Oh, man, I've come in way too late to be able to comment on all the pictures. If I don't mention yours, it's because of my membership in the Alheimer's Club.
MD, well deserved awards for the work you put into the those two models. Congratulations!
Ray, very professional looking control panel. Mine looks like something you'd add under the dash of a '55 Chevy.
Tom, nice looking bridge and loco. I like the work you did on the abutments too - often overlooked with model bridges.
Jeffrey, clearing some of that ballast from the inside web of those rails might help prevent such disasters in the future. I'm always amazed how one little piece of ballast that has migrated to the wrong place in a switch can start causing derailments.
Mike, nice picture of some real desert railroading. You can tell how much rain they expect by the fact the railroad grade is about 6 inches above the surrounding ground. I wonder how long it has taken to develop those erosion channels in the background?
Carl, nice MNS double plug door boxcar. I like the Athearn RTR line of freight cars also. Nice trucks and wheels and decent couplers compared to a few other companies RTR cars.
Fred, fantastic job on that GE with the turbo fire. Even the scorching on the lettering looks real Did you work from a prototype on that? Is the engine still actually operable after the fire?
John, your intermodal facility is developing very nicely. The container crane looks especially good. Are trucks normally going to drive up the platform to be loaded or will it always be for the side? I saw an interesting one at a small container yard today. The track ended at one end of the loading platform. The platform was made of rollers and there was a winch at both ends. The winch at the track end yanked the containers off the car and then the winch at the other end rolled the containers to the waiting truck at the road end. The loading ramp had an extension on the end that sat on the truck bed. After the containers were on the truck bed, the roller ramp was pulled out by the winch at the track end of the dock and the process started again. No cranes and very little handling. Seemed like a good idea for a light duty container facility. My era doesn't include containers or I'd be tempted to try building one.
The girder bridges look great, Michael. Pit dome though into modeling the abutments since they really help in making bridges look real. As Tom suggested, some Floquil boxcar red, mineral red, or grime, sprayed on very lightly will help bring out the details. I don't know what road you are modeling but the road name or herald looks really cool on a girder bridge to break up that big expanse of black.
Sorry, it's getting late so I have to apologize to those of you I missed but this has been one of the better WPF's so far.