More Collaboration

In several blog entries over the last few years, I have mentioned a growing notion that the Onondaga Cutoff is becoming a community-oriented model railroad.  While it is located at my home, the contributions of several guys have been critical in bringing the operation to life, whether that be in signal design, signal construction, operation planning, and the addition of details to many scenes.  A big THANKS is in order for all that have pitched in!  The layout has really matured quite a bit in a few years.

Here's a photo of another recent collaborative process - Mark, a longtime friend and fellow operator and modeler who casts models of truck cabs out of resin, has built and supplied a Conrail knuckle-boom truck for the maintenance-of-way fleet on the Onondaga Cutoff, in exchange for airbrush-weathering services on some of the cars in his fleet.  Here the Car Department works on a bad-order hopper car, set off at Onondaga Yard:

We figured out a rough estimate for each service, and are simply trading services, each of us doing for the other what would take an entire learning process.  All I will do to this model is to add window glass and a painted interior.  While scratchbuilding trucks for the whole layout would be enjoyable, on a large layout there are tradeoffs to be made.  The time spent learning to produce a model like this was instead spend weathering models for Mark, plus weathering track and installing signal system components.  It's a win-win for us both.

Relying on collaboration - a 'little help from my friends' - is the only way a large layout like this will approach a finished state in any reasonable amount of time, and along the way, we're having a great time!

~RGDave