Thankful for Dell

My laptop returned on Monday...various new parts including a new motherboard. Additionally, they're sending me a replacement main battery...something which hasn't worked for months. Everything was covered by my Complete Care warranty.

I have on passenger car side looking very much like it. It is 38'10" long exactly...and will be 40'6" once the corner moldings are added. I need to create the fixed window panes now.


This pile consists of about 200 pieces for the window frames needed to produce two coaches. The rectangle is my assembly jig (which I modified after this picture) to have a uniform window spacing.


Here is one of the upper frames in place.

Here is the side in its current state of development. Above it is the side of baggage car #40. I intend to finish both coaches and the baggage car at the same time. I'll probably use slightly different construction techniques for the other 3 coach sides. If the paycar sides were sitting there, they'd be in between them in length. The cars are 34', 36'2", and 40'6" long.

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Lisa and I took Liam to Johnny's Toys yesterday. I picked up a variety of supplies, including styrene tubes for the 2-8-0's cylinders and 1/2" tubes for making brake shoes. I can't bring myself to spend $3 per car to purchase them from a manufacturer...at least not now.

Here are the brake beams for the way car. There are also the four window frame tests in the shot.

Here is the car sitting next to the team track. I sure hope I receive some Link & Pin couplers for Christmas so that I'll be able to pull it. (mom, dad, Lisa, family...hint hint). She'll receive her white paint soon enough. The next one will receive red paint. The South Park had apprx 20 of these cars...the first ten were red and the rest were either white or pale yellow. The early cars had less hand rails and strap steps, they were red, white lettering, and I think they were 14'11". The last red cars had black lettering and were 12'11" long. The next cars were white (or pale yellow) with black lettering, box steps, and more hand rails. The last cars had different lettering, different windows, rounded corner moldings, and I think they were only 12'4" long. No one really knows which ones were the long or short ones...but we do know that some were these lengths because there were a dozen that survived to become C&S cabooses. We know that 72-73ish were 12'11" because one became C&S #1006 and is sitting in Silver Plume, Colorado.