Grand Reopening

Monday, May 29th marked an auspicious occasion as trains ran for the first time since the suspension of operations on the Path Valley Railroad. To commemorate the event a passenger train carrying VIPs from the railroad and greater Path Valley community ran the route several times to great acclaim.

Later that day the local freight delivered cars to the factory, scrap yard, grain elevator and meat packing plant, with a flatcar carrying containerized LCL loads getting parked at the freight station. The stockyard is gone now, cut to provide room for the railroad's new connecting turnouts and eventually a connection to a bigger modular system as it is built. The stockyard should eventually return on one of those modules, and indeed the stock car was a part of the consist.

All materials of a railroad nature have been put into the new train room, the pictures that had languished in storage have once again been placed in their spots and the trains are out on display. Unfortunately some of the lumber used in the previous standard gauge display was used in other applications, so the standard gauge display yard has shrunk accordingly.

The Unitrack has been removed from the temporary track table in the office, and the office table has also been relocated to the train room. The narrow gauge/Z scale trackage is still on the temporary board and it may actually become permanent at some point with an eye towards making it a show display.

And speaking of Unitrack, since I now have a dedicated place to work (be it ever so cluttered) I have once again started work on the T-TRAK modules. I mocked one up today to see how it was going to look and I think it's going to be good.

A little sanding and fitting and I think the first of my outside corner modules should be ready to assemble. It will be followed by another outside corner module and then either a pair of junctions or a pair of inside corners, I haven't decided which. I have the inside corner foam base pieces already cut but I may go with junctions at first because they do offer a bit more flexibility. After the first four are done I'll make some straight modules to fill them out.

In other news, the GP7 has arrived from Bachmann with the correct chassis but missing a forward hand rail. I haven't decided if I am going to try to get one from Bachmann or find one photo etched, I have another option to pull it off of one of the unused GP7 shells that were removed from the original units and replaced with Pennsy shells, that might be the easiest way to go.

Grandson and I had a good time running trains last Sunday when he was here.