need to break out my camera

Just weathering up some MTL hoppers

Just off the workbench...

Engine #105, a P2K GP-9, is now riding the rails after freshly completed three week electronics overhaul.  Now my workbench is bare except for scattered tools, bits of wire, and a few slivers of this and that.  

Walthers Flats

Prepping a couple of Walthers 81' 4-Truck Depressed Center Flat Cars. Undec units that I will paint and decal for TTX. Then receive some PDC.ca loads.

The April Fool...

SD40-Fan

Well, you fooled me! I'd be tempted to give it a back story (had to be modified for a special top secret load for the military) and keep the unit in service. Hey, stranger things have happened.

The steel deck rusted through

The steel deck rusted through and was replaced with wood! that's my story and I'm sticking too it

April Fools

1892 Hodges Car Company

More serious April fools

  Two serious models built by my friend John Taylor

Daniel Wow  could almost be

Daniel

Wow 

could almost be twins

...

I built an articulated cab forward 4-4-4-6 Dockside once...

Someday I intend to rebuild it as a 2-4-4-2 with a tender using a better starting chassis.

3 truck boxcar

... I remember seeing a pic of one in an NMRA Bulletin, probably late 70's or early 80's, by Whit Towers. Jose.

Almost Afraid...

...to post to this today.  I have an update on a workbench post from March, but given the nature of today and the post's thus far, I think I'll force myself to wait until  tomorrow.  BTW...I won the lottery...who wants to build their dream layout...?! 

Jeff El 1964

.

well, the weathering leaves a bit to desire doesn't?

Memories of cab forward switcher

John Taylor's model looks quite good. I first saw that idea about 40 years ago in a coffee-table sized book about model railroading. Author was Robert Schleicher. The book was about how to build a model railroad, mostly aimed at beginners. I never could understand why he devoted pages to kitbashing a dockside 0-4-0T to have cab forward, but there it was. Now I see that somebody really did it, and also that Benny did a variation. 

Nice work, Gents.

DrJolS

Giving Up on DCC - Converting Everything to DC

Hi,

I have gotten so tired of getting around every little DCC glitch, function irregularity, bad throttle interfaces, poor computer control, decoder incompatibilities, and all those dumb $5 decoders -- YUK! I've decided to go back to the good old days of raw DC control with wire wound 100W rheostats! YEAH! 

So, rather than uninstall all those idiotic decoders, and to silence the noisy ones quickly, immediately enforcing the 10,000 ft rule,  I've been working on a quick solution -- an EMP (Electromagnetic Pulse Car) :

EMP Pulse Car being readied on the bench

When fully charged it will emit a 693.1-977.5 KiloJoule Pulse, there by disabling every decoder on my layout and in the nearby storage areas. Thus, I will begin anew with no electronics left in every locomotive at hand! I've estimated it will take some days to charge up the bank of super capacitors, but when it goes off it should do the job. I've written up the full component BOM and construction details, and will upload the article shortly after demonstrating its viability.

An old era begins! Have fun! 

Best regards,

Geoff Bunza

PS. I don't know if my precautionary shielding of my laptop, phone and computer equipment will be completely effective, so if I don't respond to further comments for a while, it's because I'm debugging my infrastructure.

PPS. I've tabled the neutron generator car until I see whether the EMP pulse car is successful.

Tank engine kitbash

I'm working on a tank engine kitbash too. 

Thomas Gasior

Tanx for da Tanks!

Big laugh at the "Tank Engine" Splitrock. .  Thanks.  That is priceless.  

Tanx a Million!!

Maybe

April fools   Wow! And I

Wow! And I thought my layout had some sharp curves! 

Geoff - too funny!  This

Geoff - too funny!  This thing will make your hair stand on end!  Thanks for the chuckle.

Model Railroading is Fun

I see everybody having great fun with this months Workbench. Good to see so much humor here. Keep it coming.

Bernd

We have begun the testing

We have begun the testing phase of the new extended height model railroad. We started with the n scale layout at the club house as it was smaller and easier to move. We have discovered that the new layout height makes scenery look much better because most people can not see it at all. It does however heighten the need for complete underbody detail on the bottom of rolling stock. The advantage of the arrangement is there are generally no fancy paint schemes on the bottom of cars and weathering is easier as well. Also no one can read the car numbers from this angle and they can not question why your coal train has all the cars with the same three numbers! Some people doubt the unit train story.

The young man in the picture is our clubs youngest member, a grad student at the local college. He is in the photo for perspective. For those that don't know Jared he played offensive tackle on the college team and is a rather sizeable individual. This layout now has very easy access for under table wiring with out the need for duck-unders for most folks.

This sign appeared on the end of the layout. I thought this would be a good test to see how the internet was responding to my uploads. They seem to be going much faster than before although speeds are still not up to normal yet I might be able to begin updating my blogs again soon.

One additional sign made an appearance at the club. 

Hope this is fitting for the April fools week and I hope you guys enjoy the photos as much as I enjoyed posting them.

As always Rob

I really enjoy your posts. As a special favor could you mention to Jared that I have some sections of my layout that need to be elevated and he looks like just the person that could do the job for me.

Another aside....it sure is nice to see a young man in the hobby. Thumbs up!