HOn3 locomotive shops

[Bill Nelson]

HON3 locomotives by railroads

To start with let me explain, my Dead Grass, Crooked Creek, & Western has connections with two railroads @ Ridgemont TN./State Line GA. The Marietta and North Georgia was a real outfit that was 3 foot Gauge, and was later standard gauged and bought out by the L&N.

My old train Buddy Mack Montgomery, of Rome GA, envisioned an alternate history, in which the Marietta and North Georgia escaped the control of the rapacious L&N, and when standard gauged, left some branch lines in three foot gauge. One of those branch lines has a junction with the standard gauge M, & NG @ State line, and this is represented by thew dual gauge Georgia staging, on the narrow shelf hanging from the ceiling above the Tom's bend area of Crooked creek.

Now , In our very strange little universe, The DG, CC & W RR, and the local branches of the M & NG, have identical areas of interest, primarily Logging and iron Ore. Both railroads were interested in reaching the far end of Iron Mountain , and the rich resources In the Gegoukayoosa area. Each railroad had part of the only possible route purchased, and were at an impasse. The M&NG, fresh from an exhaustive fight to save itself from the L&N proposed a joint venture, and the State Line Railroad was formed, to feed both the M&NG and the DG, CC, & W RR iron ore and logs.

on my railroad as originally planned the narrow gauge was just a notch above a static display. Later I added Stateline, and the Georgia staging, and had some very simple dual gauge but no where to go. Next I reused some abandoned standard gauge roadbed to push the narrow gauge up to Wildwood, above the Gizzard, and now I am trying to figure out what to do up in Gegokayoosa, where I have a shelf and some homasote down, but am trying to come up with a plan for a yard , a turntable , and possibly a return loop that will allow the narrow gauge trains to go somewhere easily enough to use them to complicate the standard gauge operations, and perhaps to introduce some actual narrow gauge operations , but I haven't gotten there yet.



OK back to the locomotive question, starting with the State Line Railroad. diverging from the alleged history, all of this equipment is fully owned by the DG, CC, & W RR.

#1, is a Ken Kidder Baldwin 0-4-2 plantation engine. I have added some sadletanks to balance it better, replaced some bad factory gears with NWSL gears, but it has a shorted insulated driver and is not currently in service.

#2 is a Keystone/NWSL shay, built with a few mechanism modifications, and some brass parts to replace the white mental smoke stack domes and, I believe, the air pump. #2 is basicaly done, painted and lettered.

#3 is the FED 4-4-0 recently discussed

#4 is a Con-Coor Galloping goose, from the first batch, it was produced with a Wayne buss body, but I scratchbashed the older Pierce Arrow body for it, case the buss bodies, while interesting are uglier than homemade sin. they are now available with the P-A body. the Con-coor goose runs excellently right out of the box

#5 is the FED 2-6-0 , which needs to get a green cab, perhaps some striping, and lettering and numbering.

#7 is a PFM Cochwain Shay, a 25 ton shay, it has been painted but needs to be numbered and lettered. If I haven't done it already, it needs to get electrical pick up added to it's insulated wheels.

#? I haven't decided on a number for the C-16. #8 would be natural, but should I leave room in the numbers in case I aquire another smaller locomotive. decisions decisions.



#3 For the M&NG is an outside framed Forney 2-4-4, which I aquired from Mack, when he migrated to 0n3 many long years ago . I have been working on it for many issues for years, and it is almost reliable now. It is painted, but not lettered


#6 for the M&NG is a outside framed 2-6-2, a model of a Baldwin product built for export to Australia, the famed "puffing billy" . It was also acquired from Mack when he went to ON3, like #3 I have been working on it for years, and it is almost reliable now.

#10 for the M&NG is a MDC 2-8-0 . Like #3 and #6, it is outside framed, making it a natural for the M&NG. The early MDC HOn3 2-8-0 kits had bad gears, and needed lots of work to make them run well the later ones were much better and could be built to run very well with the stock parts.


other than those listed I have an ancient AHM HON30 0-4-0 which I spread to HON3 . it is numbered #2 with no road marks, It has split gears and is a prop @ the iron ore transfer. I may get with NWSL some time, as they may have gears that will work.

Also I once built a MDC 2-8-0, and had it outfitted with a cabbage stack, and lettered for the State line RR. I loaned it to someone , with some cars, and a piece of flex track, so they could get a feel for HON3, and them, after a family illness disrupted my life massively, lost track of that individual. I can't remember the road number, but a certain that it conflicts with my current roster. it was from an early production kit and doesn't run as well as the other one, even after getting NWSL gears.

When I started my current RR the only reliable Hon3 locomotive I had was the AHM 0-4-0, and it could pull about 2 cars. Were I to start a new large RR, I might represent both the Narrow gauge lines , and the standard gauge M & NG, with the DG CC & W RR passing through; aiming at representing the operational difficulties of four railroads interchanging in the middle of nowhere up on Iron mountain, something I can only hint at in State line, due to limited space.


Bill Nelson

 

[Bill Nelson]

getting brave

getting brave I'm doing some striping by hand as I paint the cab sides and roofs.


I got a photo of the number plates , brass castings which make a nice improvement on the nose of a low numbered locomotive.


Bill Nelson

 

[Doctor G]

HI BILL,

Good job on these engines. By my count you have about 11 narrow guage motive devices. Had you ever considered an operating session just of your burgeoning narrow guage empire???

Keep up the good work!!!!

Doctor Tom:thumb:

 

[Bill Nelson]

Tom real operations would be very limited due to very few delivery locations.

there is a freight transfer, a log reload, an ore transfer in Ridgemont the goose track and the out track @ the Georgia staging, and three tracks of staging @ Gegokayosa, on of which will need to be open .


We can run some trains, but the kind of switching opportunities we are used to won't really exist. most of the trains will be mostly logs or mostly iron ore, and the delivery locations are for the most part hard to reach. the most likely utilization of the narrow gauge is going to be being in the way for the standard gauge operations in Ridgemont/Stateline.


Bill Nelson

 

[Bill Nelson]

motor swaps planned

I have completed my paper training for my new line of work, and am at home for the next 48 hours trying to flip my internal clock over in order to do some on the job training on the midnight to eight shift.. I celebrated this by calling Wayne (loco doc- Salida Roundhouse) and ordering re-motoring kits for the C-16 and the 4-4-0, so when those come in I will be able to roll on with those projects. when the C-16 comes apart, it will also get electrical pick up on the insulated side of the locomotive, and I will study the tender trucks to see if I can easily add pick up to the insulated wheels there as well .


The FED 2-6-0 runs backwards to everything else, so I will need to swap the wires on the motor, so it can be evaluated to see what it is capable of double heading with. When the 4-4-0 gets it's Locodoc motor, it should run well with the 2-6-0, as they the drive design and wheel size is the same, and the motors will be the same, after the re-motoring. I also need to work to get a coupler on the freight pilot. the C-16 has no provision for a coupler on it's pilot. so I may study to see If I can cheat in a dummy coupler or cobble up a non-opening KD 714.


More later.


Bill Nelson

 

[Bill Nelson]

Planning considerations

I have three possible plans for HON3 projects.

Since the top end of the switchback @ the club has been turned into Shay territory (the little GE is happy there too) I am considering linking the two tail tracks for the switchback to make a big loop, which would allow the rod engines some room to play.

at home I am considering altering my plans for Gegoukayoosa , perhaps augmenting or replacing the planned turntable with a return loop. Also I am toying with the idea of making a little portable mini railroad .

planning for any of these projects would be greatly enhanced by knowing what I could use for a minimum radius. The folks on the Yahoo HOn3 chat list informed me that my C-16 will handle a 15 inch radius. My MDC 2-8-0 is considerably longer than the C-16, so I started out making a test track with a 16 in radius, which the MDC 2-8-0 will handle easily with several cars in tow.

Next I'll try a 15 in radius. my PFM 25 ton shay will reportedly do a 12 inch radius, and the FEDs have been reported to tolerate a 10 inch radius. I have no info on my NWSL/Keystone shay or my con coor goose, nor the forney or the puffing billy. so I will make increasingly smaller test circles and note what can handle them, and use or missuse that info to make decisions on what to do where. It looks like I have room to do a 16 inch radius return loop beyond Gegokayoosa, the MDC will barely drag inself up that grade, but it might be a lot of fun to doublehead trains up that mountain.

Bill Nelson

 

[pgandw]

planning for any of these projects would be greatly enhanced by knowing what I could use for a minimum radius. The folks on the Yahoo HOn3 chat list informed me that my C-16 will handle a 15 inch radius. My MDC 2-8-0 is considerably longer than the C-16, so I started out making a test track with a 16 in radius, which the MDC 2-8-0 will handle easily with several cars in tow.

Next I'll try a 15 in radius. my PFM 25 ton shay will reportedly do a 12 inch radius, and the FEDs have been reported to tolerate a 10 inch radius. I have no info on my NWSL/Keystone shay or my con coor goose, nor the forney or the puffing billy. so I will make increasingly smaller test circles and note what can handle them, and use or missuse that info to make decisions on what to do where.

Bill Nelson

Bill

The Blackstone K-27s were tested by Blackstone on 17" radius and Shinohara #4 turnouts by Blackstone.

My FED 2-6-0 instruction sheet advertises a 13" minimum radius. The MDC 2-8-0 states 18" radius, but I know of many cases where it will do less.

Some of the articles on putting together the Keystone Shays reported no trouble on 15" radius, and I would guess it would do better - more like 12". Like all model Shays, the limit is typically the telescoping portion of the line shafts - how much they will contract before binding, and how far they will expand before falling apart. If the expansion distance capability is different from the contraction distance capability, the model Shay will go around sharper curves in one direction than the other.

A narrow gauge Shay that has the engine crank roughly the same distance from the wheels as the line shafts will go around a smaller radius than a standard gauge because there is less expansion/contraction of the telescoping universals. This is where the Roundhouse Shay struggles a little because the engine crank is lined up for standard gauge. As a result, there is little gained in terms of minimum radius due to the narrower track gauge.

My test layout is planned for 15" radius, with the test grade being 3.5% on the 15" curve. I'm hoping for 3 cars from any of my locomotives.

 

[Bill Nelson]

a front coupler on # 5

I finally got a KD 714 on the pilot beam of my FED 2-6-0. I used the tapped hole, which originally held the cow-catcher casting. The notch in the pilot beam for a coupler was slightly to skinny for a 714, but a grinding wheel in a dremil fixed that quick.

The draft gear limits the travel for the lead truck , and on the 16 inch test track it almost touches, so If I do the return loop beyond Gegokayoosa, I won't go below 16 inches, which will fit in the space available, although with little wiggle room. . it is useful to have the fully operational front coupler . I won't put one on the 4-4-0, as I want to retain the cowcatcher for looks. I will experiment with the C-16, to see if I can fit a dummy coupler to it in such a fashion to make it partly functional. I have hacked up the pilot beam on many a standard gauge rod locomotive to get a functional coupler on the front of a locomotive, but I'm not doing that to my C-16.


Fred, test your grade/radius combination carefully before committing, as a tight radius adds a lot of drag to a model train, and different locomotive mechanisms react differently. Most have a lot of extra drag on a curve. My 1st little river 2-4-4-2, is the exception, going up a straight track, on a 3.3% grade with a 19 car train, it's wheels will be starting to slip; until it hits the 21 inch radius curve. Where my Hon3 goes up the mountain, it is way to steep, since it is on roadbed that is abandoned standard gauge roadbed, which was built for shays. I'm thinking it is about six and a half percent, so it is very extreme. My MDC 2-8-0 has the hardest time with that hill, the FED 2-6-0 is more than twice as strong on that hill, possibly due to the smaller drivers, and shorter wheel base. also the brass superstructure allows for use of lead weight in the hollows, and the die cast boiler doesn't, and lead is a lot heavier than zamac.

I don't weight my Hon3 cars at all, with the exception of flatcars. the NMRA standards for weight in HOn3 cars is way to heavy. if you get really good rolling trucks, and the cars are well set up, everything but flatcars will do fine. I have some grant line flatcars that have lead shot glued to the bottom, which messes up that fine detail, but lets them work. I have a bunch of unbuilt kits for Westside lumber company flat cars that are cast white metal, and they ought to weigh enough to work.


Bill Nelson

 

[Bill Nelson]

A digression- HOn3 car shops

I am putting together a narrow gauge passenger train from Ho MDC 30 foot shorty overton coaches. These coaches are extremely short, and they were inspired by some very short passenger cars which were built for the Sierra railroad for use on it's Angels Camp branch, which had curves too sharp to allow regular passenger cars.


This conversion is an old trick. I know Malcom Furlough used this, but I do not know if the practice preceded his use of it or not.


available passenger cars are scarce in HOn3 Labelle Woodworking makes very fine wooden kits, which are really nice, detailed, and complicated, and expensive Model Railroad General Store makes some nice plastic kits but like most anything good, they are expensive Blackstone will be making passenger cars in the future. all of these are standard D&RGW cars, and they are long enough to be a problem on tight curves. I have cut down a Labelle combine for my standard gauge, but that is a tricky operation on an expensive kit. There are some brass passenger sets, but they are expensive very heavy, and generally don't roll freely.

Once upon a time when mainstream model rail road manufactures still sold kits, you could get the MDC overton kits for $13 to $18. Some these cars came from my stash of kits, and some were purchased from another modeler who was weeding out his stash of goodies. other than and old kit, one would have to buy a RTR car and re kit it I don't know if they sell the cars separately, I have only seen them in sets, which is a pain, as I'd like a coach or three more.

The proceedure with the MDC cars is to remove the ends of the coach. You cut the ends off from the inside, flush with the inside of the side walls, down to the floor level, and then you cut the floor , on the end flush with the end wall. Once you have the car end out study it. There are boards between the outside edge of the car end, and the window frame, and you cut these off flush with the window frame ; (2 cuts, one on each side of the car end. there are also boards between the window frame and the door frame, and you cut these out also (four cuts- two on each side of the door) flush with the door frame and window frame.. Then you glue the two sections with the window frame on either side of the door, and you have a car end just the right size for a narrow gauge car.

with the car ends off, you have the two side walls and the floor. I cut the floor twice, about a quarter of an inch in from the walls. I leave the center of the floor out for now , and glue the shortened ends to the car sides, with the truncated floor. when the glue is dry I mark the bottom of the door with a bencil line showing the car center line. I put the center piece of the floor in the inside of the car, line the truck screw locations up with the center line marks on the bottom of the door, and mark the center section of the floor with a pencil line showing how much it needs to be narrowed to fit back into the now skinnier car floor.

In the next installment I will review what is done with the car underfloor and platforms.

This train so far consists of a baggage car, which will have a simple arched roof, as I'm short one Celestory roof, a combine, an observation car, and a second observation car, which I will alter to make a parlor car. A coach or two would be a nice addition to make a complete name train varnish ensemble.

I won't be able to finish until I get more Hon3 passenger trucks MDC used to sell some really nice ones, but the evil folks at Horizon Hobbies ( which now owns MDC- and quit making the HON3 stuff, and quit selling kits ) the brass trucks that are available don't roll well enough to be desirable. I have ordered some Model railroad General store passenger trucks, which have plastic wheel sets, and some metal NWSL wheelsets to install in them as plastic wheelsets are evil.

Bill Nelson

 

[Bill Nelson]

underfloor

Looking at my supplies I found one stock underfloor, and one that had had it's initial cuts made on it, so I photographed them .

I take the center piece, sand it's cut edges down, glue the center piece from the body floor to the center of the underfloor, and glue both to the body shell, making certain that each end of the underfloor is perfectly centered under the doors on the ends of the car, ensuring that the truck bolsters, and coupler mounting locations run down the center line of the car.. After the glue has set up, I'll sand the cut side of the outside underfloor pieces until they fit on each side of the center section.

I'll cover that later. I'm trying to flip my schedule, in preparation for working nights, and I think I'm going to take another nap. I hav ce an alarm clock set for ten at night, and will try to be up again all night tonight, doing house work, and playing with trains, in order to be ready to work form midningt till eight am the following morning, so I may have some more progress to share.


Bill Nelson

 

[Bill Nelson]

I am up from my nap, and preparing to try to stay awake until after 8:00 AM., in order to be more ready to start living on the graveyard shift, starting tomorrow night I have been working on these cars on my kitchen table, and it is in my night's plans to clean this table. I' m thinking I ought to mess it up more before I clean it, so I'm doing more of the messy work on the car floors.

the outside strips of the underfloor are too wide. rather than cut them down I sand them down with a belt sander. there is a cast in beam on the inside, and if I sand almost to that beam they fit right in place, without having much of a gap on the platform. I find that if I try to cut them down, I don't get as good a result.

T0 mount KD 714 couplers I just cut out the hollow cylinder in the cast in KD # 5 draft gear, and screw the 714 draft gear right down in the center of the #5's pocket. The bolster is a little too tall, and this will make the car sit too high, some some of the round prtion of the bolsters will need to be filed off to et the car height/coupler height just right. Since I will be using trucks I'm not familiar with, I will wait until I have the trucks in hand before I start filing on the bolsters.

Bill Nelson

 

[Bill Nelson]

working on the roof!

the celestory roof is a complex shape, and cutting it lengthwise to narrow it is not an option.

The procedure is just to cut material off the sides of the roof. This makes a roof where the bump up in the roof is too wide, but it is the only easy option, and the result looks good from the side, and so it can be lived with. the alternative is a MRGS kit @ close to $60.00 or a Labelle kit @ close to $70.00.

In the top photograph you can see a narrowed coach body, placed into an unaltered roof casting. as you can see the walls fit just inside the tabs that are designed to fit just inside the unaltered coach body. The procedure is to cut the sides off of that roof just inside those tabs. There isn't much wiggle room there so you need a very fine kerfed (kerf= the thickness of the cut made by a saw) razor saw. since an error here will show, again I use the belt sander to sand off the sides of the roof casting until I'm very close, and then hand sand the rest off with a sheet of sandpaper placed on a hard smooth level surface .

The baggage car was a part of one of the wonderful old 3 in one kitbash kits MDC used to sell. that package did not come with a celestory roof in it, so the baggage car has an arched roof instead.

These cars are at a stopping place until I get trucks, although I could install couplers and make platform rails, add glazing and attach the roofs, but I may be inclined to do that after I have trucks on them.

I will proceed to working on 3 rail line box cars next. these are very fine plastic craftsman kits. in the photo you can see one of the bodies, and taped down on the paper plates for painting are the tiny pieces that have to be individually applied for all three cars. Two holes will need to be drilled for each of the grab irons. These can build up into stunning cars, with much better detail than anything on my standard gauge railroad, but the work involved is huge.

Bill Nelson

 

[Bill Nelson]

grab iron tedium

got woken up by a phone call and felt wide awake. nothing like some grab iron tedium to get one ready to go back to sleep.

note the grab irons on the very bottom are left off for now, as they would go through and interfere with the floor fit, so the holes will be drilled and the grab irons installed after the floor is on for good.

Having built this kit for generations is why Hon3 modelers are so enthusiastic about paying the big bucks for the fine Blackstone models, which have this level of detail or better, but come assembled and painted.

I painted the grabs before installation, and a shot of paint when all the detail will cover the spots where the paint was chipped by the pliers.


Bill Nelson

 

[Bill Nelson]

polarity swap on FED 2-6-0

When I had installed the locodoc conversion motor to my FED 2-6-0, I had gotten the polarity swapped, so it ran backwards to my other locomotives. That wasn't a big deal, my narrow gauge didn't really go anywhere then, and It didn't have a front coupler, so I didn't have much of an interest in double heading.

Now that I am working for somewhere for the narrow gauge to go, and more locomotive options, it is worth fixing, so I removed the tender shell unsoldered the motor leads from their respective locations on the tender, soldered small extensions on the wire so they were long enough to reach the other side and crossed them over each other.

While testing the locomotive I noticed it had traction problems. Since it didn't have those before I added the front coupler, I suspected pilot truck and front coupler interference. I filed off some of the coupler's draft box, and turned the pilot truck the other side up, and that seemed to fix it up.

I had been doing some work on the three rail line box car kits frames . i also found a partly built rail line stock car kit I acquired at some point in the distant past, so I have added it to the construction list.


The Rail line kits are models of some D&RGW prototypes. Their cars sat quite low compared to some generic narrow gauge cars, so low that the flanges set up in the hollow between some of the frame timbers, greatly reducing the amount of truck swing, and the minimum radius.

because if this I am making dome frame modifications raising the frame higher, and moving the bolster inward to allow clearance so the coupler draft gear doesn't interfear with the truck swing either.


I'll post pictures of this later, as it is time for me to take a nap before getting up for work later tonight.


Bill Nelson

 

[Bill Nelson]

another car cut down project

Cleaning my work surface got me cleaning and organizing my cabinet, so I could store stuff in there more coherently , I found a box with some partly done Hon3 projects.


I found some Mantua 1860 box cars. That I had started to turn into short narrow gauge cars. This takes a lot fewer cuts than the passenger car. I cut the height down with one cut just above the floor. On this model I discard the plastic floor, and added a wooden floor.

To narrow it I made two cuts straight down through the roof and end walls on either side of the cast in roof walk, so there are only two plastic pieces to glue together.

These two are going into the stack with the 3 Rail Line boxcars and one Rail Line stock car I found looking through that cabinet. In the photo's there is a part way built wooden boxcar Kit, which shows how closely this easy kitbash resembles a generic 3 foot box car.

So in the works are four passenger cars, five box cars, a stock car, and seven or so hoppers. I also have three Durango press Westside Lumber company flats , which have a solid cast white metal body, so they weigh enough unlike most Hon3 flatcars.

Bill Nelson

 

[Bill Nelson]

the narrow gauge car shops!

It was my planned goal to get my workbench cleaned off this weekend.


It didn't happen. The first disruption to plans was I ran into a guy who is my daughters age who used to come down and play with her when she was tiny. He and his brother were gathering scrap metal to sell, and wanted to know if I had any I needed to get hauled off. Most old farmsteads are littered with such, and it was wonderful to get someone who I know and trust to clean out my woods, so I spent a lot of time helping them find the various piles of scrap metal.

then it turned out one of my co-workers was ill, and the guy we support has fragile health, so I did an extra shift, and only had a one day weekend, so I did not get as much done as I had planned this weekend.

I did get my workbench clear enough so I could find all of my Hon3 car projects at once, and I was surprised. I think I have more cars partly done than I have finnished, which is good, cause if I build the staging yard @ Gegokayoosa, I'll have almost enough cars, once these are done. A photo of the partly done cars is enclosed. I have about four or five kits I have not started yet also, and four more tweetsie style hoppers I have all the materials (except the trucks) cut to size for sctatchbuilding, but haven't started assembaly Yet.


I'm going to go try to take a napp, so I can co to the trainclub tonight, and still have enough energy to go on shift again at midnight.


Bill Nelson

 

[Bill Nelson]

I'm modifying the bolsters on the rail line box and stock cars to raise the body on the trucks and to move the trucks slightly inward to keep the frame and the couplers draft gear from interfering with the truck swing.

I have filled in between the two frame members behind the existing bolster flush with the frame and glued a styrene pad centered on where the trucks will get relocated to.


I need to add another thin layer of sturene as the flanges still contact the frame.


Bill Nelson

 

[S class]

hey bill maybe you can sneak a kit or two into work on the night shift (unless of course the job is important)

 

[Elliott]

There's something more important than modeling?

 

[Bill Nelson]

hey bill maybe you can sneak a kit or two into work on the night shift (unless of course the job is important)

My supervisor actually told me it would be kosher to work on a project, as long as the needed stuff got done in a timely fashion. I have not brought a project yet, though, as most of the stuff that I do is messy, and the apartment I work in is absolutely imaculate.

"There's something more important than modeling?"

Lets talk philosophy here. Of course there are things more important than modeling (I've just had the optivisor on so long I can't recognize them any more).

If modeling is of supreme importance, which of course it is, then those things that make it possible are absolutely necessary. Modeling is an art form. there are costs involved in the acquisition, creation, and preservation of these pieces of art. Preservation of this involves a roof and walls (Even Dr Tom's outdoor RR has a shed, and occupies real estate). Some cost associated with this is inevitable. Thus, most unfourtunatley, some type of gainful economic activity is absolutely necessary in order to enable, or support the important modeling activity. Being neccesary for an important activity, unfortunately necessitates that this same economic activity , (sadly this means work for most of us); is vital to our art, and thus necessary and important, however unpleasant it may be to admit it.

Also, to continue the art, maintenance of the artist is necessary, and this is not without cost. So at some point, reality forces us to find some kind of economic activity to support and maintain both the artist's physical frame, and the space needed for the object de art itself, and without such activity the art cannot be created nor maintained.

Sadly our art form is more temporal than most. We are painters and sculptors, but a painter, or a sculptor, having created a masterpiece, can rest assured that if once they are done, others will value and care for their work, as long as the materials will last. Our art form requires continual creation, and the maintenance of both the artwork itself and the space it inhabits, and because of this few of our works, even masterpieces, survive their creators, or even the inevetable changes in their creators lives.

So, we are artists, but the whole artworks we create are temporary. Because of this, we can recognize that elements of the whole may survive to inhabit another's creation. So the railroad may not survive, but the locomotives, cars and buildings might live on in another's creation.

So as important as modeling, or possibly more important than modeling, is creating, and encouraging the next generation of modelers, who might end up keeping that prized locomotive of ours in service, incorporate a surviving piece of our empire into theirs, or use one of our techniques in their work, lending a little more permanence to this impermanent art form of ours.

There are two ways to make more modelers. and one is to hatch your own. This involves finding a suitable mate (look for those creativity genes). I caught this disease from my Dad , but my Mom was an artist, and a builder, and I've accomplished more than my dad did in the model train world. However growing your own is a crap shoot. I had three children, all three have the interest, but only one was (or would have been) a builder. Little Joey had a rare hear lung condition, and did not live long enough to build much; but his brother and sister have an appreciation for the art form, and the genes skip generations some times.

The other way we grow modelers is to be helpful to others who are interested, share our stuff, and our techniques in an encouraging way. Those of us who have a level of mastery in this art form can abuse our knowledge in order to engender some impression that we are some kind of artistic geniuses. Ok, I admit it, I'm an artistic genius, but when I'm talking to an aspiring model railroaders I need to , and do tell them that I'm a clumsy, sloppy slow learner, who just happened to be to stubborn to quit, and has been doing this for 44 years.

I am a tired boy, I filled in for a sick co-worker on Sunday night, so I did six nights this week instead of five. the snow storm we had prevented my relief from getting to work, and my supervisor was stuck also couldn't get out to relieve me either. I would have likely ended up doing a double shift, except I haven't completed the Medication training yet, so I wasn't state certified to give meds, and my supported individual had some important stuff due @ 9:00 so they shook the earth to get a qualified individual there to relieve me.

I got a package in the mail yesterday, and I have the Locodoc remotoring kits for the C-16 and the FED-4-4-0. I can't wait to get these super fine motors in these locomotives, but I'm not going to attempt anything in my sleep deprived state. I'll post photos when I'm doing the work. I've done a locodoc conversion on my FED 2-6-0, and I have seen a Westside C-16 with the conversion done, and they run as well as the best rod locomotives out there . A conversion that is definitely worth the cost. I have re motored five or six brass locomotives on my own, and it is so nice to have someone do all the hard lifting of locating an excellent motor that will fit, with the gearing, or connecting linkage all figured out and there .


Bill Nelson