DM Rail Group news

A flurry of activity
March 13, 2014

Two weeks of vacation has meant more available railroad modeling time, so I've finished or significantly advanced several item from my project boxes:

1. GP30 7877, once the worst-sounding locomotive in the active fleet (until it was finally bad ordered for the horrible gear noise!) received brand-new gear boxes via eBay.  A couple adjustments remain to be made, but DMRG once again has a GP30 in service!
2. A pair of train set type freight cars received body-mounted Kadee couplers, one even got screw-mounted trucks and LOTS more weight. & nbsp; Both cars came in a large lot of model trains from friends Jeff and Karen.  It's nice to get more of these cars into service!
3. An otherwise brand-new Bachmann E-Z Command GP30 got relettered and redetailed to better resemble its prototype, BNSF 2429 (RRPA photo 1 • photo 2 • photo 3)^.  It is now ready for service as DMRG 2429!
4. One of my long-suffering Paris Coal Railway (PCOR) hoppers finally got lettered.  A Bachmann Silver C&O 100 Ton 3-bay hopper is now PCOR 1303.  A similar car, a Proto 1000 in B&O, received the first of its black relettering patches on its way to becoming PCOR 1319.
5. Two cabooses got lettered, STFR 105 and DMRG 107913 (blogged below).  Both had the DMRG dark red stripe, 105 received stencil sub-lettering to go along with its original South Fork (STFR) number.  Both still need windows and some other minor repairs.
6. Allis Southern (ASO) 58 finally has a semi-permanent identity, with red patches over the ASO lettering.  It will become IndustRail (IR) 58, and receive a DCC decoder, sometime in the near future.

Kit-bash caboose
February 14, 2014

Some time ago, Patrick Harris put up a couple posts on HOInterchange's^ Facebook page on prototype kitbashes of older cabooses with wide-vision cupolas (among other modifications).  Being a fan of odd-ball equipment (such as wreck-rebuilt "B units" and the like), I considered making a similar piece of equipment for my DM Rail Group.  However, my "serious modeling time" always seems to come at a premium, so the project didn't go very far.  Nonetheless, while I figured that my $1-special Life-Like train-set "Northeastern" caboose with the separately-molded cupola would be the perfect candidate for said modification, it was already enjoying a happy service life on the tail of DMRG trains, and had even received a partial paint job -- on the cupola, no less.

On Tuesday, however, I pulled said caboose out of my "bad order" box (the model was rather lacking for weight, hence the bad order), noticed that I had already deposited a surplus Athearn wide-vision cupola into the box, and decided to make a Franken-caboose!

First step was removing the old cupola.  Earlier versions of this caboose had a one-piece body-and-cupola, going all the way back to Life-Like's predecessor, Varney -- yep, these things have been around forever!  My version has a separately-molded cupola, which (mostly) makes things work easier.  Next step was comparing the size of the wide-vision cupola with the opening; the hole would have to be enlarged by about the thickness of the cupola wall.  Initially, I tried filing excess material off one side, and filing... and filing... and -- let's just say, I quickly switched to the X-Acto knife for a little additional persuasion!

Step three, the cupola had to fit around the sides of the body.  I trimmed away a short piece of the roof rib on both sides of the body, on either side of the cupola opening.  Next, the cupola had to be modified to fit over the body.  The bottoms of the end walls had to be cut back to fit around the body (as opposed to into the body on the Athearn caboose).  I only cut the bottoms about 3/4 of the way up, as I wanted the cupola to sit kind of high on the body, and the tabs on the cupola to help hold it to the body.  This, in turn, caused another issue, as a slight gap was visible where the cupola end walls met the roof.  I cut four triangles off a .125x.025 styrene strip (IIRC), but any similar styrene strip, sheet, or even scrap would work fine.  After cementing the small triangles in place with Styrene Tack-It, I filed the triangles to match the rest of the cupola.

Next up is a paint job.  I started by painting the cupola and roof SP Lettering Gray, then painted the roof and cupola roof black, and the cupola sides yellow.  The Santa Fe and other markings were then painted out on the bottom of the carbody.  I retained the yellow stripe across the midst of the carbody.

This caboose will also receive a proper DM Rail Group two-tone red with yellow stripes paint job, and a new number.  The previous number, 9985, was just a simple modification of the model's original number, ATSF 999851, but it was never any kind of meaningful number.  The new number for this caboose will be 107913, same as the package car I drove a couple summers ago.  Not sure what happened to the big brown truck, but it will be nice for this caboose to bring back some interesting memories!

Run-through Power!
February 1, 2014

DM Rail Group's southern terminus at St. Louis is the inspiration for a bit of run through power, as St. Louis is also the northern terminus of the Kansas City Southern system.  As such, I've started to acquire a small fleet of KCS and KCSM (and potentially TFM) power to mix in with my oddball DMRG power.  The attractive "Retro Belle" paint scheme is a welcome sight as well.

KCS-family units acquired thus far include:
• KCS 647, EMD SD40-2, gray, Bachmann, NCE
• KCS 681, EMD SD40-2, gray, Athearn BB, needs to be built
• KCS 6101, EMD SD40T-2, gray, Athearn RTR, in transit
• KCS 4042, EMD SD70ACe, Retro Belle, Athearn Genesis, NCE
• KCS 4585, GE AC4400CW, Retro Belle, Athearn RTR, NCE
• KCSM 4513, GE AC4400CW, Retro Belle, Athearn RTR, NCE