An Old Sign Finds a New Home

The name and decorative flourish were stenciled on by my dad.

Well, check another unfinished task off the list.  I finally got around to hanging this sign.  It had been a gift from my dad to my grandfather and lived on the wall next to my grandfather's back door.  Now it lives on my garage, facing the back yard, where I'll see it whenever I go out there.  The other now-finished tasks in this photo are the removal of the unused satellite dish that came with the house and the addition of a guide wire for the Passion Vine growing just out of the frame to the left.  

Getting the garage "ceiling" repaired and the lights installed was like the tsunami hitting the continental shelf and beginning to rise.  There was progress happening before then but each step seemed to take enormous energy.  Since then I've been riding this wave of motivation and getting all sorts of things done, some of them hobby related.  The key has been following the passion whenever possible, choosing a task from a list of options.  None of the steps are particularly difficult on their own but each one paves the way for the next and soon the progress becomes tangible, visible, real.  Momentum is a powerful force.

This one is special.

 

The Rolling Road to Recovery

After the challenges of wiring, and once the new decoder had been ordered, I cut the 4 pads on my soldering board to make 8 pads.  Next I soldered the wires in the tender to the pad.  They're a bit long but I can shorten them once I'm sure the plugs work as expected.  I am making this up as I go along using ideas I've seen elsewhere, tailored to fit this specific situation.

Next I decided to re-install the fireman's side valve gear.  I had left myself a note in the past on a punch list of tasks to shim the left side valve gear.  I wasn't very specific about why it needed shimming or where, so I just reinstalled it to find out.  Turns out it works great as-is.  Huh.  Maybe I fixed that issue years ago and forgot to check it off?  Or maybe it never was an issue.

Next I reinstalled the motor and put the engine on the test rollers - a tool I consider essential for working on steam engines.  Immediately the locomotive reminded me to set the angle of the eccentric, as the wheels wobbled and gahlumped.  After adjusting them the motion was indeed smoother with one major hitch in the gitalong once per revolution.  Hmm.  I'll spare you the troubleshooting thoughts; three of the teeth on the worm gear (that's the one on the axle, not the motor shaft) were chipped.  I briefly worried about finding a replacement until I remembered I had once shimmed the motor to bring the gears closer together.  That did the trick.  See the video below - this smooth low-speed running is on DC, with dry gears and joints.

Confident that the mechanism was working well I turned my attention to the male-half of the wiring.  I trimmed the pins ever so slightly to make that connection as short as possible then soldered wires to each pin.  A little heat shrink tubing and it was ready to install.  Feeding the wires through the holes in the locomotive frame wasn't as challenging as I'd expected though it did take some patient work with tweezers.  I joined the two halves of the connection and reattached the draw bar.

The thing worked well as long as you didn't want to go around any curves.  "Bending" the joint between loco and tender revealed that the friction of the holes on the loco frame was enough to pull the pins out of the sockets on the tender.  So, I tried feeding the wires through only the furthest hole on the locomotive frame, leaving slack beneath the cab.  Voila!  It works, and works well.  I trimmed away some of the loco frame, opening the second holes, and now it fits almost as if it was designed to be that way.  I'll need to leave a little slack in the wires between the motor and the backhead, but there's room for that.

 

With that established I can move on to completing the detail work on the sides of the firebox and in the cab.  That'll be the subject of the next post. 

 

 

Wiring Nightmares Can Come True

Wiring is not my favorite aspect of this hobby.  I love the look of bright locomotive headlights and the control available through DCC, and yet despite having enjoyed three years of high school electronics I just don't care for the tasks of cutting and stripping and soldering tiny wires.  I suspect it has to do with the unknown unknowns, that is, I don't know what might go wrong especially since half the time I'm doing something unorthodox.  

These days decoders and LEDs are drop-in or plug-and-play and that's fine for many modern locomotives.  However, vintage 1950 Mantua locomotives are a different matter altogether and adding DCC to such a critter requires ingenuity and creativity, math and formulas and even arcane knowledge.  Perhaps even live animal sacrifice, but I haven't quite reached that level of desperation....yet.

First off, here's what went well.  I managed to get 6 wires prepped and soldered to SIPP sockets.  Next I mounted these under the tender floor, feeding the wires up into the tender through the recently enlarged holes.  At this point I decided I'd hook up the rear light and see how that looked.  I did the calculations to determine the correct resistor value, soldered the resistor to the yellow wire and soldered this to one wire of the light.  I soldered the other wire from the light to the common blue wire pad in the tender.  So far so good. 

Then I switched on the power.

The bulb began to flicker.  Not blink - I know that's a fail safe warning that there's a short somewhere - but flicker randomly like a candle.

I didn't get a picture of the flickering bulb.  Enjoy this lovely image of the moon at sunset instead.

I made sure I had dialed in the loco address, had it in reverse, and had the light on.  Still flickering.  I could turn it off with F0, the lighting function, but whenever I'd turn it back on it would flicker.  I tried adjusting the CVs in case somehow from the factory it came set with that option but no, so I eventually just reset the decoder using CV8.  Now the light wouldn't come on at all.  Well, crap. 

I wondered if somehow I had miscalculated the resistor value, so I once again stuck my meter leads on the blue and white wires.  Huh...now I have 13.4 volts...when the F0 is OFF, and 7.3 volts when it is ON.  I had calculated the resistor value based on 13.4.  Maybe that was too much?  No, the bulb flickered, and a reading of 13.4 would make sense based on typical AC track voltage brought down to DC by the decoder.

I baked this apple pie for Thanksgiving with fruit from our front yard.  My first lattice top, made with Gluten Free crust!  Much nicer to look at than nasty old wiring and a troublesome decoder.

SO, Next I set up a test bulb on a beadboard with a 220 ohm resistor for safety, assuming the 7.3 volts might be right, but also hedging my bets that the 13.4 might be right.  Could blow the bulb but not likely.  This proved my fears.  The bulb burned brightly on the blue and white wires (forward headlight function), but only when the F0 was OFF.

The rear light was still not even glowing unless I caused a short between the blue and white wires...and then only for a brief moment.  Rolling the tender seemed to stop it.  Then the forward test bulb came on when F0 was ON, but dimly, and was bright again when F0 was OFF.

By now I my head was well and truly spinning. 

This is my Mom's kitten, Claire, sitting with our dog Ellie.  They're friends.

Seeking advice online only resulted in more confusion.  I'm pretty convinced the decoder isn't working as it should unless I'm missing something.  It IS 20 years old, at least, though it was never used in that time except to hook it up to the tender.  I probably blew it somehow or I got a lemon, either way, I'm done messing with it.  It has been removed and will be relegated to the someday-maybe bin in the electronics box.  Who knows, the motor control might still work, in which case it could be used for an animation element.

I have ordered a TCS KAM4 LED - that is Train Control Systems' Keep-Alive Mobile 4 decoder set up for LEDs without having to use any additional resistors.  I'm going to modify my solder pad to have 8 individual pads instead of 4...I mean, what was I thinking 20 years ago?  Why not just cut another groove and solder ALL the wires to the pad instead of bundling some with heat-shrink tubing?  Anyway, in the mean time I'm going to continue my adventures in electronics by installing the locomotive half of things, including a two-pin connector for the front light so I can separate the shell without breaking tiny wires.

Updates as they happen.  Thanks for reading. 

 

 

The Return of the Shifter

The time has come, at long last, to finish the Mantua Shifter.  I began rebuilding this little metal monster in 2002 or thereabouts and have tinkered with it occasionally over the years.  Why has it taken me this long?  I have some thoughts about that and will share them in an upcoming post once they've had time to mellow and mature.  Suffice it to say I'm committing to completing this project NOW before beginning any other model railroad project.

 

Obligatory un-boxing shot.  Former notes, parts packaging and bits.

The first step was assessing the state of things and determining an order of operations.  The tender is completely detailed at this point unless I decide to add any other little bits, minus the coal, of course.  The locomotive still needs some piping beneath the cab and backhead details added.  That's the easy bit, however.  The real challenge is under the hood, er, deck plate.

I'm not entirely sure what I was thinking when I drilled holes in the locomotive and tender frames for routing the wiring.  The two holes - one on each side - were only large enough for one wire each.  To wire the headlight and motor will require four wires, and if I want any power from the loco to get back to the decoder in the tender that'll take two more.  (I say IF, because I might be able to get by with only the tender trucks for pickup and a keep-alive circuit on the decoder, but that's still to be determined).

So the first order of business was enlarging those holes.  Here's the result after a few minutes with a Dremel, a sharp drill bit and some cutting oil:

The front tender truck has been pushed back in order to enlarge the holes behind the white strips.

These holes will sit between the firebox sides and the motor.  Just enough room...I hope.

The wires pass beneath the deck plate through these two holes, beneath the brake cylinders.

 
The metal debris has been cleaned from the bench and I've begun setting up for the next step, determining the resistance for the front and tender lights.  After that I'll begin cutting wire and soldering to connectors; not my favorite task, but essential.

 

The Load's the Thing

In September of 1952 Model Railroader magazine published an article by George Allen titled "Spindletop No. 4".  This article describes in great detail how to build an oil well pumping rig, delicate-looking tower and pump house with notes on how to make it operate.  George drew the plans and built his rig based on actual plans loaned to him - for one night! - from a friend in the engineering department of an oil company.  Naturally he took some liberties for the sake of simplicity without sacrificing all of the detail.  He was also limited by the materials available to the average modeler of the time; card, metal and wood.

Printed on page 24 is this diagram:

Now look at this load:

I know next to nothing about the origins of this flat car.  However, I can say with confidence that the dimensions of the load are identical to the George Allen drawing.  The large counterweights and the axle between them are free to move, sliding laterally in the motor mount, and would no doubt revolve as intended if not for the chain holding them down.  The load is made from wood, paper and metal, just as the article instructs.

Figuring that out was the easy part.  The rest of the car...there's the challenge.  It is obviously scratchbuilt with painted lettering.  The large metal center sill matches the one used on the Suydam reefer I just wrote about in the previous post, but that's the only similarity as Suydam offered no similar kit.  The other commercial detail on the car are the end sills.  Everything else is built up from wood and metal, including the bolsters, stake pockets and underframe cross members.

Being primarily wood with only the center sill and trucks to provide any weight, the car was very light.  Also, the trucks weren't mounted exactly on the car center line.  I was able to fix the alignment issue when I replaced the wood bolsters with metal castings.  For the weight I beat a hunk of old lead into less than 1/16" thin sheets to add some weight to the car.  The final bit of weight came from a metal K brake cylinder I used to replace the original plastic one.  In total the car now weights just shy of 3 ounces, about an ounce and half away from the NMRA Recommended Practice, but enough to keep it on the track without any trouble, so far.

As for a prototype, I found that the T&NO did roster flat cars in the 23xxx range...but the only examples I could find were older truss rod cars.  A similar T&NO design with fishbelly center sill was rostered in the 22xxx range, so somewhere in between may lay the truth.  And what about the pumps?  The first producing onshore oil well in Florida came online in 1943, a bit later than my era.  However, a load such as this moving down through the state on its way to a port for shipment is plausible.  I'm just pleased to be able to include a scratchbuilt car with such a beautifully constructed load in my fleet.

 

Eggs a la Ed Lee

Oh, this car has been on the bench way too long.  That delay has nothing to do with the car itself, rather the good things happening in the rest of my life that keep getting in the way of model railroading.  Still, I'm glad to see it finished and rolling down the track.  Here's the story.

This freezer, NADX 6002, in service of the Pacific Egg Producers of Seattle, is built from 'An "Ed Lee" Kit', from E. Suydam & Co of Duarte, California.  What brings this kit to my bench is its presence on John Allen's Gorre & Daphetid.  Yep, another "Heritage Fleet"car.

NADX 6002 seen on the G&D in May, 1963

I began this car in July - almost exactly four months ago.  I did not deviate far from the kit instructions, only adding weight, backdating the air brakes, and changing a few minor details.  I've got a great prototype image of this car in Hendrickson & Kaminski's Billboard Reefer book.  Suydam got most of the details correct but I took the opportunity to add missing corner straps and reduce the number of grab irons on the sides and ends.

What's funny is that while Suydam did well in this regard, they missed one "colorful" detail, that is, the PEP Eggs banner should be royal blue.  An eBay search turned up some original blueprints for the car with painting instructions and the blue color is noted.  I very carefully added some blue paint to mine and it looks good from 3 feet away.  Red Ball got the color right but has too many hinges and grabs on their NADX 6001.  Likewise Train Miniature's plastic version, NADX 6003 (though in their defense, all of their reefers used the same body).  I mention the hinges because that was a key ingredient to identifying the maker of John's car.  

Sometimes I wonder where the manufacturers get their information and why they make some design choices that don't match the car itself.  It may be clear they're working from an image of the car or even drawings as some claim, and yet, they choose to include the wrong number of hinges on the door.  Go figure.  I can come up with some plausible reasons, but they'd only be guesses.  One is that Suydam was using a black and white photo as reference.  Who knows.

Finally I decided to change the brake detail in order to run this car on my late 20s era railroad.  I took my weathering cues from John's car but toned it down slightly.  The Ed Lee/Suydam kit was fun to build and follows the classic construction methods of kits from this era involving drilling, cutting, shaping, painting, etc.  There's a sublime satisfaction I get from taking a box of parts and turning it into a rolling freight car.  I'm happy with how it turned out and can now run another car "from the G&D" on my railroad.

Let There Be ... Garage Lighting!

This post is a follow-up to my latest garage update.  Since then I've installed new lights inside and out, and have rearranged the room to better accommodate its multiple functions.

To say I'm chuffed about how this lighting solution turned out is an understatement.  A special thanks goes to my retired electrician friend for guiding me through the work step by step.  The pendants I selected were the closest thing I could find to what would have been used in the 30s, without taking out a loan for replicas.  The gooseneck fixture used above the door is likely original to the structure or from the same era.  The clue there was the cloth-coated wire found in the fixture, now replaced with safe, modern wire, properly installed.  Oh, and yes, the switch in the house does indeed operate the gooseneck light on the garage; it has already proved useful at night in the driveway.

These pictures give an idea of the light output, including one florescent fixture I kept plugged in for now; they really aren't necessary anymore but hanging there is a good place to store them until I find a new home for them.  There's still much decluttering to do though some of the stuff near the garage door has already left the building, having been donated to local thrift stores.  I anticipate spending the next two years reducing and relocating excess stuff.  At that time, perhaps before, I may be able to put some sort of test track or loop for running the trains that require a larger radius than my 4x6 layout can provide.  Still, that's a ways away and who knows what will happen in the mean time. 

  

Solid State

 

An unassuming gray box holds the key to worry free motor tool excellence.

This has to be one of the best investments I've made in my hobby tool set. The Dremel Solid State Motor Speed Control lets me dial the motor tool speed down to a near crawl.  I've shattered countless cutoff discs and melted too much plastic with the high rpm built-in speed control Dremel tools.  This vintage beauty combined with an old Weller motor tool lets me use a spinning grinding and cutting tool the way I always imagined - with careful precision - to do fine work.

Note: this variable speed control was made for single-speed, on/off motor tools only.  Fortunately they, like the speed control, can be found readily online.  Not sure where I picked up this Weller but I'm glad it survived the latest round of tool purging.  I found the speed control box on eBay in its original packaging, with spare fuses, for under $30.  Of course the low speed operation doesn't have much torque, but for grinding and shaping soft material this is definitely the way to go.

 

  

GM&G Ventilated Boxcar

The Gorre & Daphetid "Heritage Fleet" keeps on growing.  I suspect I have nine or ten cars, total, that are identical in make and model to John's cars, and another half dozen cars from private roads that ran on the G&D but don't match the car type.  This latest car fits the first category, being a Central Valley ventilated boxcar lettered for the Georgia, Midland and Gulf, number 1254, as seen on the G&D.  However, I didn't set out to build a replica of John's car.  

A while back I built one of these cars lettered for the Mobile & Ohio and had such an enjoyable time that I decided to look for more.  More were found and procured with the intent of making a fleet for the Ocali Creek Railway.  Of the cars I found in various states of disrepair, this one - GM&G 1254 - just happened to have the nicest 'bones' and was close to complete.  Donor parts from the other cars made up the lost parts.  I even decided to use the Central Valley dress-snap truck attachment, not knowing for sure what John did but guessing he might have used the original kit parts.

One bonus specific to this car; it fits my 1920s era perfectly and can see regular operation hauling perishables on the Ocali Creek Railway.  Enjoy the images below from the reconstruction process and a picture of the car with its Heritage Fleet brethren. 

Ocali Creek Mogul 145 does the honors, pulling the current G&D Heritage Fleet cars tailed by an Ocali Creek caboose.

 

The One and Only Covered Hopper

One, and only one.  As best I can tell John Allen only ever rostered one covered hopper in his entire fleet of rolling stock.  And, based on scant evidence, admittedly, my best guess for that car's road name is "Jack Frost" Cane Sugar.  More confidently I can say the make of the car was an MDC Roundhouse 2 Bay Covered Hopper.  The rib spacing, round hatches and body shape tell that story pretty clearly.  Beyond that we get into the realm of speculation.

A close-up crop from the Optimum Use of Space slide show.  Note: this is a reflection - you're looking at the left end of the car on the right side of the image.  The proof of this is the G&D boxcar to the right, whose lettering is reversed.  Original photo by John Allen.

Dating it on the G&D is difficult since it shows up so infrequently.  The best color image comes from John's clinic on the Optimum Use of Space.  Even then it doesn't clearly show the full side and is only seen reflected in the mirror at Great Divide behind a bridge column.  If you've got the Westcott book you can see it on page 4 but only a top view.  Jerry Drake's clinic on the G&D includes a full side view - completely shaded almost to the point of silhouette.  And so it goes.  Still, unless new evidence surfaces, I remain convinced it is a Jack Frost car based on the schemes of what was available in the model train marketplace during the 1960s.  I'll let you visit the gdlines.org site and dig around to see if you can find it on your own.

"Lagoon Blue" was nearly an exact match.  Trucks are metal and sprung to match what would have been under the car originally though the MR review notes the wheels were plastic.

Model Railroader reviewed the car, new, in August 1962.  There seem to be two variations in the lettering - the key difference being the position of the 'sugar baby', either next to the Jack Frost lettering or beneath it.  Without knowing when the car appeared on the G&D or when Roundhouse changed the lettering I had no guidance on which version to look for.  Being the G&D aficionado I am I had to have one for my Heritage Fleet - my own roster of cars found on fallen flag model railroads.  The car was surprisingly difficult to find on the second hand market as a complete, unbuilt kit.  Though I suspect the version I selected is not the oldest, it more closely matches the lettering on a prototype image I found, for what that's worth.  

Tamiya black panel liner provides a shadow effect to make the best of the thick plastic running board.  My acrylic weathering sludge in the cup is a mix of charcoal gray, tan and a drop of rust.

The MR review states this was an easy kit to build.  I struggled to get the hopper door braces cut to length and glued in place, and needed to spend a while with a set of files to get the underframe to fit correctly.  Roundhouse suggests painting the underframe black but I chose to match the brilliant blue of the sides, as that seems to be what the prototype did (again, that matters less than trying to match how John built his, but that's impossible to know with current images).  Where I tried to more closely follow John's practices was with the weathering.  There having a good prototype image IS important, as this is what John followed when weathering his cars, though his results often appear quite heavy handed.

 

Overall I'm pleased with the result, both in terms of adding another car to the G&D Heritage Fleet and on its own merit as a bright and colorful car.  As of writing this post, the next heritage car under construction is a GM&G ventilated box car, for which there is far better photographic evidence!  Thanks for reading.  Feel free to comment or ask questions.

 

Garage Update

We've been in this house three years now.  When we first moved in I wrote about my detached garage, and the possibilities for using the space for hobby purposes.  By September of 2022 I had settled in enough to set up a workbench there alongside the layout, still hopeful that the space could be used.  But by September of 2023 I had determined the garage was not a suitable place for model trains, beyond storage - and even that's less than ideal.  Since then I have said nothing more about it but work on the space has resumed so it is time for an update.

Let's start here:

Eagle eyed among you might see it says "Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here"...ha.  No, it says "2 110V circ 20A w/switch leg".  I braved the crawl space to find the junction box where the wiring comes from the garage into the house.  I was rewarded with the solution to a mystery we have pondered since we moved in, a light switch with no apparent function.  Now we know.  A cable run in the garage that seemed to go nowhere and connect to nothing actually connects to that light switch in the den, and will allow a person to operate a garage light from the house.  Neat.  But I digress.

What led me under the house was the garage wiring, specifically that mystery cable.  But the mystery cable wasn't a mystery until we started examining the garage wiring in more detail.  That room needs additional outlets and better lighting.  We (me, my son, and retired electrician Jack) were looking at options and plotting the current system.  Turns out there's enough room on the circuit to add all the lighting I want and the outlets I'll need.  Great.  But I'm still burying the lead.

Why now?  Why after all this time have I returned to the garage project?  Because I have finally arrived at a place of...well, let's not say peace, but acceptance.  The beginning of peace.  I accept this space will make a decent shop for cutting, sanding, painting, plastering, etc..  I accept this will likely never be a space for a large, beautifully scenicked layout populated with craftsman structures and vintage rolling stock.  I had suspected this would be the case last year but now I have come to terms with this idea.

That acceptance broke the log jam that had stymied any real progress on restructuring that area.  Sure, I had tinkered around with some decluttering, having a successful yard sale, clearing out items that could live elsewhere, but with no clear picture of what the space would be beyond a cluttered storage unit with some tools and supplies strewn about.  Accepting that this room will, for the foreseeable future, be primarily a shop for "messy" projects, with a well-organized storage space, and secondarily a home for the family bicycles, allowed me to make concrete choices to move the space in that direction.

One such choice is depicted below in a sequence of images:

 

Going, going, gone!  These built-in shelves served their purpose but have now been deemed surplus to requirements.  The window is likely original to the structure (1930s) and is a feature of the room, in my opinion.  My workbench will live there beneath it, with storage racks on either side.  The redwood planks that made up the shelves - former roof boards from the garage's original roof - will be repurposed.  The outlet in the image above will be shifted closer to that window and the extension cord leading up to the ceiling will go away once new lighting is installed.

I'm excited about the possibilities for this space, a feeling I haven't had since I moved in.  Now those possibilities aren't some distant dream of what might be, rather, they're a set of steps I can take right away to improve this room and build a shop that supports my hobbies and meets my family's needs.  Look for future updates as the work continues.  Thanks for reading.

Towards a G&D 2-8-0

No, this isn't a post about the "Putnam" 2-8-0 kit-mingle, but a new 2-8-0 project - at least the research stage.  A few years back a friend of a friend needed to sell some trains to make a little traveling cash - I know, this sounds sketchy but it's all above board, I promise.  I nearly made the mistake of buying another Spectrum 4-6-0 but narrowly avoided that fate after spotting the wheel lope; I swear half of those must be lemons.  Instead, I purchased the most reliable runner Bachmann ever made, in my opinion, the "evergreen" Spectrum 2-8-0, as Iain Rice once dubbed it.

Before the cash had even changed hands I had begun to formulate a plan for what this engine might become.  Readers who have been with this blog a while know I can't leave well enough alone and must modify and manipulate a locomotive, rarely leaving it in an un-molested state as the manufacturer designed it.  My first consideration was an ET&WNC 2-8-0, detailed to match one of their two ex-Southern standard gauge engines (one still steaming today and another under restoration).  However that option had too many compromises and difficulties.

After a bit more cogitating I decided it would make a fine Gorre & Daphetid tribute locomotive.  John Allen was fond of the 2-8-0 wheel arrangement, owning four of them, three from different railroads but redetailed or at least repainted for the G&D.  I wouldn't be attempting to make the Bachmann model match a specific 2-8-0 from the G&D stable, but a plausible G&D 2-8-0.  All I'd need to do is modify a few details to disguise the look of the Bachmann model and give it a G&D "family" appearance.  A high headlight, tender coal bunker extensions, maybe a cinder catcher on the stack, and other small details here and there should do it.  Now to find a similar prototype from which I could gain some guidance...

See this site for similar images: https://snyrr.com/category/uncategorized/116/

Susquehanna & New York number 116 fits the bill, but almost...needs a few more modifications...let's see...

This photo is available for purchase from Taplines at https://www.ebay.com/str/taplinesrailroadphotography

S&NY 116 became Meridian & Bigbee River 116 and is preserved on display in Meridian, Mississippi.  The Taplines image above (I'm hoping the link to the listing will be enough to justify its use here...) shows the engine sans spark arrestor and with a lowered headlight.  If I were happy with the look of the Bachmann headlight, (and its dim glow), I could just leave it where it is, but I like it up high and that matches the G&D style.  Point being, there's plenty of flexibility in detail options not only because I'm modeling a plausible locomotive from a freelanced railroad but also in terms of the prototype practices.  Just because it's freelanced doesn't give a modeler license to stray from the practical realities of railroading.  I would argue it makes the freelancer's task that much more challenging; otherwise, you're wandering into the artist's realm of fantasy and out of the real-world grounding that railroads have provided for modelers.

As mentioned above, this project is really just in the research stage and that's fine for now.  When it finally comes time to modify the Bachmann Spectrum 2-8-0, I'll have plenty of prototype practice and modeler's imagery to guide me through the work.  I've got most, if not all, of the parts, paint and details I'll need to do the conversion, and the engine is a smooth-running example of Bachmann's early Spectrum products before gears started splitting.  Some day this will make a fine tribute loco to pull a train of heritage cars.

 

Another Hopper Contender

Another Hopper?  

Edward Hopper, that is, and once again there's another look-alike that might take its inspiration from Hopper's painting, or perhaps Disneyland Paris.  You be the judge:

Hopper's original, House by the Railroad

Noch's Geisterhaus

Phantom Manor at Disneyland Paris

Allowing that Hopper's house is most likley a pastiche of Second Empire architectural styles and not an exact duplicate of an actual place, we are freed from any chains - ghostly or otherwise - and able to interpret both the painting and these potentially derivative works without prejudice.  Noch's offering appears to be a very close copy of the Phantom Manor, minus the chimneys - an odd omission.

To my eye the Phantom Manor appears more like Hopper's house.  The smaller windows on the Mansard roof in the DL Paris structure are no doubt there to offer a sense of forced perspective, to give the mansion a bit more height and enhance the foreboding feeling, and the porches on the side simply to make the structure busier and more visually interesting.

Disney Imagineers were reportedly inspired by a school building in Carson City, Nevada when they designed the Phantom Manor.  I've seen the Nevada structure in person and in my opinion, no, it's not a match.  There are some similarities, but if it was the inspiration they strayed far from the source in the final product.   

Some out in the world wide web claim the Disney designers were influenced by the Bates Mansion from Psycho.  I doubt that also, and attribute this effect to the public consciousness of that iconic structure; scary house = haunted mansion, similar silhouette, etc.  But if there's any truth in that rumor then Phantom Manor owes its lineage at least in part to Hopper, as his paintings were an inspiration for Hitchcock and his team.

 

 

About that shed...

Last summer I posted about mocking up structures for my NMRBO24 diorama entry.  For reasons I won't elaborate on here I never finished that diorama but I did finish the little shed.  The prototype inspiration was a dilapidated structure down the road in Hopland, California, seen here:

 Now the in-progress shots:

 

Finally the finished structure, complete with hand-painted sign of my own design:

Trademarked logos were not allowed on the diorama entries for the NMRBO contest, so I freelanced a pickle company.  This is a nod to my paternal grandmother, Pearl Rosenbaum Gallimore.  She made pickles, and is reported to have enjoyed drinking the juice from the jar when the pickles were gone.  I don't doubt she did.