Monday, April 11, 2022

More ALCO's

 I finished decaling the three RSD-15's for the Modoc and Lassen.   They were bought/leased from the Saint Louis Southwestern through the Southern Pacific.   Only the name was painted out and replaced with the road numbers remaining the same.  The lettering on the middle locomotive is okay.   I will have to use some Micro Sol to remove the air bubble that makes it look wrong.


Saturday, April 2, 2022

ALCO's

 I was able to obtain several RSD-15s at a good price.   Three of them will be lettered for the Modoc and Lassen, two will remain as Southern Pacific, and two are being repainted and lettered for the Gorre and Daphetid.   

I know John Allen disliked diesels, but his railroad was set in the first half of the 20th century.   Mine is set in the 1950's to the early 1970's.   Economics was the driving force in railroads dieselizing.   As such, the Gorre and Daphetid would have also done so if reluctantly.  

In addition to the two RSD-15s I have also painted and lettered an ALCO Century 636 for the Gorre and Daphetid.   Except for one steam locomotive that appeared on the G&D roster for a brief time all of them were numbered lower than 100.  For the diesels I have started with 100 and gone up to 132 for a fictitious roster including other RS and RSD locomotives along with other century series engines.   Below are two photos of the C636 and one of the RSD-15's as painted for the Gorre and Daphetid.  The other RSD-15 is numbered 106. 





Tee Shirt

 I decided to make a custom tee shirt design for the railroad.   Allied Shirts was the company I chose.   Their site offers a variety of clothes that can be customized with the design you choose.   I located pictures of the three ho scale steam locomotives that would be used for the railroad.

Using Paint Shop Pro I replaced the background with a color that was as close as I could make it to the color I decided to use for the shirt.  The three modified images are below.  When I decal the locomotives I will may change #108 to just #8.  The image of #5 is to the same scale as the two mallets though I enlarged it to match the width of the other two on the shirt   The tee shirt with the added images is below them.

#5 is from the Sugar Pine Lumber company and got the nickname of Minaret for the mountains near the lumber road.   #108 was originally a coal burner that was built for the Potlach lumber company as #24.  This resulted in two of the air reservoir tanks being mounted on the top of the water tank.  It was later converted to oil and transferred to Weyerhauser.  The tank mounted reservoirs were removed.  It is still in service today on the Black Hills tourist road.   #4 was originally built for the Clover Valley Lumber company and later went to the Feather River Lumber Company.   It is also still in service as a tourist locomotive and has been on the Niles Canyon Railway.

The #5 is in the book "Rails to the Minarets".  #4 and #108 and their Baldwin sisters are covered in the book "Timber Titans"










evolution of a track plan

 While I am slowly working on the wiring for the main standard gauge layout, I started working on an HOn3 switching layout.   There have bee...