Sometimes It's The Little Things

Layout building is an amalgamation of so many projects, large and small.  After about 10 full years of construction, associated design changes and then operations, I have reached a point where it's hard sometimes to appreciate the some of the smaller projects and details, since I spend so much time thinking and considering the whole thing.  

Thankfully, I'm not alone - this railroad and the operating atmosphere it supports is the product so far of many talented guys (and patient women).  One the regular yard engineers, Joe R., commented on how much he was enjoying operating Conrail GP38 #7714.  It's an Atlas mechanism, well-maintained but otherwise stock.  The decoder is a Soundtraxx Tsunami2, and to it I added the SoundTraxx Current-Keeper capacitor to bridge any dirty track.  

Seeing as though we are on the Albany Division here, while GP38's are great, it's the GE B23-7's that really hold the fort down at most yards.  So, learning from what I'd heard from Joe, I proceeded on a small project:  adding a capacitor to B23-7 #1931, an Atlas unit I'd detailed, renumbered and weathered.  These work alright, but on my isolated frogs with adjacent turnouts, we did have the occasional stall or hiccup, shutting the sound and lights down momentarily and detracting from realism.

1931 has an ESU-LocSound V4 decoder, so I used their 'Power Pack' capacitor board.  The installation is fairly simple and requires a little bit of soldering to the board, and then mounting the capacitor somewhere out of the way inside the shell.  

After the most recent session, the crew spoke highly of #1931 - no stalls, just nice smooth operations.  So, just the addition of a little capacitor circuit made a difference in one of the most critical jobs.  

When we can listen and make small changes to accommodate constructive criticism, I feel we make the hobby more fun for others.  That helps them want to come back.  Is there a greater service we can do for the hobby?  Maybe, but sometimes it's the little things that count.

~RGDave

Old, and New (well...rebuilt, anyway)

In the late 1970's Conrail took delivery of a fleet of General Electric B23-7 locomotives. These dominated the Albany Division in yard and local service during the later 1980's and into the era set on the Onondaga Cutoff - the 1990's. By this time, the B23's were becoming a ratty bunch, and so Conrail started to rebuild and then repaint them at its massive Juniata Shops in Altoona, PA.

On the Onondaga Cutoff, I work to model locomotives at different stages of weathering, reflecting photos from the era. Here, Onondaga Yard on a warm fall evening in 1995 finds 1987 and 1989 working side by side, classifying cars for outbound blocks:

Below is a closer view of 1989, with the Conrail specific details like the cab signal box and Leslie RS-3L horn, deck-mounted ditch lights, and a lack of sunshades:

And finally an image to communicate some of the tiny work that goes into detailing an HO scale locomotive, showing the metal casting ditch lights that I drilled out using #70 drill bits to accept the LEDs and their wires.

Conrail in the 1990's was a proud company that had come through a tough 15 years of demoralizing rationalization. But, part of that tough period was rebuilding the physical plant, and refurbishing a fleet of equipment - which developed a generation of railroad managers that defined the next 20 years of railroading in the Northeast.

And so it follows that some of the most ratty of the B23-7s were working next to freshly rebuilt B23-7's, and I have modeled that with Conrail 1987 wearing its 1979 paint, and with Conrail 1989 wearing its new ditch lights and 1995 paint. I enjoy weathering rolling stock and infrastructure, but when your era allows contrast, sometimes it provides as much interest as the weathering does.

Best wishes as the summer arrives!


~RGDave