My (Makeshift) New Way to Organize the HO Rollingstock

[tbob]

Well... not exactly new or my own idea, but close enough.

While cleaning up the layout and doing some organizing, I was on my knees sorting through a drawer of rollingstock when the lower pantry shelf caught my eye. I thought to myself... hmm, that doesn't get used a whole hell of alot and I'm getting awful sick of keeping my trains in plastic drawers. So I got up moved the few non-parishables and soaps from the lower shelf to the upper shelf wiped down the shelf. I dug out a box of old Märklin track that I was never gonna use and set up a few rows of straights... then voila... the noob version of a display shelf.

I also got the layout to look nice again and cleaned up some of the clutter, now only the things that are supposed to be on the layout are.. well... on the layout.

Not bad for a couple hours work if I do say so myself :hehe:

-Jesse D.-:wave:

 

[Euphod]

So that's what you've been at these many months!

 

[NIARTcar]

I envy your collection........ haha...... All I have is a paper mache board with the track painted with a light coating of rust:hehe:
........and your rolling stock!:hehe: ive got a santa fe doodle bug (war bonnet skeme) and a couple of F7s with what im pretty sure is one of the worst collection of freight cars on the face of the earth:wave: ...... very cool though I like your track plan

 

[tbob]

So that's what you've been at these many months!

Yeah, it has been a while, hasn't it?. My computer is starting to show it's age so lately even doing basic detailing work in surveyor in 06 gets pretty laggy. Unfortunately I don't have the resources and funds to replace it and most likely won't until I can find full time work. On a brighter note, I did just get back from a week long vacation (a graduation present from my uncle) in Wells Beach, Maine. I saw my first Downeaster and Pan Am Southern freight at Old Orchard Beach and saw a small yard outside of Wells with a few idling Pan Am Southern Geeps still in their Guilford paint. I also made a visit to the Maine Narrow Gauge Railroad in Portland in hopes of finding steam but to my dismay, they were running a diesel (although a very interesting one). My last day in Maine I went to Kennebunkport to visit the Seashore Trolley Museum. That was a really great place with all kinds of rare and interesting finds. I got to go on the top deck of a Blackpool Tram, saw the infamous SOAC set, a Brill Bullet, MBTA Type 5, North Shore cars... and the best part... I was invited to run the Dallas car for a roundtrip on the line (see "Putting a Face to the Name" thread). What an experience! I even got to operate in a rainstorm so I had the chance to experience wheel slip and learned how to solve it without sand. Next time I'm up in Maine, I'm deffinetly returning to the Seashore. This summer I don't have anything else planned that's too exciting... I picked up fishing while I was at my uncle's house in the Adirondacks so at some point I need to dish out $20 for a CT fishing license... this weekend I'm stopping at the hobby shop in Wolcott... and in the comming weeks I'm riding a full trick with a Naugatuck engine crew. I paid my membership dues and I'm gonna try to get my NORAC training so I can have some excperience when I try to start a career in railroading in the Fall.

Hopefully that solves some of the mystery behind my dissapearance :wave:

 

[tbob]

I envy your collection........ haha...... All I have is a paper mache board with the track painted with a light coating of rust
........and your rolling stock! ive got a santa fe doodle bug (war bonnet skeme) and a couple of F7s with what im pretty sure is one of the worst collection of freight cars on the face of the earth ...... very cool though I like your track plan

Well thank you. Your collection sounds interesting, a Warbonnet Doodlebug must be kind of hard to come by. I kinda like them, they're very interesting little rail cars. Believe it or not I have a New York Central custom job that was given to me along with the Amtrak RDC's hiding behind the locomotives. I've been tempted to swap out the rear coupler with a hornhook so I can stick one of my heavyweights behind it but I think it might struggle with the extra weight on the grade at the back of my layout. And you wanna talk about a ragtag group of freight cars... all mine were given to me from different folks so I must have one of the most interesting collections of freight cars in the tri-state area.

Not to mention one of the most unique collection of technically-not-to-scale vehicles...

I'd love to see some pictures from your layout, who knows, I may end up stealing some ideas from it :hehe:

Ooo, and before I forget, I took some more pictures of the surrounding parts of the room the give the layout it's fung shui.

And I picked this up at a flea market about a month ago and have no clue where to put it...

 

[tbob]

One step closer...

Well, after a stop at the hobby shop in Wolcott, I came home with some supplies to start wrapping up the scenery on my layout...

 

[tbob]

More...

And lastly, my old man came home with something fairly hard to come by, which now sits proudly on display...

Lemme know watcha guys think!

-Jesse D.- :wave:

 

[NIARTcar]

I love the collection of rolling stock.....its very diverse.....particularly the New Haven Equipment

Well thank you. Your collection sounds interesting, a Warbonnet Doodlebug must be kind of hard to come by. I kinda like them, they're very interesting little rail cars.

well, thank you..... ive sorta grown fond of the odd little guy myself...i think I have a picture somewhere....

ah...heres two
http://i359.photobucket.com/albums/oo35/NIARTcar/IMG_2196.jpg
http://i359.photobucket.com/albums/oo35/NIARTcar/IMG_2204.jpg

and as for my organization..... how bout this mess of horrors
http://i359.photobucket.com/albums/oo35/NIARTcar/IMG_2280.jpg
ive got a few more drawer fulls, and its not easy finding rolling stock...

heres my board (back from a while)...it now has paper mache mountains
http://i359.photobucket.com/albums/oo35/NIARTcar/IMG_2182.jpg
http://i359.photobucket.com/albums/oo35/NIARTcar/IMG_2181.jpg
http://i359.photobucket.com/albums/oo35/NIARTcar/IMG_2179.jpg

my attempt at a repaintall silver ones are mine)
http://i359.photobucket.com/albums/oo35/NIARTcar/IMG_2253.jpg
http://i359.photobucket.com/albums/oo35/NIARTcar/IMG_2257.jpg

these ones are from my father's childhood.....he airbrushed quite a bit of rust on them
http://i359.photobucket.com/albums/oo35/NIARTcar/IMG_2213.jpg
http://i359.photobucket.com/albums/oo35/NIARTcar/IMG_2230.jpg
http://i359.photobucket.com/albums/oo35/NIARTcar/IMG_2274.jpg
(yes these two loggers are from kits..... my great grandfathers is on the left....my fathers is on the right)

 

[tbob]

Well thank ya... I've been trying to stay to true to the New Haven, but I have a soft spot for different pieces of equipment.

I really like that little Doodlebug, the Warbonnet scheme has always appealed to me, especially the blue freight scheme.

Here's mine, I don't run it too often, usually for inspection and test runs...

Your organization looks just like my freight car drawer haha, I guess great minds think alike, eh? :hehe: Your layout plan looks very interesting, must keep you pretty busy. Probably alot more fun than an oval with a couple storage tracks haha.

Your repaints are looking pretty good. You're gonna hate me for this, but when I first got the layout I was a given a pair of Warbonnet Sharknoses. I figured, "I'm trying to model the NH, how can I fit these in...", well, instead of sticking 'em in a drawer I went online and checked out the NYC Cigar Band scheme... and shortly there after I was in the hobby shop buying flat black paint and some MicroScale decals...

Before...

After... (Far Right, I'll get a better picture for you sometime)...

I'm digging the oldtimers, they look very unique and interesting, especially the loggers. I've been trying to get steam but it's so expensive.

-Jesse D.-:wave:

 

[NIARTcar]

Its nice to see more intrest on model railroading..... being im 16, and live in california, model railroading isnt exactly "looked up to" by my age group and piers:hehe:
My HO board is actually two ovals that share one interchange point in the front...... the inner oval is elevated in the back so that the first oval may pass under it...... it was originally meant to be a modern day board, but as my tastes changed, i decided to opt. for a logging theme.... as a remnent of my old designs, there are two spur tracks that branch into the middle....... the board itself is small (4x8 feet) but is pretty functional...... my previous track plans were simular... (same design but no elevations)...... i also have another board given to my by my great grandfather (also and enthusiest).. which is a simple oval layout..... it is in fact finnished and is modeled in the skeme of the farming plains in colorado (where he grew up)........ In addition i also have an N scale board that was demolished during the moving, and a LARGE set of lionel, and american flyer vintage trains in O scale? i think... that had a board that was too big for the move so was dissassembled and stored...

 

[tbob]

Oh I know exactly how ya feel. Being 17 and from the boonies of Connecticut myself, well, I had to be the only train buff in my high school. It's a shame more people from our age group don't get more into it. Of course it doesn't help that prices for the hobby have gone up incredibly. I can appreciate the craftsmenship that goes into the higher detailed models, but if it's not brass, not custom, and not DCC, I really don't feel comfortable paying over $100 for a locomotive, and paying anything over $20 for a piece of passenger equipment is rediculous. It's sad when I go into the hobby shop and the gentlemen knows me as being the only person from our age group that actually has as fond interest in the hobby. Unfortunately now I'm at hard point in my life, I'm turning 18 in August, I'll be trying to start a career in professional railroading in the Fall... it's tough walking into the hobby shop and saying no to the $130 C-Liner, $120 H-16-44, $500 I5 Hudson, $700 FL9, because as much as you'd love to have it in your collection, you can't afford it and really don't need to be spending that much money on something like that when you can get a used pickup truck for less than a thousand. Anywho, your layout seems like it's had some thought put into it. I used to run O-Gauge myself, but when I realized I could get 2 or 3 HO engines for the price of a cheap O-Gauge engine, and choose from a wider variety, I packed it up and put it in the attic for another time. HO is considerably cheaper to run in my opinion, and it's easy to start a more detailed setup with. Fortunately my father is a heating and air conditioning tech for a local company, so he's in and out of people's basements all the time, so he meets all kinds of people who have train layouts, and many of them are kind enough to send my father home with stuff for me. Those kind of people in my opinion keep the hobby alive, if I haven't had any of my collection given to me, I'd still be a dozen steps back.

 

[NIARTcar]

I couldn't agree more, its by far one of the hardest hobbies to maintain. I myself found that I had a hobby shop that sold HO scale track at discount prices (brand name flex track) and I went crazy and bought up as much as i could. My board uses all flex track with cork road bed, and I personally prefer it over my old meathod of snap track (sounds better to me)..... If you have any chance to switch, I recomend it.... all you need to do is learn to sodder (i learned when I was about 8) and away you'll go!......

As for the prices now, its rediculouse... My doodlebug was bought for me when I was about 8, by my grandfather (another lionel fanatic)[hes has a basement layout, well over 8,000 dollars worth of equipment in it, and hes bought pretty much any collectable train set made] for about 80 bucks. since then its been priced at about 300, and it is a brass frame with a plastic body, amazing! but it is also a limited eddtion Bachmann Spectrum model, soo..yah...

 

[tbob]

People have suggested flex track to me, but I can barely mig weld, never mind soldier :hehe: . I'll look more into it the next layout I do, the one I'm working on now is semi-temporary so I haven't invested a whole hell of alot in scenery (thank god for ERTL, Corgi, Tonka, and Plasticville ). If the Doodlebug is a brass hybrid on top of being discontinued, hell, it's worth its weight in gold right there. I think the rarest locomotives in my collection are probably the Amtrak RDC's which were custom detailed and are still running great. My personal favorite in my collection is the RS3, it's the model of #529 which runs at the Naugatuck Railroad where I'm a member at. 529 is the last example of an operating New Haven RS3, and one of the few locomotives I've been in the cab of. Atlas did a nice job with her!

 

[SantaFebuff]

Why solder? Simply adhere the flex track's ties to the roadbed. Just make sure the adhesive is plastic and whatever your roadbed is made of capadible. I don't have many pictures of my layout. It's not really anything, but you'd probably have more interest in my equipment. Though, I still don't have picture of them! I currently have a thing of Bachmann E-Z track, but I plan to sell my collection to buy some Micro Engineering track, much better detail. That includes the tie plates! I still have yet to get an airbrush, but I do like using my brush. I'm not going to paint my engines or cars with my brush, but my model cars, sure. I love the Doodlebugs, and the New Haven scheme, I'm more Norfolk and Western though.

Joshua

 

[NIARTcar]

Why solder? Simply adhere the flex track's ties to the roadbed. Just make sure the adhesive is plastic and whatever your roadbed is made of capadible.

Joshua

Mainly one sodiers to create better electrical connections, and over all better performance on a set of perminent track, rather than use the metal clips alone

 

[tbob]

I was gonna say, I'm no metals expert but if it's one thing 3 years of ag mechanics taught me, it's welding (in this case soldiering) creates a stronger bond than glue. I'll keep the microengineering track in mind too, but it'll be a long time off before I even start planning a new layout. An N&W man, eh? Well thank ya for selling off the Virginian E33's hahaha :hehe: . I'm a fan of the high hood diesels and J-Class myself.

 

[NIARTcar]

Hey, no-years of prior training and still going strong here!

One thing I have been working on though, is metal stamp used on the hot sodder just before it cools of to make it look like a rail joint.

 

[tbob]

Jeeez, look at you Mr. Details haha, kidding. How'd you come upon that method?

 

[NIARTcar]

well, when you sodder particularly small tracks together, it tends to cool as a bubble, so I was first thinking of making a smoothing tool, to flaten it out at first, then I thought of making a mold

 

[tbob]

That's a pretty cool idea, flattens and adds detail