Here’s a photo of my most recent weathering project, this is an Athearn Genesis GP9 I left as a newly painted unit with just road grime on the locomotive. Used a mix of Vallejo light grey and dirt color for the weathering 

Friday I held my first operating session with five in attendance. Two worked my main yard making up and breaking down trains, one operator worked the mine runs, I worked the secondary yard, and the last operator worked the left hand side of the layout, which is the Nitro area. Our session lasted two hours before we all went to lunch at a local restaurant to critique the session. Things went off almost without a glitch, except for one pesky Atlas switch, and one Peco switch which had too much of a gap in the frog, which was remedied.

Built by a good friend of mine, this extension off the left hand end of my layout was finished just in time for my first operating session. This allows an operator to now fit three cars plus locomotive in this section alongside my chemical plant and scrapyard. The extension is made of plywood with Masonite around the sides, with a slight lip around the sides and end so nothing goes off the deep end, and is wired into the main bus at the end of the layout. The extension is simply clamped on with two clamps:

Today I’m showing the conversion of my PRR Alco S2 9106 into PC 9806. Unit was repainted, decaled, and weathering added. With this done, I now have an all PC fleet, except for leased PNC GP10 3403...

It’s arrived, and right out of the box!

Finished adding the utility poles down the left side of my layout, plus found some excellent prototypical signs by Small Scale Innovative, and have installed most of these:

Recent news from the layout:

I’m finally working on finishing my utility pole line down the left side of my layout using Walther’s electric utility pole set

Ordered a set of what looks like excellent road and railroad signs from Small Scale Innovative which will arrive Thursday 

Big news is I join the ranks of ProtoThrottle owners tomorrow when my throttle arrives. Joe Atkinson, perhaps you can give me some pointers on setting mine up as well for slow speed switching 

Here is a current project I’m working on. This car is an Athearn Genesis car I’ve had, but never had applied weathering to it until yesterday. Of course not finished, I still have to paint the wheels and trucks, plus spray some dirt around the bottom of the car. The car so far has been done with two colors to simulate rust, then some rust streaks added, plus Vallejo rust texture for some rust spots, and streaking grime by AK Interactive for spillage:

A few recent scenes of Alco 9106 working from Nitro to Spring Street yard:

I’ve recently revamped my website, it’s still at the following: www.hitopbranchmodelrr.com