Great Northern railway

Hi Sam;

Long time no talk.   Nice to see shots of your HO railroad.  Looking good.

Regards,

Jerry

Yo Jerry,

Just noticed that OGR just put this new forum up for us 'odd' people so I thought I'd post a few pictures of the layout.  For the last few months, I've been getting the layout ready for this Sunday when I have a open house for this month's NMRA meeting.  Over the past year, I've picked up about 20 new engines and the bulk of them needed to be painted.  Since GN and NP were 'joined at the hip', I've added several NP engines and painted them up in the gray boiler scheme:  I love multi-colored steam engines.  GN leased yellowstones from DM&IR during the winter when DM&IR couldn't haul ore due to it freezing so I also picked up a 2-8-8-4. 

With 1500' of track covering a 33'X47' area, I had a lot of cleaning to do to get ready for the open house.  But, I think the GN railway is ready for the crowd.

Sam

I liked that retail coaling facility.....before people show up, check that building with the stone addition...it may need ties moved and a foundation, to thwart rivet-counters and critics.   How were GN and NP "joined at the hip"?  Knowing little about them, I would have assumed they, between themselves,  and the Milwaukee were fierce competitors

The 'critics' get 'show me pictures of your basement size layout and all 150 buildings on your layout and how you did each of them'.   James Hill (founder and owner of GN) owned a lot of stock in NP as well as SP&S and Burlington.  He tried on 3 occasions to merge all these railroads into one but the ICC ruled against it.  The merger finally happened in 1970.   The GN and NP shared the main passenger terminals in St Paul and Seattle and Burlington pulled the GN passenger cars from St Paul to Chicago.  Both GN and NP owned SP&S and shared SP&S's track to bridge some cities.

I think Milwaukee was last to reach the coast and they had the most severe routes to get across the mountains.  I never read much that Milwaukee was a threat to the GN railroad.

WOW, thats a beautiful layout.

Thanks, Matt.

Video:

GN P-2 4-8-2 mountain freight crossing Chumstick canyon trestle.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujdVUF1STZI   

Sam

GN S-2 4-8-4 northern pulling passenger train.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3vzjohUg8s   

Sam

Video of the GN R-2 2-8-8-2 in glacier park colors.  The engine rivaled the Big Boy and Allegheny in tractive power.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwtHmXKgPlU  

sam

Just arrived.

One of my favorite locos !!

Nice layout.  I noticed that HO layouts have the same issues as O Scale layout. Somebody laying down on the job face first. 

samparfitt posted:

Video of the GN R-2 2-8-8-2 in glacier park colors.  The engine rivaled the Big Boy and Allegheny in tractive power.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwtHmXKgPlU  

 

sam

Excellent!!!!   However, I'm curious as to why your R-2 does NOT sound like an articulated, i.e. no multiple exhausts, just 4 chuffs per revolution?

Like they say: how many work at your company? ...oh about half of them!

I think most model articulateds are set up for just one cam.  There's two cams, one on each set of drivers but the sound would sound like just one continuous noise.  Also, only one motor controls both sets of drivers so they won't go 'in and out' of sink like a full size articulated.   Somethings don't scale down well.   Kind of like scale handrails: make those scale and 1) you probably couldn't see them , 2) they would be extremely delicate and 3) they probably wouldn't look right.  

For me, I consider modeling an art versus an exact duplicate.  It's like looking at an expensive oil painting real close: it's just a bunch of paint brush strokes.  One looks at it from the proper distance to get the feel of realism without painting each leaf on a tree.  Our brain fills in the 'detail' for us. 

If you've ever watched Bob Ross paint, you know what I mean.

samparfitt posted:

Like they say: how many work at your company? ...oh about half of them!

I think most model articulateds are set up for just one cam.  There's two cams, one on each set of drivers but the sound would sound like just one continuous noise.  Also, only one motor controls both sets of drivers so they won't go 'in and out' of sink like a full size articulated.

It seems that the sound systems in the O Scale articulated models have found ways of "generating" that in-and-out of sync exhaust sound. Apparently the HO sound suppliers have not discovered that yet?

  Somethings don't scale down well.   Kind of like scale handrails: make those scale and 1) you probably couldn't see them , 2) they would be extremely delicate and 3) they probably wouldn't look right.  

For me, I consider modeling an art versus an exact duplicate.  It's like looking at an expensive oil painting real close: it's just a bunch of paint brush strokes.  One looks at it from the proper distance to get the feel of realism without painting each leaf on a tree.  Our brain fills in the 'detail' for us. 

If you've ever watched Bob Ross paint, you know what I mean.

 Regardless, you still have a fantastic layout!!!!

I had a talk with the one employee resting and he's back at work.  Not sure why he was tired; back in 1938, you only worked 12 hour days, 6 days a week and just moving 100 pound chunks of ice around!

An easy fix on the W-1 electric.

The engine ran fine upside down on the bench but was shorting out on the track.

The brass is not cast but just bent sheet brass so it was easy to straighten out.

The original foam was gone so new foam was cut via a scroll saw.

Here's the guts of her:

The new DCC sound systems may be more enhanced for the chuffing sound.  I'm using the PFM sound system from the 80's.

Back in the 80's and 90's I had 'cutting edge' high tech equipment on my layout and all enjoyed my monthly operation sessions.   Now, The new DCC systems are the latest thing.  I've got around 44 steam/electric engines and am not going to convert that many.  Besides, I'm very happy with my 'stone age' sound.  It has about 24 different sounds, besides the usual chuffing, hiss and whistle, 3 different wheel motion noise, 3 bells sounds, generator, 3 air pump sounds, coupler and blower.

 Like DCC, I can control my trains remotely so one can 'walk along' with his train on the layout.

One is controlling the PFM sound systems.

The other are RC airplane transmitters that control speed and direction (good for my electrics and any engines others may bring over to operate).

Here's a video of a sampling of the PFM sounds:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjJM-a9B5Sw

samparfitt posted:

I had a talk with the one employee resting and he's back at work.  Not sure why he was tired; back in 1938, you only worked 12 hour days, 6 days a week and just moving 100 pound chunks of ice around!

Its to bad that you have to stand there and watch him like that.   You just cant get good help these days.

I was watching you videos. The more I see your layout, I like it even more. Question.  Since you have the ore docks and Glacier National Park . Did you model the entire GN system, from Minnesota to Seattle?  Once again thanks for sharing your layout.

That old rule seems to apply to everything: there's always that 10%.

I did model the entire system from St. Paul (upper yard that is straight) to Seattle (lower yard that is curved).  Since the mainline is 400' long, I figured I could model both yards (cities).  Takes a good 1/2 hour to go from one city to the other.  Minimum radius is 48" and max grade is about 1/2 percent.

The yards are large being about 22'-30' long holding about 500 cars each with a train of about 35 cars can be in each track.   I made all turnouts #10's on the mainline and yards: they are needed in the yards as the cars would probably derail when a switcher is pushing that many cars through the points of the switch.

I like me some GN!!!

My 1st train HO) was a Bachmann GN 2-8-0 in Glacier scheme.  Probably not prototypical but at the time it was beautiful.

I may be wrong, I really haven't studied GN all that much, but it seems like they had a lot of similar equipment to my Seaboard Air Line, at least their steamers with the front-mounted air pumps seem similar to the SAL Q3 Mikes.

If I was into SAL, GN would be my next choice.

(I need to get a couple of O scale boxcars with Rocky on them)