My old and increasingly decrepit "layout" does not receive any attention. It is used just as a setting for photographing my model building projects. In it's current form it dates from 2009 when, following a family visit to England, I switched my British 4 mm (OO) scale modeling to Southern Railway and in particular the far end of the line from Waterloo station in London at Padstow on the north Cornwall coast. It was built as temporary but has lasted 10 years on two 2' X 8' + 2' X 3' pieces of sheet fiber board with loose 2" X 1" supports on top of wood TV tray tables. The track is Peco code 100 turnouts with Atlas flex mostly buried in Woodland Scenics walnut shell ballast. I have had many plans to replace it with proper modules but never get around to that basic part of model railroading. Building models is much more fun.
This latest picture is just an assembly of my arch roof "Harriman" style passenger car collection as a nameless late 1940's 7 car train. Possibly a second section of a Cascade or a San Joaquin valley train.
The first car behind the Athearn MT-4 is my most recent passenger car project. I managed to obtain a pair of MDC "Harriman" baggage cars which resemble SP 60-B-10 baggage cars. (The worst foobie feature is the baggage doors are only 6 feet apart.) It has a modified underframe to correctly space the trucks. I will write a separate blog about this car and the Harriman utility vents I used. I don't use an airbrush anymore and wound up using a PreVal sprayer with TruColor SP Dark Olive for paint. Works for me.
Next is a total foobie baggage RPO with a scratch built underframe and a pair of Athearn 6 wheel passenger trucks. The roof has been repainted and the round vents re-spaced. The dark olive is the recent original paint from the Athearn/Roundhouse Western Pacific lettered versions of these cars. I just removed the WP lettering and replaced it with now out of production Micro-Scale SP Heavyweight decals, I am not wasting my good Thinfilm SP decals on these foobies.
The next two coaches are rebuilds of Model Power Round Roof cars into 60-C-1 chair car lookalikes. These are similar to Jason Hill's rebuilds and include interiors using PSC plastic chairs.
The last 3 cars are best kept in the distance from the camera. They are 2 Sunset/GGD "Harriman" coaches and an All Day Lunch car. The roofs are a well known problem. I have removed the plastic windows from one coach and replaced it with sheet clear plastic which improves the look considerably. I need to do the second coach. The ADL has been modified with clear windows and changes to the underframe with relocated battery box, new ice boxes, cooking gas tanks and other fittings.
I will have to do separate blogs about each some day
