ft boxcar from MT. No roofwalk, but retains bettendorf trucks. White door most likely indicates food shipments only.

Stock MT Shock Control car, toned down with dull coat, trucks and wheels painted with weathered black, and consolidated stencil and U-1 wheel inspection emblem added.

Custom painted with faded red. This is a Super Shock Control car. These type of cars had couplers that cushioned during both coupling and travel, thus reducing damage to lading.

As shipments of fruits and vegetables were driven to tofc traffic, the need for mechanical refrigerators declined. On cars such as this, the cooling equipment was removed, and cars converted to carrying regular freight. This car had the mechanical refrigeration emblem "oranged out" on the blue door, and spot painted where needed. MT car with roofwalk removed. Masking and painting on quickly repaired cars were never quite symmetrical.

MT car heavily weathered.

Very cool example of an early "Damage Free" 50' box. This would be a holdover from the 50's, as indicated by the large yellow DF herald. By 1981, the "Route of the Super Chief " had been gone 12 years.

Nicely weathered UP plug door box by MT.

Missouri Pacific gondola of unknown manufacture.

Custom painted and decaled 50' plug door box on a MT model.

The BN plug door box is nicely weathered in rust, but does not show up in pictures very well. The Santa Fe 40 foot "Hy-Cube" (high cubic feet, elevated roof) car was designed to ship appliances.

Mildly weathered MT cars

Seeing double

The Richmond, Fredricksburg and Potomac cars have a beautiful shade of blue, contrasted with a silver (aluminum) plug door. Mildly weathered. Wide vision Ce-6 caboose.

Why the designation Ce? Santa Fe freight car classes used the first letter and the last letter of the type of car to name the class. Thus, Caboose is Ce, Box is Bx, Flat is Ft, Reefer is Rr, etc..

The number represents a different type of car in that class.

For more information on Santa Fe Shock Control freight cars, please see my article in the March 2006 issue of N Scale Railroading. In this article, I show 20 different paint schemes used on the red 50' Shock Control cars.

A video of this train can be seen on You Tube at:

http://youtu.be/7-1c1xJvBgQ

Monday, September 16, 2013

1981 Autorack led by GP38 3532

I had been looking on eBay for sometime for someone selling the old N Scale of Nevada replacement panels for the Con Cor Auto Racks. But then I discovered that Plano models had manufactured the same type of panels in N Scale. With that, I converted my last five Con Cor cars. I was able to put together a 31 car Auto Rack special, which you can now view on YouTube. In a previous blog, I put together an Auto Rack train with my Micro Trains and Red Caboose auto racks. In this blog, I've pictured just the Con Cor Auto Racks. Please also note that I modified the MT trucks for close coupling, to better represent the prototype.

You can view this video at:

http://youtu.be/EFwsGoOJVMQ

Atlas GP38 3532, custom painted and heavily weathered. This unit had a 16 cylinder normally aspirated diesel engine generating 2000 h.p. These locomotives were designed for local and secondary service where hi horsepower and turbocharging would be wasted. However, that never stopped using many of their 61 units in mainline service.

Kato SD40-2 5027 "Snoot". Fresh out of the paint shop. Custom painted and decaled with all the normal rooftop additions. After a spree of buying SD45's and SD45-2's from 1967 to 1974, Santa Fe returned to the 16 cylinder 3000 h.p. SD40-2 in 1977, purchasing 187 units thru 1981. Along with the twenty SD40's bought in 1966, this class represented the largest type of locomotive on the Santa Fe roster. Each cylinder on the diesel was 645 cubic inches.

Atlas B23-7 6365 heavily weathered. The B23-7 was an upgrade by General Electric of the U23B model. It retained 2300 h.p. from its 12 cylinder diesel engine, but got upgrades in the electrical modules and improved floating bolster "B" trucks.

U36C 8755, mildly weathered, custom painted. This is a Kato U30C, with a N Scale of Nevada U36C conversion kit. N Scale of Nevada is now out of business. The U36C was manufactured by General Electric, and Santa Fe purchased 100 of these 16 cylinder, 3600h.p. units between 1972 and 1975.