Beginning our Utah Railway Fleet

[jesso]

Our club's great N scale modeler brought over our first batch of new Utah Railway shells. He did a great job getting them painted. Utah Railway converted 9 GP35's into GP38-2's. He modified the GP35 body to include the filter box in front of the dynamic brakes. He even filed the nose to match. We are also making the one of the two non-modifed engines that Utah Railway owns, the GP40's. Unfortunately, everything else are very modified engines. They have 5 SD50S's and 6 MK50-3's. Those are going to be hard to make, we may just find some engines that are close, put the red stripe on them and call it good.

Next step, he wants me to put the decals on, I hope I don't mess them up. He told me, do his first for practice. I'm glad he thinks I will do ok. I wish I did.

 

[Jim Krause]

You have a real project on your hands there. Looks like some nice paint work to start on.

 

[jesso]

Decals are on

After going through the frustation of ripping decals, I finally got some instruction on how to do decals and we blitzed through all of them. He has taken them back to his house and is clearcoating them and if he has time before tomorrow, weathering them (which we both agreed won't be too hard as Utah Railway tries to keep their engines clean) but we should have 4 running Utah Railway engines for tomorrow night's train club meeting.

 

[Gary S.]

That paint scheme is really nice.

 

[jbaakko]

Awesome, I want to see what you pull of for the MK50C's

 

[Herc Driver]

That really looks nice! They're going to look great on the tracks.

 

[jesso]

Awesome, I want to see what you pull of for the MK50C's

We have been trying to find something close, but that cab is just killing us. The long hood is fairly easy, it is an sd50, but sd50's don't have safety cabs, so we have been thinking of using Kato SD70MAC's, they have the safety cab, plus all the fans and radiator's are in the right places. My friend feels that he might be able to file it down in the front a little to match the angles.

It is a compromise, but we are thinking that most people won't notice (or care), as there are only 6 MK50-3's in existence. As the two that we are making are mine, I'll be happy with them.

 

[jbaakko]

Cool, Can't wait to see. I've wanted to bash one for a long time, but never have.

 

[Triplex]

Unfortunately, everything else are very modified engines. They have 5 SD50S's and 6 MK50-3's. Those are going to be hard to make, we may just find some engines that are close, put the red stripe on them and call it good.

The SD50S's are SD50s on SD40-2 frames. However, the Utah Railway SD50S's aren't the same as the N&W SD50S's. These are Australian-built (ex-Hamersley Iron?). The radiators are different from any US domestic design.

http://www.nsdash9.com/rosters/6504.html NS (N&W) SD50S.
http://railpictures.net/viewphoto.php?id=172465 UR SD50S. Note the uneven-sized, low-mounted radiators.

Maybe you can use Kato SD40-2 frames, take Atlas SD50 shells (cut shorter), and borrow the radiators from some other EMDs.

 

[jesso]

Triplex, this is the stress that Utah Railway causes modelers. They appear to buy nothing that is standard. They now have 3 GP40's, so there is some hope of modeling some of their stuff (although UR 3002 is still painted KCS 2700). My source of info has said he doesn't know if it will be painted gray and red or the new orange and black (Utah Railway was purchased by Genesee & Wyoming).

We are starting with 7 engines. So we aren't building everything now. We have been looking into how to build an SD50s as there is a web site with VERY good measurements of them. But as I am scared by decals, scratch-building and/or kit-bashing is very much in the future.

Here are the measurements for the SD50s's: http://utahrails.net/utah-ry/utah-ry_6061_measurments.php

 

[SD90]

Looks good, I love GP38-2's, you have a good fleet going there! Can't wait to see the progress!

 

[TruckLover]

WOW, those are looking great, keep it up, can't wait to see some more pics!!!

 

[jbaakko]

AWESOME info on the SD50S! I linked it on Model Railroad tips. Keep up the work!

 

[jesso]

Train Club Meeting

We had our meeting tonight. It went really well. We put the new engines on the layout for the first time and they ran great. We ran out of time and were not able to weather them, but they still looked great. As Utah Railway keeps their engines pretty clean, they looked like the pictures we had of them.

Unfortunately, I let them take the other two engines before I took pictures of them, so here are the two I have. My next thing I need to learn is how to take steady pictures without a flash so that the engines look the gray that we see them at.

 

[jbaakko]

AWESOME! Keep up the GREAT work!

 

[jesso]

Got the engines back yesterday. Our club's artist weathered the tops of them and put number boards on them (haven't figured out how to take a picture yet so that you can read them ). There is only one more thing that he wants to do before they are "finished." He wants to put a light black wash over the grills. He is a little nervous that he dirtied them "too much." But I think they are ok.

 

[jesso]

Adding to the fleet

We had our monthly N scale meeting tonight. We met down in Mesquite, Nevada to see one of our member's home layouts. We usually all bring a train to run on the layout and one of the member's had a little surprise. Atlas has brought out two N scale Utah Railway Alco's and he brought them to the meeting. They ran very well. As a club, we are now up to 6 Utah Railway engines, with 3 more coming soon. Now, we will be able to run different eras of the Utah Railway. We joked about doing the era between the alco's and the current engines, where they just leased other company's engines, colored over the logos and spray painted Utah Railway on. That would make quite a colorful fleet. They had old Santa Fe's and Burlington Northern's.

 

[TrainNut]

Wow! How'd I miss this thread 'till now? Love them Alco's. Paint job and decals look good on all.

 

[Triplex]

We joked about doing the era between the alco's and the current engines, where they just leased other company's engines, colored over the logos and spray painted Utah Railway on. That would make quite a colorful fleet. They had old Santa Fe's and Burlington Northern's.

Didn't they have F45s in that period?

 

[jesso]

Yes, they did. They actually painted one the correct colors and I believe it is sitting on a dead line somewhere in Missouri, but they had two that were Burlington Northern Green. They changed the BN logo to look like an italic U and just spray painted Utah Railway on the sides.
They also had some SD45's from Southern Pacific.