For a Friend

Years ago, I bought an undecorated Atlas ALP-44 electric locomotive because I’m kind of a traction junkie (more on that in a future post) and the price was right. It certainly didn’t fit in with the AHNC story, but it was a model of a really cool locomotive. I had no idea what to do with it, I just hadta have it. But it sat in the box for years because I didn’t know what to do with it.

I finally had an idea when I learned my friend Nancy had been diagnosed with breast cancer. She’s a tough lady – second time around for her as she also successfully fought kidney cancer. Oh, and while she did that she was completing her college degree, with honors thank you. Her husband is a model railroader, and she’s been known to run a train now and then on his layout. Nancy doesn’t run trains at prototypical speeds, though. She’s that person who looks at a throttle that goes up to 10 and tries to find 11 or 12 or 13… thankfully her husband has really good, virtually derailment-proof trackwork on his layout. I knew the Atlas ALP-44 was a fast runner, having the same mechanism as an AEM-7 which I have seen run very fast. The prototypes of both models regularly attained 100+ MPH operation in passenger service, and the model was designed to be able to attain similarly high scale speeds.

So this is a birthday present to my friend Nancy. An ALP-44 looks pretty good in pink, I must admit!

Unintentionally Annual Update

In the waning days of 2015 I remembered I have once again left my readers in the dark for nearly a year. Things have been busy on both the 1:1 and 1:87 railroads which occupy much of my time!

The 1:1 railroad I work for suffered badly during the phenomenal Winter of 2015, with nearly a month of back-to-back snowstorms landing eight feet of snow on the region and taking a major toll on equipment availability. Things were not put to right until well into the spring, and a large part of our overall focus and effort for the remainder of the year has been to ensure we have taken steps to prepare ourselves for the next winter season so that we do not have a repeat of last year, no matter what Mother Nature brings. So far, as I write this on a nearly 60 degree day just a few days before Christmas, it’s hard to believe it could happen again. Then again, last December was pretty benign as well, and in fact it wasn’t until late January that the snows came repeatedly and in earnest. I had better not be complacent!

On the Acadia, Halifax and North Coast, much progress has been made. As mentioned in my last post, the fleet is indeed complete, or at least if and until I decide to expand it! The roster today stands at 23 locomotives, all DCC equipped and now in the process of receiving LED headlights, ditch lights, and red markers on both ends (this is why I spring for six function DCC decoders!).

There are also 98 freight cars painted and lettered for AHNC, 11 passenger cars, two “Remote Control Lead Vans” (cabooses equipped to remotely control locomotives), and 14 pieces of maintenance of way and company service equipment (ballast hoppers, plows and spreaders, etc.). There are a few AHNC cars and locomotives floating around out there which I have given to friends over the years as well.

I have also built a few structures, including an entire engine service and car shop complex as seen below.

Even if the AHNC roster stays as is into the future (what are the odds of that?), I have already found ways to expand the fleet. I now have an affiliate tourist operation called the Black Woods and Schoodic Mountain Scenic Railroad which will operate over a portion of the AHNC. Trivia bit – I had considered the name Black Woods and Schoodic Mountain early on while developing the concept of what has become the AHNC, so the scenic railroad is a bit of a nod to “what might have been”. I also decided to establish an equipment leasing subsidiary called Acadia Rail Leasing. Both of these subsidiary operations will be a good excuse to retain and operate pieces of my model railroad collection which otherwise aren’t a good “fit” for the AHNC’s roster, like BWSX’s neat little Baldwin S-12 (below) and one of those brawny but cool-looking GE C32-8s which is being rehabbed to join the ARLX lease fleet (the maroon locomotive in the photo of the shop complex above).

Unfortunately, my ability to create custom decals for these projects has been greatly hampered by the age and increasingly erratic operation of the ALPS printer I have owned for many years. It still occasionally feels up to the task, but more often I get error messages and it simply refuses to work. Someday soon I will have to seek another way, but for now I keep trying and use it when it cooperates.

Some, albeit small, progress has been made on the construction of the model railroad itself this year. Beginning in late summer I dismantled a rather massive bookcase in the basement, made several trips to home improvement stores to purchase lumber and other necessary construction supplies for the layout, moved years of stored items around as well as I could to make room to repaint the basement walls, and purchased several hundred dollars’ worth of Code 83 flex track and turnouts.

Even these preliminary tasks have shown me something – up until now, I had accomplished what I do in this hobby as pretty much a solitary activity. Yes, I belong to the Coastal Mountain modular group and I am not a loner hobbyist by any means, but the concept of the AHNC, and all of more than 150 or so pieces of equipment and structures, were all done by me alone. Then, when I began to take even the first tentative steps to build a layout, I realized this is a task few accomplish by themselves, and I have certainly welcomed the help I have received thus far! My dear wife, who has been very supportive of my hobby all along, assisted me with the task of painting the basement walls. My friend Jeff Turner of GC&M fame also came over to help choose and lug lumber and showed me the basics of benchwork construction. For the first time in several years the table saw in my basement was used for its intended purpose, rather than being… a table (uh, never mind that photo above of my new shop facility sitting atop it) .

I hired another good friend of mine, Mike Tylick, a retired art teacher and well-known model railroader and professional layout designer who has appeared many times in the model railroad press, to take a look at the hand drawn track plan pictured in my last post. Mike took that along with my list of “givens and druthers” and offered many critiques, tweaks, and suggestions I would never have though of, and HUGELY improved the plan. I discovered, not really a surprise to anyone who knows me, that I was being a bit too linear in my thinking. Mike busted that up just enough to make things really work, but still kept within my rather steep wish list which included no visible tunnels and no “spaghetti bowl” of tracks. I’m glad to say the resultant track plan is not completely unrecognizable from what I had started with, so I guess I did some things right, but wow is it much better, and Mike readily saw what the things I didn’t really like (he didn’t either!) and found a solution. I think it’ll be a great balance of operation and scenery, which is exactly what I wanted.

Finally going into high gear with layout construction does still need to wait for some further preparatory work – I need to hire contractors to relocate some plumbing and install new overhead lighting and additional electrical outlets throughout the basement. For the sake of my sanity and my homeowner’s policy, those are things I prefer to leave to professionals! In the meantime I am proceeding with building scenes like the shop facility, which can be installed in a modular fashion when the benchwork does get built.

I am looking forward to 2016, which will see even more progress, even dare I say a completed main line to finally operate trains on? We shall see, but with the help of my friends, I’m sure I can do it. In the meantime I’ll make a resolution for the upcoming year, to post to my blog more frequently, and feature reports of continued layout progress and things which my readers have asked about such as an illustrated roster.

In the meantime, thanks and best wishes to my friends and readers in this holiday season! More to come… soon!

Leaving the Lights Up; and 2014 Progress

Wow. Talk about leaving the Christmas lights up! Last post was Christmas 2013. Now, a year and a few days later, it’s long past time for an update!

In my defense, during 2014 I have been actively “working on the railroad”, both the AHNC as well as the 1:1 railroad I work for. The 1:1 railroad went through a very challenging change in management which has kept my professional life extremely busy, but I still have made time to work on the 1:87 one as well. Yes, my basement still is sans layout, but I am at least making progress working on a track plan:

I told myself that 2014 would be the year to “Complete the Fleet”. That is, go through all of the boxes and finish all of the kits and paint and decal every piece of equipment I have for modeled portion of the AHNC fleet. In the past few years, just counting AHNC locomotives and rolling stock, I have finished painting, decaling, and weathering somewhere around 150 pieces of equipment. About 20 or so of those were done this year alone. Did I complete the fleet? Uh, not quite. But I did make progress. One of the most significant accomplishments was that all 23 AHNC locomotives are now painted, lettered, and equipped with DCC decoders. Most of them are old “blue box” Athearn, so that meant a lot of wiring and soldering. Still need to get to lighting, but…

Woodchip hopper 40012 was another recently completed AHNC project. I finished eight such cars this year, which should be sufficiently representative of the 20 total on AHNC’s roster. The Model Die Casting gondolas I built them from are no longer produced and are getting hard to find now, but I may keep going if I find more. Or not.

Very few pieces of equipment in AHNC’s fleet do not require some little bit of kitbashing or detailing, and these woodchip hopper cars are among the “heavier” kitbashes. Still, they were simple and quite fun to do. Just extend the top of the car 1/2 inch with some Evergreen styrene, extend the ribs with more Evergreen styrene and add Detail Associates ladders, build a new top sill, and voila, a typical coal gondola rebuilt with extended sides for carrying much lighter woodchips. Paint and decal (including the Excess Height Car markings) and done. Once I got into a routine, I could build one in just a few hours, minus the paint and decals.

The loads are the plastic Athearn “coal” loads intended for these cars, modified so they sit in the car 1/2 inch taller to match the height of the extended sides. I painted the load a base coat of tan, let that dry, and then applied spray adhesive on the painted plastic and sprinkled a couple of layers of sawdust from my table saw over the wet glue. Sawdust makes for about the most convincing woodchip load you can find! I was careful to make sure the spray adhesive was dry and the sawdust secure before putting the loads in the cars, because I want them to be removeable.

I am also working on kitbashing one of those ancient Tyco train set piggyback loader gantries into a woodchip unloader. It’s turning out to be a really fun project, and will certainly be a future blog post as well.

Oh, and the steam locomotive I posted in my last blog entry a year ago? I mentioned she didn’t run well (barely at all, really), so while I was at the Springfield train show last January I found a nice Bachmann Spectrum 2-8-0 at a great price to replace it. When I got it home, I was pleasantly surprised to find that it had a Soundtraxx DCC and sound decoder already installed. My first and so far only sound equipped engine! Wanting something a bit less generic, I added an Athabasca Scale Models Canadian Pacific style vestibule cab, tender oil bunker, and detail kit and painted it in the same CP-inspired scheme as the original #10. The new Princess of Fundy looks right at home and runs (and sounds!) great:

What of the old #10? Rather than invest a lot of probably fruitless time trying to get it to run, I decided a different future was in store for this model. I repainted it yet again, this time with a faded and grungy look, and changed its identity. I then built a small town park diorama, with the locomotive prominently “stuffed and mounted” on static display in the middle of the park, and gave it to a friend for his layout.

A Tale of Two Locos

Merry Christmas and happy holidays to all!

So I was sitting at my workbench a couple of weeks ago looking over things and musing about what to run this year on my traditional circle of track around our Christmas tree, and settled on my heavyweight business car train. Then it occurred to me that the more modern power rostered by AHNC has never quite looked right with my heavyweight business train. Sure, a GP38-2 or U18B can pull it, and even though my business cars are thoroughly modernized with roller bearings, HEP wiring, and are Amtrak certified to 110mph, a 70’s era freight hauling brick just doesn’t add class to a glossy train of heavyweights like observation car “Chickadee” shown below or its three sisters, HEP/Utility car “St. Croix”, diner “Passamaquoddy”, and coach “Campobello”.

So I went looking on the shelves downstairs, knowing I had something more appropriate which I’d originally acquired for a Maine Central engine project but hadn’t done, and by now probably won’t as the AHNC continues to become my main modeling focus. Finding what I sought, I embarked on one of the quickest painting projects I think I have ever accomplished. Two days and done.

Enter freshly outshopped AHNC GP7 #50, clad in dress black with silver striping and lettering with yet another Rock Island-inspired paint scheme (The Rock’s RS-1s were delivered with this scheme, the oval being of course red instead of AHNC’s green). Although still designated as a GP7 below the cab, the FRA Blue Card shows her as a GP7R because the Washington Junction Locomotive Shop crew gutted her and equipped her with a 1500hp 12-645E prime mover and newer electrical system, making her mechanically equivalent to the railroad’s existing SW1500 fleet. Note that the long hood is designated as the front!

Like the remainder of the business car fleet, she carries a name. “Dirigo” is the official motto of the State of Maine and is Latin for “I Lead”. A very appropriate name for a locomotive, don’t you think?

And then I went COMPLETELY off my rocker.

While rooting around for the Atlas GP7 which became AHNC #50, I came upon another old acquisition. This one I think I came into possession of in the early 1980s while I was living in Eastbrook, Maine. A train set quality Tyco product, it had been given to me for free because it was busted up and inoperable. Judging from a crudely brush painted “1138” on one side, I had repaired it enough that it could run again and tried to paint it sometime during my time living in Newton Upper Falls, MA, which would have been 1992-1993ish. The thought at the time was to have something I could run on a loop of track under the family Christmas tree, but it never did perform that role.

The AHNC concept was in its infancy at the time, and while it was far less developed than it is today, it certainly did not involve the type of motive power the 1138 was! Back then, I was envisioning the AHNC to be even more modern than it is now. Among my early projects were the latest motive power of the time – I remember applying an experimental paint scheme to a Rail Power Products B40-8 and trying to update the then-new Athearn GP50 to a GP59. Of course, since those days the story has backdated to the point where AHNC is a bastion of 1970s era second generation power and not (then) cutting edge 1990s third generation power, but still 1138 clearly had no place on the AHNC. So she sat in a box with little if any attention paid to her for twenty years.

Until now.

Along with the GP7 for the business train, I carried the steam engine to the workbench for an overhaul and new paint and decals. I was prompted to give this project a try for two reasons – first of all, to renew the idea from two decades ago of having this locomotive to run trains around a Christmas tree, and second, upon the recent news that an organization called New England Steam Corporation has completed an agreement with the city of Waterville, Maine to purchase Maine Central steam locomotive #470 and intends to move it to Ellsworth, restore it, and operate it on the Downeast Scenic Railroad and other railroads in Maine! If such a thing is happening in reality, well, it certainly no longer seems so farfetched to have a steam locomotive as part of the AHNC fleet!

So, I am proud to introduce AHNC 2-8-0 #10 – yep, AHNC now has not only a first generation diesel but a steam locomotive as well! She is appropriately named “Princess of Fundy”, and unlike the rest of the fleet her paint scheme hearkens more to Canadian Pacific practice than Rock Island. #10 may even look prettier on the business train than #50 does! I don’t know how much she’ll be a feature of regular operations on the future AHNC (she runs, but admittedly very poorly due to her cheap construction and long period of inactivity), but she’ll finally fulfill an idea two decades in the making when she helps the GP7 power a train around the Christmas tree this year.

Look in the cab and you will see her engineman already on the seatbox with a hand firmly on the throttle. He’s an older heavyset guy with a long white beard who laughs often and takes to wearing a fur-lined red coat and cap in winter. Says he’s from up north somewhere. Must be Aroostook County he’s referring to. He mentioned his name but I forgot – oh, let me look at the train register sheet. There it is, “K. Kringle”… wait. Could it be?

Paydirt

About 35,000 years ago, the Laurentide Ice Sheet covered Maine with a blanket of ice which was in some places several thousand feet thick. As the ice sheet ebbed and flowed, it scoured the land, literally making mountains into hills and dragging along billions of tons of granite rock, gravel, and sand with it. When the ice sheet finally receded 11,000 years ago, all of this glacial debris was left behind, creating the notoriously rocky soil and rugged, boulder-strewn terrain much of Maine is known for. Throughout downeast Maine, massive amounts of sand and fine gravel were deposited by glacial meltwater in long ridge-like formations known as eskers. Luckily, these eskers are easily accessed and mined, and the sand and gravel deposits are a valuable commodity readily transported by rail. The Acadia, Halifax and North Coast Railway has capitalized on this “paydirt” all around the railroad’s service region and hauls millions of tons of aggregates each year from railroad-owned quarries located north of Tunk Lake deep in the Black Woods area of downeast Maine.

These aggregate trains are usually operated with one of AHNC’s SD38-2s (see Bigfoot), up to 25 hopper cars, and one of AHNC’s “RCL Vans”, which are cabooses converted into radio control lead units, able to control the locomotive from the opposite end of the train. The RCL Vans operate on the north end of these unit aggregate trains as there are no facilities to run around or turn locomotives at the end of the Black Woods Secondary. Heading southbound on the branch is predominately downhill, so a heavy locomotive always leads the loaded trains, while the RCL Van leads the empties back up the branch.

AHNC’s hopper fleet includes 50 2300-cubic foot Ortner aggregate hoppers (by Walthers) and 25 older former Ortner Rapid Discharge coal hoppers (by Model Die Casting, now Athearn). I have no intention of modeling all 75 hoppers in the fleet, but I have completed a representative number of 17 Walthers aggregate hoppers. Pictured above is AHNC 51049 and several other cars from the same group after recently being painted, decaled, and weathered. While the Walthers cars do have molded plastic “gravel” loads, I thought the real thing would look much better, so I sprayed adhesive over the plastic loads and sprinkled finely sifted sand on top before installing them into the cars. I also have 9 of the MDC coal hoppers, which are being rebuilt and shortened from 50 feet in length to 40 feet – the reduction in capacity is necessary because sand and gravel are much heavier per cubic foot than coal!

Video comes to the AHNC Blog! This video link shows a relatively short AHNC aggregate train led by SD38-2 350 and trailed by RCL Van 951 hauling eight cars of “finest-kind” sand from a Maine esker. Although the focus is admittedly poor, the white domes on the locomotive cab roof and front RCL Van roof are radio antennas for the RCL equipment. The train is shown on a test run over the Gotham City & Metropolis Railroad. Oddly, the SD38-2 is not equipped for digital command control or sound, but the audio picked up the sounds from other DCC and sound equipped locomotives on the GC&M layout, so it gives the right impression!

Holy Horsepower, Batman!

That’s right, citizens! Two new locomotives for the Gotham City & Metropolis Railroad were recently overhauled and painted by AHNC’s shop crews at the Washington Junction Shops. They are presently being set up for service at GC&M’s East Gotham enginehouse and are soon expected to haul freight – and maybe help fight crime – in Gotham City.

This was a very enjoyable project I did for a friend of mine who has built an excellent model railroad “Riddled” with Batman and other DC Comics themes. Prominently featured on the layout are such things as The Daily Planet, Arkham Asylum, the Batmobile, and a wide range of comic book heroes and villains. It’s a really fun premise to base a model railroad on, and despite the whimsical theme it is a very well executed, serious, and interesting railroad that is a pleasure to operate. It can keep two or three few people busy for quite a while, yet is small enough to be easily operated by just one person. The GC&M is also home to several pieces of AHNC equipment on permanent lease.

Last weekend I was looking at a couple of paint and decal designs I’d made up for the GC&M. Since my friend has a birthday coming up soon, I thought maybe instead of just printing decals for him, I should paint and decal an entire locomotive. When I wrote my “Baby Boats” post a couple weeks ago, I mentioned that I had kitbashed several U18Bs that were relegated to “ghosts of projects past” but were destined to be repurposed someday, so I chose one of them. Then I started thinking that since I had made two paint and decal designs, maybe I should do two locomotives. A little further digging revealed a “dummy” or unpowered Athearn GP38-2 that would be a good addition. So with two candidates rescued from the dead line, I was ready to start.

Speaking of deadlines, my friend and his wife were coming over for Saint Patrick’s Day, and I thought that would be a convenient time to give him his gift. Great idea, except I had just given myself only one week to completely prepare, paint, and decal two locomotives! Yes, I got it done… with about 20 minutes to spare before they arrived!

I wonder if Batman and Robin have kept their FRA Class I locomotive engineer licenses current? That GC&M 2001 in black looks like a righteous candidate for a rail-based Batmobile to patrol The Dark Knight Route!

Bigfoot

If you’re sitting in a restaurant somewhere in Downeast Maine and overhear somebody in a blaze orange hunting vest say they shot a Bigfoot in the woods out behind Tunk Mountain, no need to abandon that homemade blueberry pie dessert and burn rubber fleeing town. He’s not talking about killing a Yeti (we hope), but probably was out photographing one of AHNC’s two SD38-2 locomotives on the hilly Black Woods Secondary. Oh, and the hunting vest is just the local high fashion, often worn year round by hunters and non-hunters alike.

AHNC’s SD38-2s are favored photographic subjects because they traverse a remote but scenic route deep within a heavily forested and hilly area, and they are somewhat novel because six-axle diesel locomotives of any kind were historically not common in the area. Not long after World War II, AHNC predecessor Maine Central acquired some six-axle E7 passenger locomotives and would occasionally send one Downeast on the crack Bar Harbor Express to Ellsworth, or even more rarely all the way to Calais on other passenger trains, but that era lasted only about ten years, and Maine Central didn’t even own any other six-packs until after they left and AHNC took over the Calais Branch and environs.

The SD38-2 is noted for its high tractive effort at lower speeds, and most of them were owned by railroads serving heavy industry such as mining and steel mills. AHNC’s SD38-2s had once worked for a western utility company hauling coal from mine to power plant on an isolated railroad. When that mine played out and the railroad shut down, AHNC purchased the locomotives to haul aggregates from several quarries in the Tunk Lake area. Not quite 69 feet long and a hefty 166 tons, the SD38-2s dwarf everything else on AHNC’s roster. Their size and six-axle trucks quickly earned them the nickname “Bigfoot” amongst AHNC employees and local fans alike.

About the models: Here’s another example of the same corollary to Murphy’s Law that I experienced with the U18B project I wrote about last week (see Baby Boats) – the more effort and expense you put into kitbashing that “never gonna be mass-produced” model, the more certain that someday it will! Even more rare than the U18B, only 90 SD38-2s were produced, but KATO came through and made models of these locomotives. As typical of my luck, they were announced around the same time I’d finished my first (poor) attempt at kitbashing one. Sigh.

KATO is a much higher quality model than the rugged and inexpensive old Athearn “Blue Box” models that make up more than half of the rest of AHNC’s fleet. I waited a year or so and looked around for good deals before I bought the two Bigfoots for about 40% off list each. That was still considerably more than I had previously spent on a locomotive, but I thought it was a very good deal and price for the quality. Unfortunately, shortly after the purchase, AHNC’s records were subject to a random audit by the company’s Chief Financial Officer (a.k.a. SWMBO), who generated a terse memo that the expenditure had not been properly reported and, despite my bargain hunting, was still deemed excessive.

D’OH!! Busted!

Baby Boats

General Electric’s Universal Series locomotives were nicknamed “U-Boats”. The U18B, smallest of the domestic Universal Series produced, quickly got the nickname “Baby Boats”. A 55 foot long, 110 ton, 1800 horsepower baby, sure, but still smaller than the other U-Boats, which eventually ranged up to 80 feet long and 5000 horsepower.

AHNC’s story goes that following the Maine Central’s purchase of ten U18Bs in 1975, AHNC borrowed one for evaluation. Suitably impressed with the small locomotive’s big capabilities, AHNC ordered two Baby Boats in early 1977. After MEC’s exit from the region and AHNC’s expansion, more road locomotives were needed, and among the acquisitions were two more U18Bs purchased secondhand from CSX, making four Baby Boats in AHNC’s 18 locomotive fleet.

Modeling this kind of locomotive was long a challenge – only 163 prototype U18Bs were ever built, and other than a poorly-made Lionel HO model briefly available in the mid-1970s, a model U18B was not available for many years. Most modelers felt that a good quality scale model of such a relatively obscure prototype would never be a likely subject for commercial mass production. Still, the Baby Boat had a strong following, and many modelers – including me – sought to kitbash one.

My first attempt modeled one of the Maine Central U18Bs, using a long out of production Athearn “Blue Box” U30B shell and frame which were cut and shortened to suit a U18B. Cutting a chunk out of the all-metal Athearn frame and then putting it back together, as well as modifying the motor and driveshafts, required a lot of specialized tools and taught me many new modeling skills (it probably taught me a few cuss words too). My first U18B model came out pretty well, I thought, but I knew the bodies of older Athearn GE U-Boat models were too wide. This detail once mattered only to the hardcore “rivet counter” niche of model railroading, but as time went on it became pretty obvious to all because better quality models were showing up and making the older Athearn “widebody” models look amateurish.

For my second attempt at a U18B, I already had figured out pretty reliably how to deal with shortening the Athearn frame and running gear, so I stuck with that, but I wanted to combine the guts with a scale width body. Fortunately by then Atlas Model Railroad Co. had a number of U-Boat models with scale width bodies. I ordered enough Athearn locomotives and Atlas body shells to cut up as needed and was well on my way to kitbashing several more, and hopefully even better, U18B models.

Sure enough, I was working on several kitbashed scale width U18Bs, which despite being a very challenging project were going pretty well, when along comes one of the model railroader’s MANY corollaries to Murphy’s Law – “The more effort or expense you put into kitbashing that “not a chance of ever being mass-produced” model, the more certain that someday it will indeed be produced, and very, very well at that!” I had read that InterMountain Railway Co. was mass producing U18Bs. At first I ignored the news (after all, I already knew how to make a Baby Boat!) but then I saw one, and well, erm, we all live in an age of instant gratification, right? The kitbashes quickly were sidelined, and I purchased four Intermountain U18Bs which I then custom painted and detailed as AHNC U18Bs 200-203. I admit they might look slightly better than anything I’d tried to kitbash so far… (click the pictures to enlarge)

About those unfinished kitbashes – no worries! As you’ve read here before, nothing stays in a model railroader’s junk box forever! You will undoubtedly read about them in a future “Ghosts of projects past” article!