20 years and going strong

Who would have thought
    
     It's hard to realize that this layout the SFRSD my 7th since 1969 is 20 years old this month. To help celebrate the occasion I invited many of my friends over for a timetable run in the afternoon followed by Pizza and a casual run in the evening. However as they say the best laid plans of mice and men can go astray as a few of the guys had family commitments and could not make it.     
     So I decided to change the day by starting latter have pizza for dinner then a run on the railroad.
     As I have done in the past two years I asked the guys to bring over some of their trains to run on the RR and a few did just that.
    Dennis brought along two of his Conrail locos and a string of TOFC's and a freight train to run.
    Noel came along with his Iron ore train and cool looking locos that you will see below and John brought along a train as well.
    I apologize for the quality of the images, they are stills from my video camera.

Two Conrail locos brought along by Dennis running through Hackney.

  

A meet at the exit from Augusta

     Noel brought along three of his unique Pilbra cabbed locos. There are 15 in total with each group of 5 painted in a slight variation to represent a different batch ordered by the iron ore company, West Coast Mining. The cabs are all etched brass created by our good friend Vic including the dynamic brake blister, the radiator and the fuel tanks all made from etched brass all fitted to Kato U33C units.
    Noel and I did the painting of all 15 during the course of one day. Using Badger Model flex paint sure helped as we were able to see each coat dry giving us plenty of time to mask, paint and repeat all day. The decals are custom made to Noels design.

The white panel over the cab is to keep the engineers cool. It acts like a tent fly by having an air gap between it and the cab roof.

If you look closely you will see the variations in each loco as each one of these represents a batch of 5.

    

     John got nostalgic and brought along his very first N Scale loco and train. A pair of Kato GP30 locos and a string of Roundhouse Santa Fe Box cars. Way to go John.

Don't they make a nice couple.

     The night would usually see some additional trains like L&N, UP, D&H, Mexican, some Victorian locomotives and additional ATSF locomotives and rolling stock on the RR brought along by the guys who could not attend.
     It was a good night so thanks for coming along guys.
     After all of the years that have passed there are still several buildings to be started and placed on the RR. Ponca City is short about 4 and there is still one to add to the town of Winfield. Now that spring is here and with summer fast approaching it might just be what I need to get these started.
Thanks for stopping by.
Rod.