Winter Projects


wheeler1963

wheeler1963

Aurora & Portland Owner
What is your major winter projects this year? We all have them, weather keeps us in most of the time, so it's a good time for major projects. My garage is on hold because I can't do joint compound in the cold temps (that's my story and I'm sticking to it anyway).

So my major project is to finish up engines that have been sitting in boxes for years. Some of you followed my SD40-2 builds, got 15 finished up, so now.
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Let me introduce you to the Geep Fleet.

25 Athearns
2 RPPs
2 Atlas
 
Ah. I see. Man, that's a lot of locomotives!

The reason I ask all these questions is that my relatively small fleet of diesels (4 powered and one dummy) is all old Athearn Blue Box. I have enjoyed recently touching up paint and adding LEDs and number boards. I'm tempted to do more detailing, but wonder if I ever have a layout if I'll convert them all to DCC, or if I'd be better of buying some newer DCC or DCC Ready power. And if that's the case, there's not much point in continuing to pimp-out the old blue boxes.
 
I'm building and rebuilding a string of Passenger Cars for my Northern Pacific Layout at this time. Mostly the cars are Rivarossi with one Branchline Blueprint kit. Essentially, I disassemble the Rivarossi cars down as far as I need, then repaint them, if needed. Most Rivarossi passenger cars came with interiors. However when you buy them off Ebay, you buy them "as is". So, I might need to add interiors, which I do and then I paint the interiors and populate the cars with People. I expect this project to take another month; or, so and I will find something else to do, maybe add DCC Sound Decoders to a couple steam engines.
 
malibu43 said:
Ah. I see. Man, that's a lot of locomotives!

The reason I ask all these questions is that my relatively small fleet of diesels (4 powered and one dummy) is all old Athearn Blue Box. I have enjoyed recently touching up paint and adding LEDs and number boards. I'm tempted to do more detailing, but wonder if I ever have a layout if I'll convert them all to DCC, or if I'd be better of buying some newer DCC or DCC Ready power. And if that's the case, there's not much point in continuing to pimp-out the old blue boxes.
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I have converted many Blue Box diesels to DCC, all of which worked great! I still have a couple of BB F-7s which I have replaced the motors with Can Motors from NWSL and converted to DCC and this makes them very nice runners. It's my opinion that many of the older kits for locomotives are worth converting to DCC. I have not converted to DCC and sound, so can not really speak to that except for one MDC Roundhouse Ten Wheeler which I am still in the process of completing.
 
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After re-thinking about Winter projects...I have have several in mind.

- Finish the Waupaca Industrial area on my layout.

- Continue on with my New Year's resolutions that I intend to keep.

- Apply for the NMRA Golden Spike Award.

- Weather rolling stock.

- And...hopefully start the expansion of the layout.

Greg
 
My major winter project is a multi-faceted plan to continue building structures, the highway across the layout, a highway bridge across the creek gap and finish the scratch- built vertical grain dryer! I want to do more, but realistically, these will keep me busy until spring.
 
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wheeler1963 said:
I'm pulling your leg. It's time for you, James and I to get busy building those layouts!!!!
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Funny you should say that.....I made some progress this past weekend. I finally got the room cleared out for starting the build! I had to finish the bedroom #3 (smaller room) install from what I removed from bedroom #2 (bigger room). I will try to get pictures up either tonight or tomorrow night to show the "clean slate" I have to work with! :)
 
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