Spring, and Action

 The month of April is always busy, and this year it has been that and more.  During April I have managed to visit and take photographs in 13 states on three separate trips.  Somehow since April 1 I have traveled from New Jersey and visited Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia, Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, North Carolina, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Kansas, and Missouri!  The New England states were pat of a trip including family to Massachusetts to visit a cousin and his family and watch my brother run the Boston Marathon.  It's been a month filled with wonder and with new experiences, as well as some grounding experiences with fear and with frustration - all in all, an intense and balanced experience.  

A trip with wonderful friend Jon Kayes to Kentucky, Tennessee and the Carolinas early in the month yielded some great photo opportunities.  One of them was the Canton, NC paper mill job on a picture-perfect morning.

The South is loaded with great railroad opportunities if you know where to look, and Jon does.  I am glad to travel and be part of the trip, and excited to be able to record images like this.   One of the really neat opportunities in the coal fields is that NS still uses cabooses in some operations, thanks to long shoving moves on many of the mine runs.  Here's one of the rebuilt NS cabooses with a heritage N&W decal at Frisco, VA.

At a glance both of these photos show that even in 2023 there is a lot of interesting railroading left out there - you just need to take the trip!

The month ended with lots of model railroad activity, where auxiliary light installations continued as well as operations on a variety of railroads.  Lighting installations are adding more than I expected to the atmosphere of the Onondaga Cutoff.

And thanks to good graces with my family I have also been able to attend a few operating sessions locally, including one at Tony Koester's home on his incredible Nickel Plate Road.  Jim Leighty offered to snap a photo, and got me and Tony together with Tom Schmieder and Ed Bush in the background.  Operating sessions are a time to come together and help make the owner's railroad come to life.

As time goes on, change rolls along, and it is important to document moments in photographs and in words to ensure the long journey of life is remembered and enjoyed.  We are fortunate to be able to live in a time when so much is possible.  As April comes to a close, I wish you health and the best fortunes for May and the warmer weather coming soon!

An Opportunity to Improve

The model railroading hobby is full of twists and turns, and as the hobby improves so too do we have the opportunity to improve our modeling.  The recent push to get locomotives wired for auxiliary lighting allowed me time to consider a closer look at those that went out for upgrades, and I decided it was a good opportunity to improve the details where needed.  

A spotting feature of modern GE diesels is the handbrake chains, which are exposed and visible hanging from the frame down towards one of the trucks on the locomotive.  They are quite fragile in HO scale, and while nicely modeled by Atlas from the factory they are routinely broken - especially over decades of moves and operations.  I took the time as the paint cured on the step lights to reinstall the chains, thanks in part to chain from Tom Schmieder.  

Here's a pair of GE B40-8 locomotives that have operated for years (more than a decade!) on the Onondaga Cutoff.  Now they have proper lighting - and repaired details!

Now these locomotives will not only look sharper during the night with their step lights but also all the time, with the correct handbrake chains re-hung.  I used phosphor-brass wire eyelets to make hooks that will ensure this installation is more durable than the factory installation.  

Other details got a hard look, too, including the air horn o n C40-8W 6155.

The stock horns on these older Atlas models are sub-park, too small and poorly detailed.  Thankfully detail parts are available and Details West has a variety of cast-brass horns like this beautiful Leslie Inc. RS-3L - an exact scale replica of the horns favored by Conrail.  

Details matter in this hobby, and it's fun to have the ability to make improvements like this!

Running with Teddy

 Teddy is beginning to stretch his legs with operating sessions!  In addition to running trains on the Onondaga Cutoff and also last year on Jerry Dziedzic's NYS&W, in early April we had an opportunity to run at Ted Pamprin's beautiful C&O Allegheny Division railroad in northern NJ.  Ted is always a gracious host and both Teddy and I appreciated the invitation to run trains together.

Teddy's first train on the C&O was appropriately train no. 1, running westbound across the railroad.  Teddy ran while I acted as a conductor, guiding him across the route.  He had a steady hand and a quick eye, learning the layout quickly.  We arrived at Hinton where the yard would add cars to our train, and since it's a division point we also got new orders and a new clearance card there.  

Teddy was all smiles, and eager to continue.  Rich Wisneski also helped Teddy as needed and at one point, their trains passed along the New River Gorge scene.

Sharing the hobby with Teddy, Pete and Susie is a pleasure.  Whether they enjoy trains or choose another hobby going forward, showing them that we can do these things in groups and at a high level I think will be a good memory for them - and maybe, just maybe, help bring the model railroading hobby a few new lifetime members!  

'Next Gen'

 In busy times, perspective is important.  It only takes a few seconds to step back, take a breath, and consider an idea that comes to mind.  

The Onondaga Cutoff is a dynamic and growing collection of people interested in the camaraderie of railroading, experienced by building and operating a scale model of how Conrail did things in 1994.  In that light, bringing new people in is a critical part of its long term mission, and young people add even more to the richness at hand.

From left to right, we have Pete, Christopher and Teddy, all of whom are regulars at our operations.  Each time they get better, and are more able to participate as a full member of the team.  It takes time to learn, but they're well on their way.  

The best is still yet to come!

Finding Wonder, Again

As days and years pass so does time, and our perspective on all these things changes too, as a matter of course.  We can see things differently, or sense that we are seeing things differently, and no matter what the days pass.  

This incredible hobby of ours pushes the envelope in whatever ways we allow, and one of those ways is the simple sense of wonder of it all.  A recent opportunity led me to a small company that installs custom ESU LokSound DCC decoders in locomotives, but also goes beyond that and offers all sorts of services for auxiliary lighting as well.  I took a chance and sent a few locomotives over to Garden State Modelworks LLC - and the results caught me by surprise.  I knew it would be cool, but didn't expect to be stunned!

The most recent operating session came and went, and after dark - always an enjoyable part of a session - there was a new level of magic, a new level of life to what we were seeing.  Before these new lights, there would be a lot of dark along the bottom of all these engines.   

Step lights now bring a whole new dimension not just to the locomotives so equipped but to the entire scene.  Extra marker lights, a Conrail staple through the 1990's, are now scattered through the roster instead of just on the Rapido or ScaleTrains units that came factory equipped.  Older Atlas and Athearn locomotives now jump out of the dusk or the darkness, looking the part of their prototype at night, all thanks to a beacon of attention in a tiny pair of step lights.  

March 20th would have been my dad's 84th birthday, and one of the treasures he gave freely to others was his lasting sense of wonder.  He loved a day at the beach, loved watching sports, loved a good upset, a quick basketball 'back door' play, a perfect football block or seamless pass, and above all, the integrity of the game.  I miss him, daily.  

For me, who remembers lonely nights trackside around Dewitt, NY in the 1990s, a few tiny light details have renewed a sense of wonder into the operations on the Onondaga Cutoff.  Much more to come on this!

A few new ideas...

Recently, with the rise of digital artwork and online ordering we have seen options for custom-run freight cars on the market.  Operations like Home Shops LLC in cooperation with Tangent Scale Models and ExactRail have made some beautiful and plausible freelanced road name releases.  

I am considering trying something similar with the Onondaga Cutoff, allowing our licensed use of the Conrail logo to be employed which in turn would allow that modelers could 'own' a piece of official Onondaga Cutoff rolling stock.  Here's a first stab at the logo, based on a logo the company used in the 1990's for safety awards:

 I think it would be fun to have a Conrail boxcar for its usual service but to have this logo in a large format in addition to the usual Conrail name and logo.  What do you think?

The Value of Snapshots

 Browsing through one of the old photo albums of my early photography, back when I used my mom's point & shoot camera to shoot some print film of trains we came across, I was inspired to share one here.  This is August 1990, Dewitt, NY, an image taken by my mother as we made a quick stop at the Dewitt engine yard.

From left to right you have me, my cousin Matt, Jack in the backround and my brother Ben on the right.  Behind us is weeks-old C40-8W 6098, 13-year-old B23-7 1975, U23B 2795, and a bunch of other locomotives out of the frame.   

August 1990 would have been one of the trips to Skaneateles and Marcellus, NY, likely to see The Dean Brothers play - my uncles' rock n' roll harmony band.  These were some of the legendary trips in my mind that clearly played a foundational role in the idea of the Onondaga Cutoff.  

Jack is there with us, traveling up with us in the minivan like he did most summers in that era for long weekends.  Ben and I did nearly everything together in that era, a time I remember fondly despite the contrast of my mom's fight with cancer which had just started again, and my sister whose illness would haunt her for the rest of her time.  

I'm 13 in this photo, headed into 8th grade.  Well before thinking of college, I am already wearing a Syracuse University shirt, where I'd actually end up a student just 5 years after this photo.  The Rio Grande hat fits the mood, it's always been my favorite railroad - but Conrail is tangible, exciting, and bright, just like is seen here.  

The memories fade on their own to some degree, but the sentiment does not, and photos like this one bring it all back in full color.  So, take some snapshots!   And even if digital, get some prints made now and again of your recent favorites.  You'll come across them decades from now and they'll do their thing - take you back, in your mind, for a few moments.  The best way to appreciate the present is to be aware of the past and full of wonder about the future.