This weekend at the Schamburg Convention Center Joe Delia of Augusta Track will be attempting to break the world record Helix height. He will be at the Worlds Greates Hobby Show and tell him Keegan sent you. Info can be found here: http://www.augustatrack.com/world-record

The record breaking was successful and was done by a pair of Bachmann Spectrum 44 tonners in 30 min. Control was Digitrax with custom throttles. I hope to have photos and videos later along with more info.

I was extremely excited about this and wanted to share it. I was in contact with Walthers literally a full year ago on the topic of donations. Now as of yesterday we finally got our package from them. It came by complete surprise and contained these items: 2 Trilevel Autoracks, 1 Three pack of the New Well Cars, 1 Coil Car and One of the New Snowplows. These were all amazing models and I will definitely be going to Walthers for cars in the future. 

And a car on that item:

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I spent 3 hours taking a out of the box RTR car for a road name that really doesn't fit on my Western Maryland layout.  I don't have a plausible reason for why a SP 100 Ton coal hopper made it to the east coast.   I got the car for a couple of bucks at a train show.   I did this project while watching the Steelers/Cincinnati game last night.   The premise for this car is that it is a block of hoppers that Conrail picked up from Espee in the early 80's to accelerate the retirement of the 70 ton fleet.   Sounds reasonable, no?

So after about 4 years of compiling freight cars for my first serious layout, I finally gathered enough courage to weather my first one. I started with an Intermountain 40' Modified 1937 AAR boxcar and then replaced the side and end grab irons with Kadee ones. It took about a few hours a day for nine days to do (yes I know that's a long time) but I feel it was worth doing slow and steady for the first try. Here's a photo of the finished result:

On my layout there is a switch toward the back of the layout that leads to a couple of public delivery and storage tracks. Access to the switch to throw it by hand is obstructed by a set of coal silos and a lumber shed.

 Now That the Holidays have concluded, I made a request for images from the Delanco Public Library, on the 29th of Dec. Their reply was that they would be closed until the 4th Jan. I suppose I should check my e-mail more often. As I received another e-mail from them, on the 1st of Jan. with the requested images. It really amazes me, how few images there are of the structure. Granted the 1st instance of the bridge was put in place in 1832, when photography was in it's early stages itself, and was an expensive venture and hard to come by.

The first step in getting the updated C&E built is done. The benchwork has been reconstructed with some seriously large carriage bolts. Guaranteed not to move until I am ready to move. Bus wire is run from one end to the other. Black in back makes it easy to not get them confused. The subroadbed follows next them we can really get serious.