Additions

Yesterday the much anticipated C-57 arrived.

After a quick clean and lube it was running quietly and smoothly about the layout, as expected from a Kato.

Turning it into the Erie K5A should be interesting. The drivers are about right, they mike out to 75.6" at the tread which is only a tad bit short of the prototype's 79" drivers. At the flange they mike out to 84.4" but comparing it to the pictures of the K5A it shouldn't throw things off too much.

I have not yet been able to disconnect the tender but it appears to have the same attaching arrangements as the Kato Mikado. I will have to figure out a way to get this to cross over to the larger 6 axle tender I have to put on it. Also, the shells are going to be difficult. The Arnold shell will require quite a bit of hollowing out, which will take a while since it is a cast metal shell. The Atlas carved out nicely and ended up being a few millimeters short. Since the Arnold shell has piping cast on that is not present on the prototype it might be easier to lengthen the Atlas shell. Either way, the project moves forward.

I had a medical procedure today (I don't want to talk about it, suffice it to say it was age related and requires a day of prep previous; if you don't get it you will when you reach the half century mark) so I was out of the house when the mail came. My wife, being the sweet thing she is, drove me to the procedure and afterwards, since we were near the train shop took me over there to see about getting a couple of decoders. They didn't have the decoders, but they did have this PB1.

Once it is painted in blue and striped in yellow it should match right up to its PA1 mate.

 It was a disappointment not to be able to get the decoders I was after though, because I was anticipating the arrival of this Burlington SD7 (and it is an SD7, marked on the sill plate as such, even though under the shell it is identical to the SD9), and when I got home it had indeed arrived.

Hopefully it won't be as onerous to chip as the SD9 was, and as soon as it does have DCC installed it can take its place in the consist helping the Redbird out.

I think they will make a really nice pair.

Projects

My wife's grandfather was an engineer for the Erie Lackawanna Railroad, and since I am known to be a train nut my mother in law asked me to make a little something for her to commemorate his service to that road.

My wife ventured the idea to put a boxcar in a display case, which I thought was a good one, and to that end I ordered off of Ebay the boxcar pictured below and a 4"x2" display case.

As you can see the boxcar is a 60 foot unit that scales out (60x12/160) to be about four and a half inches long, not counting the couplers. What that means is it is never going to fit in that 4 inch box.

So, back online I went to find a larger box, which I did, and at the same time I found this Bachmann SD50 locomotive for a pretty attractive price. So, I thought I would put both the locomotive and the boxcar in the new larger display case since there is going to be room for it.

Of course I did have to test-run the locomotive. It ran well with my SD7 but after one lap you could smell the motor...which is pretty typical for the old white-box Bachmann train set locomotives and kind of what I was expecting out of it anyway. So my plan is to pull the motor out of it and wire it up to a 9v battery and switch so that it can sit on the display track with the headlights on.


The new display case should be here in the next day or so and after that construction can commence. The new case has a detachable pedestal that runs the length of the box that I hope is hollow so that the battery can fit into it. If it is I will drill some holes into the locomotive frame and attach it with screws that can also be used to run the juice to it for the lights. The loco will sit on the pedestal and the boxcar will be on the base below and in front of the pedestal. The switch for the lights will be on the backside where it is not seen when the case is on a shelf.

My wife tells me I'm going way overboard for this simple project, but if it works it's going to look really cool.

UPDATE: It came out really well, and Grammy loved it.

She sent me a pic (that I didn't have saved to this computer) of it flanked by pictures of her father, one standing with his crew in front of his new PA1 and one of him in the cab of his K5A Pacific steamer. If I had seen them first I would have gotten a PA1 instead of the GP50 to put in the box, but it did give me the idea to start a new project building his Erie K5A.