My Northern Pacific Butte Montana Layout.


Mark: I like taking photos of my layout since the photo will show so many defects that the human eye will miss. Good examples being gaps under buildings or stationary features such as with relay boxes or figures standing only on one leg. Using today's digital camera(s) the modeler gets instant photographic results to show the layout's features and can easily repair any "defects" seen on the photos.

Leaning utility poles are found everywhere in real life, but a crooked pole on a layout just doesn't look realistic.

Greg
 
Toot, that is right in one of my wheelhouses! Thanks for that Link! There is an annual meet in New Zealand for WW1 aeroplanes at Touranga City that I would love to attend! I have been to the EAA's Airventure event and have not seen a single WW1 aeroplane there. There was a J-1 Standard there one time and it was beautiful. The J-1 Standard was a trainer used for Aviation Cadets, once the U.S. decided to get into the war!
 
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Lately I have been working on passenger cars, attempting to sell my Overland Cars because they are too early for my layout and replacing them with cars that where in use by the Northern Pacific in 1953. So far I have the Branchline Pullman car and three cars made by Rivarossi and a Rivarossi Baggage car that might be here today; or, Monday Three of the Rivarossi cars are the Pine Tree/Butter Knife Northern Pacific paint scheme cars and two of these are streamlined cars, which would have been fairly new in 1953. I am Pre-Lowey in 1953, which is somewhat difficult for me as I love the Lowey Paint Scheme.

An unexpected problem has cropped up. Previous to my Overland Cras I had a set of Athearn Standard Passenger Cars that wormed their way through-out my layout without problems. I can't be sure; but, believe these were the same length car as I m now attempting use. However, these new cars have a problem passing through one short tunnel and I am having to do surgery on the interior of this tunnel to allow them to pass. Why the Athearn Cars would pass through and the new (for me) cars won't, is a puzzle!

I've also found that people selling passenger cars on Ebay tend not describe their length, important information for buyers to know!

O.K., O.K., I know, if there aren't photos it's not actually happening. I will follow this post with some photos very soon!
 
YaY? What does this mean? Don't forget you are talking to a card carrying Luddite!

Here are photos of my new passenger cars:

HPIM8207.JPG


Above is Pullman Car #716 "Spotted Tail". This is the Branchline Blueprint car.

HPIM8208.JPG


The above car is a Rivarossi Pullman car #730 "Chief Many Horns"

HPIM8209.JPG


Here we have a BPO car by Rivarossi IHM/AHM? Light Weight #155 in Pine Tree or Butter Knife paint scheme. I can't locate a BPO car with the number 155 in the Passenger car roster at the NPRHA's website, so I think that Rivarossi/IHM/AHM? just put a number on this model.

HPIM8210.JPG


Lastly, the above car is a Rivarossi AHM/IHM? light weight Coach Car in Pine Tree; or, Butter Knife paint. There is no number on the car, so I get to decide what number to give it. This car came without interior; or, car weight, so it's a ways from being put on the layout. Both this car and the BPO need Kadee # 451 couplers and extended swing gear boxes which are on order from ModelTrainStuff.
 
MARK, You have the makings of a nice passenger train there!

So, You are saying that you are opposed to new ways of doing things?

I am not familiar with the term - "butter knife" paint workings?
 
Shirley, I'm a luddite, constant change as we see in the world today, does bother me. I see much that has changed for what I feel is simply change itself. Basically I'm an old dog, tired of constantly needing to learn new tricks when the reality is the old tricks where better! When I see a better idea, I am quick to glom onto it, if it makes sense to me. I will admit to you that I don't like the direction the hobby is headed, with Ready to Run; or, use, out of the box and put on the layout stuff! I'm in the hobby to have fun, which means I get much more satisfaction and enjoyment from building stuff myself. In essence I'm not much of a supporter of the modern day model railroading hobby as I don't buy RTR, stuff.

After the simple Olive Drab; or, Pullman Green color of passenger cars, the Northern Pacific passenger fleet paint schemes where, the Pine Tree scheme, which was also called by some the "Butter Knife" scheme and the Lowey scheme. I don't recall ever having said the "Butter Knife" paint workings.
 
The "YAY" comment was in reference to you having sold your listings -rather quickly you said.

I am NOT going to pay $44.95 for a freight car in order to just sit it on the track and run.

YOU'RE in to DCC, so that makes me more of a luddite than you!

I still don't see any "Butter Knife" in the paint scheme?
 
Shirley, The bow of this ship looks like it has a yellow "Pine Tree" on it and a green "Butter Knife" on the sides. This photo of and N.P. F3A courtesy of Intermountain Railway Company! I got into DCC before I was stupid old and I do struggle with it, on occasions.


Butterknife.jpg
 
O.K. I guess there is a new way of spelling Yeh and that is Yay. I would say Yay is a phonetically better way of spelling Yeh!

"I am NOT going to pay $44.95 for a freight car in order to just sit it on the track and run". Nor am I, I have over 160 freight cars on my smallish layout. At that price I would have to have spent close to $7,500.00 for my roster! This would make the Model Railroading Hobby an investment and not a hobby and I would certainly consider it to be a bad investment at that price. Nope! My roster has cost an average of around $5-$7.00 with a low price of $3.00 and a high of $18.00. We can't forget that my layout is 32 years old, so I was buying cars when they where much cheaper. $18.00 is for new Accurail cars. I have many LLP2K, Branchline Blueprint, Intermountain, Red Caboose, Tichy and other detail rich cars that I still paid less than the new Accurail cars. I've only paid $18.00 for Accurail cars bought from a hobby shop, feeling that I need to reward them for even carrying any kits!

I would really have to consider very hard whether to become in this hobby, today! The reality is, it is a bit to high priced for my tastes, especially now that I am retired. You can rationalize the high prices of things today, all you want! It won't change the facts, for me!
 
YaY? What does this mean? Don't forget you are talking to a card carrying Luddite!

Here are photos of my new passenger cars:

View attachment 42621

Above is Pullman Car #716 "Spotted Tail". This is the Branchline Blueprint car.

View attachment 42622

The above car is a Rivarossi Pullman car #730 "Chief Many Horns"

View attachment 42623

Here we have a BPO car by Rivarossi IHM/AHM? Light Weight #155 in Pine Tree or Butter Knife paint scheme. I can't locate a BPO car with the number 155 in the Passenger car roster at the NPRHA's website, so I think that Rivarossi/IHM/AHM? just put a number on this model.

View attachment 42624

Lastly, the above car is a Rivarossi AHM/IHM? light weight Coach Car in Pine Tree; or, Butter Knife paint. There is no number on the car, so I get to decide what number to give it. This car came without interior; or, car weight, so it's a ways from being put on the layout. Both this car and the BPO need Kadee # 451 couplers and extended swing gear boxes which are on order from ModelTrainStuff.

The Rivarossi/IHC/AHM stuff was lettered for pretty much every railroad out there. I have some of those cars around here lettered for SP. There isn't much prototype info available on them. There are a mixed bag, but quite serviceable. I converted mine to body mounted couplers and added a few doodads. Passenger train modeling can get horribly expensive. Even the run of the mill Wally cars are approaching $100 per car. At that price level, I'll buy older brass models and upgrade them. I'm glad my passenger car roster is mostly full!
 
Mark is correct that this could be an expensive hobby, but it can be expensive only if you decide to take that road.

I have both RTR and kit rolling stock on my layout. The ore cars are turning out to be expensive when you consider the cost of the car itself, the cost of Kadee couplers, the metal wheel sets, the Chooch loads and the Woodland Scenic's ore on the Chooch loads. Then, there's cost of the weathering materials. I've finished maybe 60 cars and 40 more to go and the balance of the 300+ ore cars on the CM&N roster will have to be lightly weathered and go without loads and maybe forget KD couplers and keep the stock draft draw bars.

My down fall is my collection of Kadee box cars (somewhat expensive) that I purchased and ran once and now they sit in their plastic cases. Perfect detail in everyway and even Howard Zane has remarked about Kadee's quality and attention to detail in their rolling stock. Someday I'll pull them behind one of my GP 7 locomotives.

Much of the rolling stock which I purchased in the last few years was from estate sales and swap meets. I was buying nicely weathered BB cars with Kadee couplers and metal wheel sets for roughly $7.00 or less each. One great buy was three custom lettered flat cars with wood decks and with KD couplers and metal wheel sets for $5.00 each. Shopping at swap meets for these "deals" is a secondary hobby for me.

Let's not talk about the cost of sound DCC locomotives. But, lets figure the cost of today's hobby supplies compare to their cost in the 1950's. The cost of the hobby hasn't changed much when we figure in the time value of today's dollar. A dollar in 1955 had the value of $9.23 in today's dollars!!! So the RTR box car you purchased yesterday in 2019 at $18.50 would have cost approximately $2.00 in 1955.

John Allen once remarked that his model railroading hobby cost him the price of a pack if cigarettes per day.

I figure that when I spend my hobby dollar allotment, I'm enjoying the hobby and never consider it to be an investment. I started buying kits before my retirement started and I been retired for almost eight years and haven't started even one of the many kits. I even have some wood kits from the early 1980's from La Belle and others that are still in their boxes.

I know several guys who spend their $$$ on their custom Harley motorcycles and travel the countryside or then there those who have their mail delivered to the local tavern. Personal preferences I suppose on how each fellow wants to spend or waste his money.

Model railroading is a great hobby and someday I'll get to building those kits I have in some storage bin and maybe even stop buying RTR rolling stock. Oh, I did buy Thursday at Walthers, a RTR flat car for $18.95. A real beauty.

Greg

Disclaimer: I did have Honda Gold Wing Motorcycles and we did extensive traveling on them in the summer months and model railroading took a back seat to my motorcycling experiences.
 
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Greg, The only difference between an N.P. Freight F unit and a N.P. Butter Knife/Pine Tree Passenger unit is the Butter Knife on the sides. I like all three F-Unit paint schemes: the Freight Scheme and both the Butter Knife/Pine Tree schemes and the Lowey Paint Scheme.

Sound decoder locomotives are priced all over the place, generally about $100.00 more than DC locomotives. I've gotten to the point where even though I find them to be pushing what I am comfortable paying, I find installing sound DCC in locomotives to be too much head scratching and would prefer to by factory installed. If just simply DCC, I really don't have much problems installing decoders. Something that bothers me; however, is that most DCC equipped decoders in factory installations have not been provided with land for soldering Keep Alives into the Circuit.

With the new Passenger Cars I am in the process of building; or, rebuilding I have determined that my track work was not up to snuff! I used the NMRA Standards Gauge referenced in RP-2 thinking it was giving me clearance information. Not so! I bought a new gauge a year or two back, seeing as to the fact that it now comes with a plastic piece that the gauge is inserted into. I was thinking that this would now be a Standard for Clearance, with the new plastic part and again, not so! I can't even find anywhere where the plastic part is referenced in RP-2 or anywhere else. It stands to reason that more clearance is needed for longer cars and my 22 inch radius curves! I am in the process of adding clearance, for my 85 foot cars, which means busting up scenery and cutting tunnel liners open to provide the needed clearance. The added clearance doesn't cover up the fact that the inside and outside overhangs don't look very scale like!

So, if you are considering building a new layout and want to use 73 to 85 foot cars, my advice is go with larger radius than 22 inch. I would not drop under 30 inch radius, were I to start over.
 
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