Sunday 17 September 2017

New headlight for Leviathan

Leviathan is the largest locomotive on the Thoroughfare Gap Railroad. She is a Baldwin ten wheeler, used in heavy freight and also in passenger service. The model is a Bachmann 4-6-0 with Tsunami sound. I have backdated the model a bit with some simple modifications. I repainted it, moved the Westinghouse pump to the driver's side, gave it a wood cab, removed the generator and changed the headlight to an oil burning model.

The headlights in these models are lit by an LED mounted inside the boiler. The light is transmitted to the headlight by a light bar. This light output from this arrangement was always too dim for my liking, and the LED that came in the locomotive gave a cool white light.

I replaced the light with a 1.8mm warm white LED. I drilled out the headlight and mounted the LED inside the headlight box. This required some minor modification of the frame to accommodate the wiring. I think the final result was worth it.  Let me know what you think.

Leviathan simmers outside the Erewhon engine house.

Sunday 10 September 2017

Erewhon blanketed with snow


Erewhon is the operating staging yard on my Thoroughfare Gap Railroad. It is occupies a set of shelves adjoining the layout.

I really wanted to try modelling a snow bound scene for something different. For my layout, Erewhon is located in the mountains, a staging point between the rest of the outside world and the my Thoroughfare Gap Railroad. It has a small engine house and a turntable for looking after the locomotives.

I need to add some more conifer trees at various points in the scene but otherwise I feel it is largely complete. I have thought about including a coaling tower and water tower but I don't really have room. I may include these on the backdrop at some stage 'in the distance'.

A mirror adds to the illusion of distance. The ties under the turnouts had rotted out, the track gang replaced them with new ones.

The engine  house at Erewhon. This a laser cut kit made locally using plans from makecnc.com.

Blog resurrection

It's been over a year since I have posted anything at all. That does mean I've not been working on the railroad.
One of my last posts was about about staging yard which was about to be sceniced, I'll post some photos of that soon.
I've also been making redwood trees, troubleshooting derailments and replacing trucks and wheelsets on older rolling stock.
More to follow soon.
I'm going to try to make a blog post every two weeks. It may just be short and sweet but it will make a consistent record of the layout.
Luke