Shifting Gears

One of the best parts of this hobby is that it really is many hobbies at once.

How many hobbies out there involve carpentry, electrical wiring, computer programming, plaster work, painting, mechanical and electrical construction and maintenance, operations planning, weathering, history, and planning?  Not many.  But one of them is model railroading. 

And so, after major scenery progress, it is a nice change of pace to change categories for awhile and focus on progress somewhere else.  Over the last few weeks, I've finally been able to make some headway on several mechanical projects.  First off, I finally finished up one of Lenny's 'Suffern Hoboken Interstate Transfer' GP35's.  As Lenny contributes his weathering mastery of freight cars and locomotives to the Onondaga Cutoff, I am adding DCC, sound, and ditch lights to his locomotives. 

Lenny's paint and decal work are second only to his weathering skills.  It's such a pleasure to bring some light and sound to his locomotives!

After that project was packed up for delivery to 'home' rails, I opened up a few new additions to the fleet on the Onondaga Cutoff as well.  Conrail's Chicago Line was a kaleidoscopic experience of foreign power in the 1990s - locomotives from all major railroads and many regional railroads as well made appearances on Conrail's trains, with and without Conrail locomotives mixed in.  That allows a fun and dangerous little side hobby for me in modeling run-through locomotives.  

Here we have two ScaleTrains SD40T-2's and one of Athearn's latest-run SD50's.  Each of these models is testiment to the fact that this hobby has never been better.  Adjusted for inflation, you get more than we have ever paid for these models, and it's done perfectly - all we need to do is program their decoders and weather them up, and they're ready to represent run-through power from UP and SP alike on Conrail trains through the 1990's.  Each is factory-detailed to match the look of these engines in the later 1980's and early 1990's - the stuff that used to take me dozens of hours to change on generic models.  Today's stuff is simply amazing.  

While all are nice, boy - these recent ScaleTrains offerings (with new drives, LocSound V5 decoders, dual speakers, keep-alive circuits built in, and the see-through grating) are just incredible. Next time we will have photos of the completed weathering.  Paint and detailing are top grade and it's exciting to spend time weathering them up for service!

~RGDave