A bit of variety today.

Friday group at the SFRMD.

     A group of us get together each Friday in a round robin that has now been going for 7 years. Yesterday it was time to attend Johns house and see the progress on the SFRMD.
    John was worked very hard and to our surprise we were able to run trains on the Santa Fe main for the first time. Trains had been staged in various towns some with old locos and some with new additions to the roster. Two additions caught our eyes, one a new Intermountain SD40-2 with full ESU Loksound the other a small switcher S2 if I recall with sound also.
    Boy have Intermountain upped their game. The new SD40 looks fantastic and performed as good as it looked with even better sound than any of us had heard before from our N Scale fleet with various decoders we have used in the past. The Alco switcher, well it knocked the sound out of the park. It too sounded exceptionally good and ran even better.
    No video but a couple of pics to show the new additions.

 A couple of random shots from the day.

The new Intermountain SD40-2 loco 5080 with it's nose ahead of a Kato unit

The switcher

F units waiting to get some power on the turntable.

A view we have not seen before, signals in a row looking behind the Udall elevator.

The next part of this post.
   A New RR with no name as yet.
   I have decided to build a small shelf layout once we settle down into our new home hopefully about August with any luck. This will be based on a new to me railroad the Missouri Pacific. This is so I can also run a few trains on Johns RR on his Mopac RR as interchange traffic. As a result I have started to purchase some new rolling stock and commenced weathering some to get them to look as they should.

Here is a couple of pics of the start.

Before

And after with only a light go with Pan Pastels and Dull-Cote. More to do.

    I also scrapped away any weathering and Dull-Cote from the outside of the ribs to highlight the fading of the panels

This is an old Roundhouse car. I painted the top Chrome Silver by dabbing with a stiff old small brush

.

    Then I touched up sections of the top with some Burnt Sienna followed by a dab of Burnt Umber into the middle of these spots to make the rust look a little more defined and aged.

More Pan Pastels

A mix of Pan Pastel Grey and a rust colour.

    So we are underway. I have just received just over 100 FVM 33inch metal wheels and a few sets with resistors already installed. These will be added to the cars as they get their weathering.  New trucks will be added where necessary a paint of the couplers and they should be good to go.
 Thanks for taking the time to stop by.
Rod.