Mail Call! Railway Post Office, commonly abbreviated as RPO has rolled in!


troyphoto said:
Ugh... was just in my LHS here in the Fort...

Needed Vallejo Brown Violet, THE color for WWII US Vehicles and helmets... Ran a finger along the rack in the brownish greens. Or greenish browns. Excellent. Fully stocked!

grabbed a bottle, looked at the label... UGH... Olive Drab

So NOT the same colour.

Found the Olve Drab slot, and it wa full of Olive Brown... Huh?

Someone doesn't understand paint colors... Even though the term "olive Drab" has been around since before WWII, that particular colour as reprented in the Vallejo line, didn't get adopted by the US military until Korea. The green for vehicles in WWII was slightly browner.
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Since my LHS won’t stock Vallejo I buy from Scalehobbyist.com. They carry the full line of Vallejo paints at what I believe are very good prices

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TLOC said:
Another delivery. I ordered these yesterday morning while on the plane from Lombard Hobbies, these are for me

View attachment 170031The usual bag of Fruit Snacks that the grandkids love, another carry bag and the wheel gauge business card. I purchased 3 of the HO scale Gunderson Plate F box cars 50’. 2 numbers for AOK and 1 COER. The 3 containers are also for me for a project down the road…

I did separately purchase a case of 18 Aurora TBOXx50’ yellow box cars that since I ordered yesterday I have commitments for 14 of them. Very modern cars, build date is 2017 so they will show some grime and light graffiti but not much. They are not here yet! The Aurora Miniatures are absolutely gorgeous, they roll very well and are heavy weighted cars. The couplers SUCK and they droop. They will get replaced by Kadees and shimmed if need be

Finally, a lost in the USPS system box from Hiawatha Hobbies, that Hiawatha made good on. A UP modern Kenworth truck. This is to go along with the project down the road. About a month ago I ordered this and it was shipped the next day. A week later it was in Oregon per USPS tracking. I called Hiawatha yesterday and they sent out a new one. Here 2day.View attachment 170032I am very happy I am close to 2 exceptional Hobby shops that also have great online service. 75 miles from Hiawatha and 125 miles from Lombard.
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Tom
I would be interested in that UP semi 😁
 
troyphoto said:
Very good prices.

I'm just sad that the locals who do stock most major model brands would so easily confuse the two colors.
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My LHS has always been good about checking the colors. I also buy at the retail store of Noble Knight Games. One of the brother owners was a college roommate of the son in law. Their staff is super knowledgeable and the store I understand is a Paradise for gamers. They must also have 20+ gaming tables in there. They got me involved with Vallejo and AK interactives a few years ago but strictly suggested retail pricing. It’s why I found Scalehobbyist.com
 
Smudge617 said:
Still not sure how you broke them, you obviously don't know your own strength Mike.
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🙊
While on a trip to Scranton this past saturday i decided to stop in Montoursville at Bowser. Some may know the factory better as Jonny English and that's where the Pennsy steam locomotive kits came from. Was fortunate to be able to aquire sand dome for my L1 mikado project:
20230619_175451.jpg

Both the K4 pacific and L1 mikado shared the same design boiler. But major notisable difference was the placement of the bell and sand dome on each locomotive:
20230619_175456.jpg

Bowser got the castings and mouldings from Penn Line and they only did K4 configuration as on the model. On L1 the sand domes were placed on first part of boiler after smokebox. I presume because of first set of drivers right behind cylinder blocks:
20230619_175552.jpg

So when it will cool down and i'll be in the mood for modeling, all i have to do is shave the cast on the boiler sand dome, drill the hole for one in first part and fit it in proper place.
 
All the way from Japan in only 5 days, got this HOn3 0-4-0 Porter kit from Toma Model works (with my smallest HO 0-4-0 for scale !)

EE5B82F9-3AED-41DB-848C-378A67F199DB.jpeg

I have no current narrow gauge models but have been toying with the idea of a small scale HOn3 layout and just couldn’t resist when these came back in stock.
 
There's just something about opening the front door to find a delivery by the uniformed agent of the USPS or other delivery service.

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This is the latest edition to the ever-expanding livery of motive power for the D&J Railroad.
This is an Athearn Genesis SD45-2 in Norfolk Southern paint. One of the few that the road operated for a short while.
The decoder is a Tsunami 2 with LED lighting.
The model will be headed to the modeling desk for weathering and application of some minor detail parts and weathering including K-D couplers, then to the programming track to be registered in the JMRI roster and detailed programming then over to the speed matching department to give it a custom speed table so it can be run with any other loco on the D&J Railroad roster.
Despite this being an SD45-2, notice it doesn't have the flared radiators of the original SD45 distinguishing design. This will work alongside of its close sibling, cab number 1704.

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D&J RailRoad said:
There's just something about opening the front door to find a delivery by the uniformed agent of the USPS or other delivery service.

View attachment 172056

This is the latest edition to the ever-expanding livery of motive power for the D&J Railroad.
This is an Athearn Genesis SD45-2 in Norfolk Southern paint. One of the few that the road operated for a short while.
The decoder is a Tsunami 2 with LED lighting.
The model will be headed to the modeling desk for weathering and application of some minor detail parts and weathering including K-D couplers, then to the programming track to be registered in the JMRI roster and detailed programming then over to the speed matching department to give it a custom speed table so it can be run with any other loco on the D&J Railroad roster.
Despite this being an SD45-2, notice it doesn't have the flared radiators of the original SD45 distinguishing design. This will work alongside of its close sibling, cab number 1704.

View attachment 172057
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Excellent pictures and choice in locomotives. I love to see the packages on the front porch

enjoy
 
Iron Horseman said:
AS I said I am way behind. Here is some more catch up. ....
Include your picture - below.
Tell us About it - The Santa Fe ordered six of the 3460 class "Super" Hudsons in 1937. Ball bearings on all axels and drive gear. Super heated and a few other things. They were signifcantly larger than Santa Fe's prior Hudsons and were the heaviest, largest, and most powerful Hudson type built as the move to diesels stopped further development of the design. The locomotives were assigned to named passenger trains between Chicago and LaJunta Colorado, where the Mountains and Northern Class locomotives took over for the western part of the journey. Of the six locomotives in the class only one was streamlined and named the "Blue Bird", however crews would call her "Mae West" because of the glamor aspect. Somewhere after the fact (scrapped in 1956) apparently model railroaders started calling it the "Blue Goose" which name it is now commonly known. In its hey day the locomotive was used for many publicity photos and promotions. It even got to pose with 4 of the brand new E1 locomotives on the "Chiefs" publicity photo. The Santa Fe made exactly 1 passenger car with this color scheme but for some reason it never got further than that (other than in the AHM/Rivarossi world).

This is a Broadway Limited Paragon 4 Brass/Hybrid offering. What I didn't know is that the blue bird actually had six different paint schemes through its life. This is the last 1953-end paint scheme as that is my era. However I have to say I like the previous 1947 colors where the driving wheels and trucks (even the tenders) were a darker blue.

Review - The detail looks great and in proper proportion. Many of the brass models of this locomotive were too tall by at least 6 scale inches. Later I'll have to get a photo of it side by side with the AHM equivalent to show how really good it looks. As I have no test track a review of performance will have to wait. Down side is that it was pricey (very). And OH YEAH, for the price the packaging is very chincey and cheapo. Nothing like a fine brass model should have.

Reasons for obtaining the item - Once again hard to model passenger trains in the Santa Fe Transition era without having this locomotive in the round house.
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A couple week ends ago at the Matfield Green "Day of the Cowboy" 2023 show, the town celebrated the 100th Anniversary of the arrival of the railroad. They invited us, The Chisholm Trail Division NMRA club, to set up the modular layout, so I was able to run the Blue Bird for the first time.

The locomotive takes and inordinate amount of time to power up. So long that I was beginning to think it was defective. I think it is the "keep alive" capacitance system that made programming on the main with JMRI slow and tedious. The programming track would probably have not worked at all without a booster. Once I finally got it off of channel 3, it was still slow to come to power on the layout. It was stiff out of the box and surged a bit at low throttlw. I checked for binding of the drivers/valve gear but could find none. The sound was loud (which was good since the show layout was in a barn), but it was crisp and clear, very unlike the loud blaring blured sound of the original MRC brilliance decoders.

I soon discovered it has two operating modes. One is standard and the other is advanced which means the functions are mapped differently. Took a little time to get used to where things were. Whistle, bell, and headlight were all the same and normal, but other things were not. I ran in standard mode where it has a great function on #7. It turns the smoke on and off. I hate locomotives that have a physical switch on the bottom or back of cab, or majic wand somewhere for the smoke control. I could turn it on and run until the fluid ran out and then just switch it off.

After the first run the surging seemed to have gone away and it ran smoothly. I was able to creep past the speedometer at 3.7 smph and zoom past at 87 smph. The keep alive system works flawlessly and I didn't have a single stall. I had 4 time slots to run, so each run I connected it to longer and longer trains. In the end I was running a respectable and prototypical 14 passenger cars and it pulled them effortlessly. Of course there is no grade, so that is a story yet to be told.

I don't like the color of the lights. They are way too blue for a 1940s locomotive. I am thinking I can give the headlight a wash of yellow to make up for it. Also the light facing back from the cab into the tender is too bright might have to figure out how to program it to be "off". The smoke is a bit thin which was exacerbated by the layout being in a barn with all the doors open and the wind blowing through. There was once, where the wind was blowing nose on and the smoke blew back past the cab that made it look like it was charging down the track over the century mark. Wish I could have gotten a picture of that.

Over all I am impressed and so was everyone else. It was the hit of the show. Folks would follow it around the layout almost ignoring the other trains.

BlueJay on curve.jpg
 
One of the functions of the decoder keeps the locomotive from moving until it has gone through all the sound items of the loco starting up. You can toggle that feature off and the loco will move on command despite still doing the startup sounds. I don't know where that feature is but it's just one box that is checked for start-up noise or uncheck it to allow the loco to run right away.
 
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