OK Azmax64, know your a "Q" fan.

Check out Broadway Imports CZ Cars in HO Scale at Walthers.com. I just bought the "Silver Colt", highly detailed and worth the money, IMO.

I'm very impressed.

Rode on the Silver Colt between SLC and Denver in the Summer of 1981 on the Rio Grande Zephyr. So purchased it for display in my house....out of nostalgia.

The cars won't be on sale for long, limited run.

We'll check them out. Do you buy local, or do mail order?

quote:

Originally posted by azmax64:
We'll check them out. Do you buy local, or do mail order?

I do mail order mostly via the Internet, if you have any problems with them let me know. It's my home turf (heh-heh). They are pretty good with their packing and service.

The best shop I've found so far in Dallas is on the East side of the Addison Airport on Ratcliff Drive (eck, brings back Ft. Knox memories). They have a pretty good HO Scale selection in store but do not carry Broadway Imports but you can order via them to Walthers.

I bought my Atherarn TRE tri-levels from the store locally though, 3 for $60 on sale.

I have boxes of N gauge that I have never had time to do anything with.
A lot of it maybe half of it is lower cost Bachman.
I collected a lot of Southern and Norfolk-Southern stock.
Got two complete Southern Cresents.

I took the Siver Star from Columbia to Tampa once. I was able to find a few of those.

I got to ride the Corolinian from Fredricksburg to DC a few times.

If I ever get back into it, I will start looking for those two.

I made a few desk top layouts for some kids and normaly just displayed the trains on track mounted on wood. They gathered to much dust that way.

We have a small spur here in Easley, SC that runs to Pickens a few miles up the hills. The National Railway Utilization Company bought the line and the workshops in the 70s. They rebuilt a lot of rolling stock and every now and then, you can spot an old boxcar that is painted light blue with their logo on them.

I have several of them in my collection along with a locomotive. Now the shop in Pickens overhauls locomotives.

CLCX, Inc is the name of the shop now. I will see a yard switching locomotive all beat to hell on the side track in down town Easley and a few weeks later see it back with a shiny new coat of paint.

here is the Pickens railway link +++http://www.pickensrailway.com/

The wiki write up about Pickens engine history.

Pickens locomotive history
The first Pickens locomotive was a secondhand 4-4-0 that was damaged in a derailment on its first trip. It was replaced in 1909 with a new 2-6-2 from Baldwin Locomotive Works and was numbered 1.

The line dieselized in 1947 with a Baldwin VO-660 (built as Singer Manufacturing #2), It was numbered 2 and was later named T. Grady Welborn. The 2-6-2 steam engine was sidelined until 1955 when it was sold for scrap. Number 2 is still on the property on the original Pickens trackage but has been out of service for some time as a switcher for CLCX, Inc. as of 2009.

In 1963, after the line was acquired by James F. Jones, the Pickens acquired a EMC SW locomotive. It was built for the Union Terminal Railroad Of St. Joseph as their #5, it later served as Missouri Pacific Railroad #6005 before it became Pickens #3. It was sold to Duke Power by 1970 and then to a movie company before being acquired by the Thermal Belt Railroad in 1991, becoming their #1.

In the early 1970s a Baldwin S-8 was purchased by Pickens. It was built as Youngstown Sheet and Tube #701 in 1951. It became Pickens #5 (which named it Allan M. Baum) and was used as a backup locomotive. Pickens sold off #5 to SMS Rail Service in 2001.

When the Pickens expanded in the early 1990s, it acquired a pair of ALCO S1s numbered 6 and 7. These were repowered with Caterpillar prime movers. As of 2007, one of the Alcos (#6), was still on the property, stored inoperable.

In 2000, the Pickens acquired a fleet of former CSX GE U18Bs numbered 9500-9508. Three (9501, 9503, 9507) are used for parts.

Wendell, do you remember the trains through Sand Hill at Fort Benning? Two of us train fanatics in the same OSUT Platoon. LiteraryGrunt was the other one (he posts on here sometimes).

We lucked out and got the barracks (which is now next to Eagle Tower) that was close to the railroad tracks. Back then it was B-6-1 now it's B Co 1-50th Infantry....I think.

Back in 1982 it was approx 4-5 trains a day through post Southern Railway (former Central of Georgia), now it's Norfolk Southern. Way too cool.

I'm familiar with Pickens.

Pickens bought the light blue boxcars new in the late 1970's or early 1980's. Back then Congress had passed a law for Equipment Trusts that you could buy a physical asset like a Boxcar in a depressed industry which railroading was back then. You could charge per diem on the Boxcar while it traveled the country on various railroads AS well as use the depreciation on your balance sheet. So it was a moneymaking venture. It fell apart when the regulatory environment changed. Not sure if it was Congress or ICC.

Anyhow those 70-100 ton steel boxcars sold for about $40,000 new back then. Not sure what they go for now.

If your interested in full scale trains you can get some cheap here:

++www.ozarkmountainrailcar.com

You have a new house, you just need something for the front lawn in kind of a static display.

You can also charter a private car and attach it to the back of an Amtrak Train:

++http://www.aaprco.com/Cars/car_type_index.html

^^^ Some of these passenger cars were owned by the U.S. Army at one time in their past for troop trains, thats how old some of them are. Look at the car named "Wisconsin Valley". U.S. Army Hospital Car. Thats back when the 68W Medics traveled in style (heh-heh).

Have y'all seen this one rolling anywhere?



They used to keep it on a side track about 2 blocks from my parents house and 4 blocks from my house since I moved back to the old neighborhood.
They would move it to a side track down town to be hooked up when somebody had enough money to rent it.
Strange thing was the RR would not let anybody board it in town.
You had to go all the way to Atlanta to board it.
It was real nice inside. It had evrything for several large families to travel in style.
The bad part about renting it was setting up a schedule to be haul to where you wanted to go and get parked for a day and most of the time that was a bad section of towns in the middle of a rail yard.

The reason they won't let you board anywhere. The private railroad carriers do not want someone to board outside of a Amtrak station due to insurance liability concerns. You can get around that restriction if you know someone in management or operations in the railroad that your traveling on.

My High School stopped Amtrak's Empire Builder a few times for field trips from Chicago in the small hamlet we lived in. The Milwaukee Road (now Canadian Pacific) Dispatcher's daughter was attending the High School at the time though. The problem with taking the Empire Builder is it is only a one way trip so they took buses to Chicago.

Some Amtrak stations have a Private Railroad car spur somewhere where they can be parked. Your correct though, not all of them do. Typically $5-7k a day to charter a private car with crew and $500-1000 a day to store it on a private car track.

Milwaukee has a spur where they keep the cars of the Highway Contractor and Steel Magnate's cars. So Milwaukee has 2-3 New York Central 20th Century Limited painted cars but stenciled for Charter Steel. The owner of Quad Graphics before he died had a small Burlington Zephyr trainset stored at his Sussex, WI plant.

Union Pacific Railway has by far the largest Private Passenger Car Fleet. With a complete trainset or two for marketing and excursions (see link below).

++http://www.uprr.com/aboutup/history/histequip/diner.shtml

The man that owns the Palmetto State owns an old closed down textile mill in town.
he has used it for years to scrap old textile equipment and other metals, some he rebuilds.
It is now being converted to apartments and stores and restuarants on the ground floor.
A spur came off the main track right up into the mill at the cotton warehouse.
It didn't cost him anything to store it and the Pickens Doodle would come by and put it on the side track when needed.
The spur is now paved over. Which is sad because the granery was also on that track and Now it is all trucked in and out.
I loved watching all the coming and going years ago.

I can tell the economy is getting better.
There are a lot more trains lately.

quote:

Originally posted by WENDELLKEITHDUNCAN:
I can tell the economy is getting better.
There are a lot more trains lately.

Your pretty observant....lol. They are pulling locomotives from storage finally. Not a lot so far from what I read on the RR boards. A few hundred each for most of the Class 1 RR's. They were quick to cut though and may have cut too deeply.

My trip to Fort Campbell in August I was really impressed with how much they fixed up the tracks through Clarksville and from Ft. Campbell to Hopkinsville. Someone in DoD did a good job there. They were both in really crappy condition in 1986. The Army was getting really nervous back then about losing rail service altogether to Ft Campbell (they would have been screwed if that happened), they railheaded a lot in the 1980's to NTC and such and I think the max speed was 5 or 10 mph. It's easily 25 mph now.

Pickens was a Short Line and they ara boom or bust depending on online shippers obviously. So if enough shippers stop shipping they cannot meet their fixed costs. One of the reasons short lines are profitable is they are non-union and they have work rules that the larger Class 1 railways cannot get away with. On the flip side they are very dependent on online shippers to pay their fixed costs.

Wisconsin & Southern (you can Google them) has a special deal with the State of Wisconsin in that they use taxpayer money to pay rail maintenence. So their fixed costs are lower then most. Plus the Ethenol boom helped them a bit with online traffic. Generally, short lines do pay for the investment by attracting jobs based manufacturing and/or processing. Short Lines are better at marketing and obtaining State and Federal grants as well.

Initially Wisconsin and Southern was started by Randy Gardner who was a large highway contractor initially. He bought a short segment of line to run a dinner train and his private railway cars. It mushroomed from there as the various railways in Wisconsin pulled back. He is dead now but the railway has a fairly large map of lines in Wisconsin.

They are getting pretty cool now with the technical innovation, they have remote control locomotives now for switching where the engineer stands on the ground and works a controller box.

They experimented with satellite control (crewless trains) for a while on Union Pacific in the remote areas. They even experimented in Iraq with remote train dispatching from a center in Iowa. Not sure how that turned out.

They are currently working on electronic brakes which if they replace air brakes will result in higher speed frieght and passenger service because trains will be able to stop in half or less the distance they do now. Costs money though so not likely in the next 5 years.

We have a couple posters that are Locomotive Engineers or Railway crewmembers. They are all Marines or most of them are.

Hercules1944 - Silver Star reciepient. He is a retired Loco Engineer for the Milwaukee Road.

Syrix - He is at Ft Eustis I believe in AIT now, recently joined a USAR Railway BN Unit near you, I think in N.C. He has a green Army Seal as his avatar. He should be back around Christmas I think, forget how long his AIT is. He has a damn good USAR enlistment contract. I can't believe he got what he did.

GoDawqs - Norfolk Southern Engineer, he posts mostly in Hot Topics. I'm guessing from the screen name he is based in Georgia. Posts mostly in Hot Topics

PKen - I think he is retired not sure but either Chicago and Northwestern or Union Pacific.....memory fails me there. Posts in Hot Topics with a Steam Loco as his avatar.

Rusty something or other. Locomotive Engineer for the Panama Canal Railway. Their colors are Kansas City Southern railway colors and they have a Passenger Train painted like the "Southern Belle" streamliner. It runs the width of Panama for Cruise Ship Passengers mostly that don't want to ride the ship through.

There are a few more. Used to have a rather lively Railroad thread in Hot Topics (heh-heh).

The Pickens line that runs from Easley to Pickens lost most of it's customers due to mill closings.
4 I know of.
Plus Singer/Ryobi is not doing much business these days. I think they consolidated all their plants into 2 in the Anderson SC area.
That leaves maybe 2 mills still putting out on the line.

If you are ever in the Dillsboro NC area the excursion line there is kind of neat.
Runs through the Nantahala Gorges.
Point of interest on te line is where the movie 'The Fugitive' was filmed for the train wreck scene.

I have always wanted to take the line near the Kentucky Tennesee state lines. Big South Fork Scenic Railway which has the Blue Heron tour.


Plus if you are near Vesailles Kentucky, there is Bluegrass Railroad Museum where the robbers hope the train to steal your donation for riding.

I found this website looking up things.
I didn't realize we had this much around.
Actually, I have been to a few of the places and some aren't worth the trip.

+++http://www.railserve.com/Tourist/North_America/Southeast/

Spenser NC has a big museum and has a program for Boy Scouts to earn a Rail Roading merit badge. I never could get enough support for my Troop to go.

Around here, you have to be a relative to get on with the RR.
A boy I worked with a long time ago took about 10 years to get on.
His father was about to retire and finished his career as a disptcher in Greenville, SC.
His brother had been with them for a while.
It just seems weird hearing him say the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way.

The Relative to get on with the Railways thing is kind of a myth. Whats going on there is it helps to know someone on the inside of any company to vouch for you prior to getting hired, thats true across the board.

However, the railroads are looking for risk reduction in people they spend money on NOT leaving the company a short time later. This is why they favor Veterans and why Marines do well in the Railroad Industry. It's a very regimented Industry with a lot of rules and regulations that they expect to have followed to a T or your gone.

So if you don't have relatives in the industry the way to get in is via training. Thats what I was kind of implying about the USAR Railway MOS. That helps a LOT. I know this because Milwaukee had a USAR Railway BN at one point (maybe it still does) in the Menominee Valley.

A lot of the Soldiers in that unit were hired on locally by the local railroads because they had knowledge and skills and knew what they were getting into.

I know I've stated in the past that the Army is NOT a job training program BUT there are execeptions to that rule and this is one of them. Railway crew members are on a real decent pay scale with decent benefits. I've been in IT for over 17 years and there are some Railway crewmembers that still get paid more then me. Hence my respect for the field. They would not pay so much if the responsibility in their hands was not commesurate.

There is also the MODOC Railway academy where you can pay for training. The BNSF apprenticeship program in Overland Park, KS, etc, etc.