It's getting better

 It is a common theme here on the Onondaga Cutoff blog, but it is worth reading again that this hobby is getter better and better.  Month by month there are new products coming out that help us to replicate our favorite equipment across nearly all eras.  

The new Rapido Trains CP and CN rebuilt intermodal flatcars are some of the latest to arrive.  These are the cars that were once boxcars and flatcars and were rebuilt from the frame up to handle piggyback trailers, and later, containers.  Open deck grating was included to cut weight as possible and the cars had a very distinctive look.  Some of them on CP lasted until the late 1990's, and they showed up on not only CP trains but also D&H and Conrail.  

Even just a quick look like this shows the specific prototype detail possible now in a new car.  Weathering is underway and once the car is added to the fleet, I will include a few more photos for you.  Stuff like this really adds some flavor to any intermodal train, and it will be nice to include some variety on the OC in piggyback operations!  

While any of these could certainly have been kitbashed, the availability of them commercially allows modelers to assemble a fleet of them, and also enables all of us to have more time for the railroad and for weathering as opposed to having to kitbash these cars.  From my view it is a win-win to have cars like this available to us all - and another sign that the hobby is healthy and getting better.  

Another Rapido Visit - This Time, the RTL 'Turboliner'

 A long awaited visit is underway, this time for the only preproduction model of Rapido's new RTL 'Turboliner' in HO scale!   

A model long pondered by the guys at Rapido, this one will finally make it to production in 2022.  Given the fact that they ran over this very territory on the prototype, I offered to Rapido that they film a product video on the Onondaga Cutoff in the same vein as the layout visit they made.  However, COVID came in the interim, which delayed things.

In the end Jason and Jordan at Rapido sent me the model in the mail.  The only commercial model of these in the world is now on the Onondaga Cutoff!  Of course that will change with the production run but it's a fun tidbit of information for now.

The video, starring Pete and Teddy and myself, can be seen here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yARLYcJuXLk  Enjoy!

It's fun to provide a stage for such a standout model, and it was a hoot to be able to make the video.  Many thanks to Jeremy at Rapido for the editing expertise!

Modeling Season is Back!

 Modelers of various subjects joke about the months of the dead of winter as being 'modeling season' - a part of the calendar when it's cold outside, there are less commitments, and longer nights.  All of that combines to allow more time to focus on the hobby.  Even with a family and full-time work, it holds true that the Onondaga Cutoff makes some major progress in most winters!  

I finally was able to make time to open and explore the latest release of Rapido Trains B36-7's.  Given the two new paint jobs available, I added a final two of the model to the fleet, which will really help set the era.  Gorgeous models!  Also in the background is a gift from Joe Binish, who supplied the Onondaga Cutoff roster with one of his 'Central of Minnesota' all-door boxcars - a good fit for the layout.  All of these will be in service soon!

Extra time on nights and weekends after the holidays is also a great opportunity to pitch in on other's projects.  I was able to spend time with Tom Schmieder on his growing DL&W layout, where he is pictured hard at work installing feeders in the massive staging yards.  Once we finish the feeders here and wire everything up, it will be buried beneath a near-scale model of the Lackawanna's Port Morris Yard - lots to be excited about here!

Finally, it's always nice to have time for state-of-good-repair projects on the Onondaga Cutoff, like this scene.  The lights had not been working, and needed some troubleshooting.  Turns out after investigation that a cold solder joint was to blame.  I repaired the joint and once again, we have a scene that adds some depth to our operations and that at night really becomes a striking visual:

Little here, little there.  And plenty to come.  This hobby makes even the longest nights of the year feel short!

4-pack for the Holidays

4-Packs are standard fare for many items, and in the world of craft beer it usually means something worth trying.  Today, though, it's a 4-pack of locomotives - four of a kind all finally programmed and weathered up for service.

Rapido's B36-7 as you have seen before here and other places online is a real work of art, an incredible model in looks, sound, and operation.  The detail and paint are fine and as good as any paint on the market.  I took extra time with the programming and the weathering to make sure those lived up to the high bar established by Rapido, and so here we are:

TV14 at CP282, Onondaga NY, September 1995

I am really thankful for these long-awaited models, they fill a huge hole in the Onondaga Cutoff roster as well as the roster of any Conrail, Seaboard, or CSX intermodal modeler.  I followed my usual protocol with the weathering - masking windows and lights first, then a dark wash of thinned dark brownish-gray paint to highlight the doors and give some depth to seams.  That cures overnight, then a overspray of dullcoat, followed by airbrushed dust and mud on the underframe and an overspray of beige to fade some of the paint.  Once that cures, I finish with powdered pastel chalks and some dry brushing.

Finally having a small group of these means that we finally get the 'fleet' feel for these machines.  With 60 B36-7's on the roster, they were somewhat common on mainline trains.  However, add in that these were mostly focused on the routes that hosted intermodal trains and they suddenly seem very common for the Chicago Line.  Nearly every piggyback or intermodal train in the early 1990's had one or more of them in the consist.  

This was a pretty great way to spend some late nights finding some 'peace' after the craze of work during the holidays.  The kids are wired each night and it feels like we are always moving at 100 miles per hour - it's too fast, and it needs to be manually, mindfully slowed down sometimes.  Weathering is a time-consuming but satisfying process that slows down those moments we need to really appreciate things sometimes.  

Teddy at 5, Pete nearly 3, Susie at 7-1/2. 

The Abeles, December 2019

As 2019 draws to its close, I have a lot to think about.  It has been a bewildering year.  We Abeles are finally coming out of some of the craziness of having an infant or baby in the house continuously for the last 7-1/2 years.  Raising kids is awesome, demanding, incredible, and it is hard work.  My wife amazing, smiling and happy and hard working on these kids so much of the time.  Each day, each of these little people develops, grows, and is becoming a person you can speak with, laugh with, and enjoy.  For sure, then, we also have hard days, dark days, sad days.  We all can do better.  And whether a good day or a hard one, it's a blessing and should be appreciated.  

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, best wishes from us to you all into 2020!

~RGDave 

Rapido B36-7: Looking Great

Just a few days ago, a nice box arrived in my mail with three beautiful Rapido boxes inside.  A fourth is coming soon:  the arrival of the long-awaited, much anticipated B36-7, a staple on any Conrail route with intermodal trains in the 1980's and 1990's, and one of the critical models for operations on the Onondaga Cutoff.

Before traveling for a few days, I had time to unbox one of them, Conrail #5054, one of the neat engines that remained in original paint until the end of the 1990's.  Here we go:

This is an absolutely incredible model to see firsthand.  The color is perfect to my eye.  The overall look captures that husky-yet-soft appearance, and the dimensions I could verify check out.  The Conrail-specific stuff is amazing - cab signal box, marker lights, ditch light placement, battery box doors, horn placement, all perfect.

The model was reported by Rapido to come with too many snubbers from the factory, and indeed that was the case with this one.   A gentle but firm twist with a hobby knife for a few seconds and they popped off.  Rapido on one of their recent videos also said they would offer replacements if you aren't satisfied.  The photo above is after their removal.

I programmed the address to 5054, and started to test the lights.  Ditch lights are installed on this one, and they and the headlight look great.  Nice and bright, LED but 'day glo' or whatever these are called these days.

Next, we turn on the marker lights, which glow beautifully red just like the prototype.  Conrail did not use marker lights like other railroads by this date, and so elected to use lights that could be off or lit red only.  Rapido captured the look perfectly!

Sounds are the best I've heard from the factory, crisp and chuggy like the real GE's.  Amazing.  Operation is smooth and steady.  

My only complaint besides the obvious issue of the extra snubbers would be the programming of the decoder; the lights should all be controlled independently of direction.  Instead, the markers are lit on the trailing end only, and the head and ditch lights on the leading end only.  But, I can change these with the right CV's and will do so once I hear back from Locsound.

More to come as the others get unboxed and weathered up; what a great step forward for Conrail modelers!

Finally for tonight - my best wishes to you all for a happy and healthy Thanksgiving.  I believe we have a lot to be thankful for here and am looking forward to the future!

~RGDave

Rapido Visits, Again!

A nice surprise on September 9 was another evening visit from Rapido Trains to the Onondaga Cutoff!   This time around, Josh and Jordan of Rapido reached out to see if they could visit as part of a larger trip doing some research on upcoming projects.

They were mum about most of those, of course, but I did get to hear about Jordan kissing a Rohr Turboliner later that same week.

If that Turbo comes to be, you can bet you'll see one on the Onondaga Cutoff - Amtrak used those regularly on the Chicago Line between New York City and Niagara Falls in the 1990's!

No matter who I've met from Rapido, they have all been fun, informed, and wacky in that happy model railroader / railfan kind of way, and it feels like I've known these guys forever.  The three of us share some modeling interests, especially Jordan and I who have a lot in common in Conrail and in SP interests.   After a tour of the 'OC' we took a few photos of the guys in the layout room.

Employees from Rapido all seem to love layout visits, and Jordan is a Conrail fan. Here's a group shot of all three of us next to CP282.  Rapido's presence on the layout is growing.  Later this year Rapido's much-anticipated B36-7 models are due, and several are headed to the Onondaga Cutoff to bolster the 4-axle fleet.

Speaking of 4-axle GE's, here's my custom-painted B23-7 #1931 working the Cazenovia Industrial Track a few months back.  I put a few photos into Helicon to stack them resulting in a nice depth-of-field, and I liked the result enough that I wanted to share with it you all here.

This caps off a busy summer on the Onondaga Cutoff and I'm excited for the fall.  Next targets include some work to finally finish up the Doelger Brewing complex - as always, plenty of things to come here soon!

~Dave

Rapido's Fun Video at the Onondaga Cutoff

A rumor no more - here's the video that resulted from the June 4 Rapido Trains Inc. visit to the Onondaga Cutoff!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwBoC-tm0DY

This sure was fun to make, and it's an honor to have had Jason, Dan, and Janet spend an afternoon with me at the layout.  Thanks, guys!

~RGDave

Rapido Trains Inc. Visits the Onondaga Cutoff!

On Tuesday June 4, we were honored to host a visit from Rapido Trains Inc., one of the top manufacturers of model railroad equipment!

When Rapido had announced their production runs of the GE B36-7, a locomotive that Conrail employed extensively across the Chicago Line, I had reached out to Bill Schneider while attending the Mid-Atlantic RPM meet outside Baltimore, MD last year and offered the OC as a layout on which to film their new models.   Rapido has a series of good (and funny) videos for most of their new product releases and the Conrail B36-7's would look quite at home!

One of their project managers reached out, and after some discussion it worked out that they were able to make the trip in conjunction with another trip.

What a hoot to see Jason, Dan and Janet from Rapido Trains at the Onondaga Cutoff!  These are good and friendly people that are moving the hobby forward, and it's exciting to spend time with them.  We ran a few trains and may have done some video shooting, too - perhaps there will be a Rapido video sometime in the future featuring the Onondaga Cutoff....

Dan looks great in his new shirt, don't you think?   After the visit wrapped up, we took the drive north through the hills of New Jersey so that Jason and Dan could see Tony Koester's Nickel Plate Road layout for the first time.

Jason had met Tony years ago but this was a fun chance to spend time together, and operating or spending time looking at Tony's layout is always a treat.  Tony graciously hosted us for a tour of his railroad, and we may also have done a video shot or two there....

It was a late night early in the week, so this post is getting updated later than usual - but the late night was worth every minute to be with some of the leaders of the hobby, and people I've looked up to for some time.   I'm thankful it came together!

~RGDave

A Collaborative Month

Long-time readers will recognize the title of this post, as we have discussed the importance of collaboration here before.  A railroad of the complexity of the Onondaga Cutoff would simply not be anywhere close to this operational, let alone with scenery, without help from trusted friends who are skilled modelers and technicians themselves.

As an illustration, this month I was fortunate to be part of several collaborations with the local group of layout owners.  First off was an evening weathering with David Olesen, whose 1986 CSX layout following the former C&O main line over Allegheny Summit is coming along.  He asked to see how I weather locomotives, and brought a few of his new purchases to be our subjects.

 

Alongside David, I weathered my recent purchase of a CN C40-8M, a fabulous model by Rapido Trains.  Rapido, in my view, is really coming on strong with excellent models of critical locomotives and cars that modelers have been asking about for many years.  

A few weeks later, I accepted an invite from Tom Schmieder, who is working to construct a large and intricate operational layout based on the DL&W's New Jersey lines west of Port Morris in the early 1950's.  He had a group of accomplished modelers there, including Perry Squier, Jerry Dziedzic, and Tony Koester and it was a pleasure to work alongside them.  Bob Bahrs, an expert on DL&W operations in NJ, was there to lend a hand as well.  We had some discussions about decisions Tom was facing, and I think the consensus as usual led to the best construction going forward.

While just at the benchwork stage, this railroad is going to be something else once it is working.  Our region has needed a Lackawanna operation for some time and this will be it!

Finally, just a few days after that session I was able to spend some time on Jerry Dziedzic's NYS&W layout, where we modified the approaches to a bridge on his railroad to more accurately reflect the prototype.

Pardon the grab shot, but it illustrates the point I am making: collaboration is possible in many ways, and all of them can be fun as well as productive.  It may sound intimidating, but I would argue the benefits outweigh the costs by quite a margin.  There are a lot of subject experts in the hobby:  why not let experts be experts, and trust them to assist in your vision? 

I have a feeling you won't be disappointed!

~RGDave