GP 60 B unit

Finished weathering my GP60 B units

     It's been really hot here in Melbourne this past week 44 degrees Celsius that's 115.2 degrees F for four days straight so no chance of doing anything outside even the birds have gone.
     I did manage to get the grills on my GP60 B units sprayed before the heat arrived and it sure does make them stand out. I also gave them a very small amount of weathering along the top using an airbrush and Pan Pastels I think they came out looking OK. I have decided that I will not add the wire grabs handles. I am also not sure I like the grey side frames. These might get a coat of Scalecoat silver and a touch of weathering before they enter service they just don't look quite right

Here's a snap of the two sitting in the yard at Augusta.

     The locomotives in the background are also new arrivals to the roster. I had permission from my financial controller to purchase a set of E8A & B units from BLI. This is a bit of a history trip for me as my very first loco was an Atlas E8 in the same livery.
     If you have not had a chance to listen to the sound from one of the N Scale units you sure are missing something. I have MRC. Loksound and Tsunami sound decoders fitted to many of my locomotives and they do not even come close. The fact that they have planed where the decoder and twin speakers are fitted sure makes a difference. Thank you BLI

     I have yet to put the E8's on my programing track to set the road number that will happen over the course of time. Now the next job is to find some decals so I can upgrade my existing FP45 locos from the early scheme to the Super Fleet scheme as my E8's are due to replace them at the head of my directors special.
    I am very happy that these units have arrived.

    Loco Roster.
    I thought I would start showing my locomotive roster that I have been gathering since about 1989.
    The unit below is my version of a U36 at the time of the ill fated merger between Santa Fe and the Southern Pacific. It is a Kato U28 that I cut off the original radiator section and grafted on one from a Bachmann U36. I added the RC unit, air conditioning, sun visors and the beacon. I used Accuflex acrylic paint and applied the Microscale decals. The trickiest part was forming the crescent shape behind the cab however I copied a decal and made a styrene template for it and future units that needed updating. A small amount of weathering and just last week a did some light washes around the side doors to help them stand out. This loco has a loksound decoder installed with two speakers installed in the fuel tender. It sounds OK.
   

    This locomotive has done many miles over N Track modules for days on end, on my SFRSD and still runs like a Swiss watch.
That is it for today.
 Enjoy your day.
Rod.

GP60 M update

Adding sound to my FVM GP60M
     Once I had cut away the fuel tank casting area to allow for the fitment of the speaker I gave my loco to John (one of the decoder installation guru's of our group) to finish off the installation of the Loksound decoder and speaker.
     In a couple of posts back I showed how much material I had to remove from the fuel tank area so below you can see the speaker installed. Unfortunately I do not have an image of the decoder sitting in it's place in the chassis.

Note the 10 thou styrene under the speaker it seems to help to produce more sound

A better side on view. You can also see I have weathered the side intake grills, it really makes them stand out.

     Unfortunately there is not enough space to fit the speaker into a speaker box like others have been able to do on some other N Scale models.
     I need to add some double sided sticky tape to hold the fuel tank cover in place, the clips do not have anywhere to grip now that so much material has been removed.
     I also needed to adjust the notching as this did not seem to be working as it should under it's first test. Thanks to Loksound USA they put me on the right track to get it to notch once again. A bit more tweaking of the sound and some more light weathering and Loco 129 will be ready to take it's place on the SFRSD.
     A big thanks to Vince at Top Hobby for some helpful advice and to my good friend John for completing the installation.
 
 My GP60 B unit.
     I thought I would show my new GP60 B unit masked ready for its grills to be weathered probably tomorrow as the weather it tipped to be fine and about 22 degrees C. Ideal for spraying.

My masking tape of choice is Tamiya. It is easy to use and has a nice straight edge. I use 6 mm tape for the close areas and 18 mm for the broad cover.

I will use my airbrush with a mixture of flat black with a hint of rust added with lots of thinners.

     Have a happy new year everyone.
Rod.

Merry Christmas

That time of the year again.

     Hi all just wanted to say to all to have a very Merry Christmas and a safe, happy and enjoyable new year.
     Run a train a day.
Rod.
PS I think I'm getting another GP60 B unit from Santa yippee.

Progress on the GP60M sound installation

Plans change
    
     After reviewing several forums along with discussions with friends it was decided to go down a slightly different path with the speakers that I would use in the GP60M that I spoke about two posts ago. It seems that the use of the small rectangular Knowles Fox speakers makes a significant difference to the sound obtained from the Loksound decoders. It was also going to be difficult to machine the fuel tank to fit the two 12 mm round speakers they way we would like.
     Bill gave me one of these new speakers (thank you Bill) and so armed with this off I went to Vics house to supervise the machining of the fuel tank. Well, Vic was wanting me there so he could show me just how much material had to be removed in order to fit this speaker. What a job. Vic's milling machine did a fine job however we decided later that we should take out all of the sides of the tank as you will see in the images below. Once home I had at it with a new smallish square file that did the trick. This should leave enough room to have the speaker mounted in a speaker box which we are hoping will give us even better sound.
     The body was the next big job as the decoder will not fit sideways in the shell it's too wide so out with the 180 grit wet and dry paper wrapped around a coffee stirrer and let the sanding begin. What a job however it seems that it has worked as I can now offer the decoder to the inside and it fits nicely.
     For the fuel tank cover I laid a piece of masking tape over the exterior, marked out the location for the holes and used my Dremel to drill out the holes hopefully to let out most of the sound.

     Here's a few pics of the progress thus far.

Here you can see where the rear of the frame has been milled to fit the decoder.

A side view of the fuel tank machining to fit the rectangular speaker

And from below

 

The sanded area to both insides of the body shell

and the fuel tank 

    The next step is to have the decoder installed and see how she sounds.

Thanks for coming by.
Rod.

Not much done this past few weeks

Just working on a few trucks

     The weather has been kinda iffy this past few weeks so haven't felt like doing that much on the SFRSD.
     Instead of doing nothing there was several Atlas LNT 9000 cab chassis on the RR that needed to be detailed. They were still in their out of the box appearance and needed to look like they were earning their keep. I set about painting the wheel rims using Italeri Acrylic Paint Metal Flat Steel. I used a very fine OKER brand fine tipped felt brush that I purchased from an air brush supply company. This proved to be a very useful piece and made the job quite easy. The next step was to spray the chassis with dull coat and then using my new PAN PASTEL neutral soft grey went over the tyres to take off the shine. That made a huge difference. A fine tipped black marker to blacken out the grill, the top of the exhaust pipe and the number plate and it made a huge difference. The same pad that was used on the tyres was also used on the cab after I highlighted the door handles roof lights and front bumper with the metal colour. About 6 trucks received this treatment.
     The next job on the list was a trailer that was given to me by Vic. This has an exquisite brass etched chassis and sub floor including a bulk head. Dual axles and etched mud flaps were included. Vic had added a sheet of very thin styrene to the deck and I wondered how I should tackle this.
     I started by using a scalpel to scribe horizontal lines across and a few along the deck to simulate weld lines where the deck plate steel was added and welded together. Vic had already painted this flat black so I set to and brush painted all of the below deck with Model Master Chrome Yellow. The deck received a brushed on coat of the Metal Flat Steel paint as a base to the next process. Once dry the whole trailer received a coat of Dull Coat. Then the weathering started. A thin wash of oil paint Vandyke Brown for all of the underframe and the deck which also received a dab or two of raw umber and burnt sienna to simulate rust and some wear and tear. The wheels and tyres received the same treatment as the trucks metal flat for the rims and Pan Pastel for the tyres. The mud flaps received some flat black and the job was done. Next came the timbers on the deck.
    

The timbers are from Northeastern Scale Lumber stained with a Walnut touch pen. They scale at 4"x 4" in HO

     I neglected to take any images of the completed trucks so here they are. Not spectacular but using the three foot rule they are a lot better than before.

Thanks for stopping by.
Rod.

New Locomotives hit the rails

FVM Santa Fe GP60M and B units

    For too many years I have yearned for some manufacturer to deliver to us Santa Fe modelers the GP60 M and B units that hit the Santa Fe in 1990. Many years ago I purchased a GP60 M and B unit in brass at I must admit too much money. When they first were put to work on the SFRSD they would not run across the new M E turnouts and in fact they had difficulty running at all. I said to myself, self this is dumb why keep these if you are not going to have the pleasure of seeing them operate. So in 2003 they were sold to a very happy customer and I started waiting.
     Suffice to say I was a very happy man when I heard that FVM were going to release them in the not too distant future.
     This still caused me some dilemma as my RR is set in 1986 four years before they were introduced to the Santa Fe in the Corwith Yard in Chicago. I thought well I will be firm and stick to my era.
     Time passed and still no GP60 M's from FVM until the past month when they hit the LHS, well the USA ones anyway. Boy did they look ok, the forums were raving about just how good they looked and ran. It didn't take long for the emails to be sent from yours truly to one of my favorite on line stores to place an order for one GP60 M and one GP60 B. When some of my friends and I were talking they said how are you going to turn the lead loco. Ok I had to order the second GP60 M oh and also two ESU plug in decoders along with one Loksound Micro sound decoder to get this lash-up humming.
     The first order of business was to mask up the bodies and paint out the grills with a diluted flat black with just a touch of rust added for good measure. I then gave them a very light spray along the top just to show that these puppies were meant to be working from the get go.    
      Once all three were painted the next job was to install the two plug-in decoders. They went in like a snap once my friend John worked out what I had done incorrectly and now run like a dream.
     The last job to tackle is the installation of the sound decoder. John has done one of his with a lot of machining of the frame and a good amount of filing of the inside of the body to give clearance for the decoder as they are just a tad too wide to fit.
     So armed with this my GP60 M is now stripped, the frame has gone to Vic for milling not only for the decoder but also for the two 13 mm speakers that will be inserted into the fuel tank portion of the frame. As I write this I heard back from Vic that the top milling went very well but have not heard from him since. Should I be concerned. I will let you know in the next post.
     Meanwhile here is a few images of the insides of the loco.

You can just see a small portion of the painted grills along with the top.

So that's about as far as we can go at the moment. More to follow when further progress is made.
Thanks for dropping by.
Rod.

The SFRSD gets full CTC

Last update to the dispatchers panels.

     Brendan kindly came over this morning to update the SFRSD dispatchers panels. We had previously been running under an ABS system knowing that as soon as Brendan had time to configure all of the software we would go to full CTC.
     There were a few things we needed to sort out about how the RR was to be controlled so after watching quite a few videos on the subject we were set in our minds about what we needed.
     On the 25th of September Brendan came over to set a few signal switches on the panel for testing. With the grateful assistance of John F and John C testing sorted out a few areas that needed to be tweaked. The signals at the Left hand end of Guthrie were playing up but that was about it.
     So the big day was today. Brendan arrived early this morning with his dad and proceeded to install all of the necessary software into the system.
     All worked very well and boy how cool to see the panel finished. It has taken just on thirteen months to get to this stage which is as planned.

This is the Left hand panel beginning with the town of Augusta. The signal switches along the bottom row are the new additions with Brendan having been able to have them operate in three positions which will give the dispatcher additional control

And the right hand panel with Flynn on the right.

And a full panel view.

       A huge thanks goes to Brendan for the countless hours he has spent putting this together. My close friends who have assisted in the wiring and testing plus a very huge thanks to the many folk who contribute to JMRI for without their dedication to this fantastic tool none of this would have ever happened.  
     Operating sessions will never be the same again.
Thanks for looking in.
Rod.