Your golden-era model railroads!

[p51]

I haven't done much with my layout as I've been working on 1:1 scale trains for each weekend (as a brakeman on a nearby tourist RR) since June. I'm taking a break until the end of this month, so hopefully I can get back to the layout.
Meanwhile, the Sergeant who normally drives the CO's command car for 'B' Company, 796th ROB has some washing to do!

 

[p51]

Someone managed to snap off a shot with their Speed Graphic camera on a August afternoon at Sadie, TN. The shadow from the Texaco "Sheppard's crook" sign post shows up on the TN State Patrol car, though.

Mr. Grindstaff must be discussing "that war across the water" with one of the older men who hang around his store these days...

 

[p51]

At the Hunter, TN depot, and a lovely local gal is waiting for her sweetheart to arrive with a 72-hour pass at Camp Forrest:

The old men are inside arguing about checkers and the war "across the water" at the Grindstaff store near Hurley Hollow, at Sadie, TN

The commuters wait for the 12:15 to Johnson City at the Buladeen depot:

Another duty day is halfway done at 'Baker' Company, 796th ROB:

And near the Ensor farm, the gap is set correct to keep the cows in their pen. New-fangled flatlander swing gates are unheard of here:

 

[p51]

I added a new gas pump at the Grindstaff store. It's a very small detail but I found a very good looking model of the right Texaco brand pump for normal leaded gas that would have bene in use in rural areas in the 40s.
It's 1/43 scale so it's a little bigger than it should be, but these pumps were very tall in real life, so I think it works well.
It only took about 20 minute of weathering (dry brushing and washes) to get it to look right for the location.

 

[p51]

It's November 11, but on my layout, veterans are never forgotten:

Lee Bishop
Captain, US Army
1998-2006

 

[p51]

A few random close-in shots around the Buladeen depot over the weekend...

 

[p51]

I added this to the wall over the weekend:

It's an aluminum casting made by the Age of Steam Roundhouse museum off their original. I drilled attachment holes and painted it to match how it'd look in service in WW2. It's hanging on the wall of the train room. I used clevis pins attached to picture wire from behind to hand it on the wall.

THEN, I put my GoPro camera down inside the Grindstaff store with the roof on and took shots with the app on my cell. They're not the best shots as the camera wasn't made for this kind of thing, but once I ran them through some filters, they have a feel like "someone with a Speed Graphic" took them in the summer of 1943. It was neat to see it from the perspective of a O scale person:

 

[Davy Crockett]

Please keep on posting on this Thread, I enjoy reading it very much!

D

 

[David Conwill]

What @Davy Crockett said. I don't reply a lot, but I enjoy the updates.

 

[p51]

Thanks, guys!
Here's looking down Stoney Creek Road on a sweltering summer's day in 1943 while waiting for the next ET&WNC train:

 

[p51]

FYI, a photo of my layout is in the Trackside Photos section of the March 2021 Model Railroader.
I goofed when I added the caption with my cell, it auto corrected my first name to "Ashley" instead of Lee, but otherwise it's all there.

Yesterday, I realized I had the right kinds of pilots for my ten-wheelers they carried in the 30s and 40s, in the spare parts package. I hadn't known that before and was pondering scratch building the right kind of wood pilot they carried in the war and pre-war years. Clearly, I was happy I didn't have to do that, and also angry I didn't know that earlier. An hour of paint and weathering, and now ET&WNC 9, 11 and 12 all have the right pilots!

Here, you can see what they'd carried up to yesterday, boilertube pilots that were correct for the final days of the narrow gauge era on the RR:

 

[GHT]

I'm with Davy Crockett & David Conwill, keep posting p51. You are entertaining a bunch of closet ferroequinologists.

 

[p51]

Okay, I have some updates...
My layout is now on Trainmasters TV, if you know anyone who's a paying member:
https://trainmasters.tv/programs/mylayout-lee-bishop?categoryId=228
My presentation to a NMRA affiliated group was edited down to this in case you might be interested:

Right after that, I finished a 3D print of a ET&WNC hopper car, which is coupled to a wood kit of the same type of car. These are great looking cars and I'm looking forward to ordering and completing two more of them:

And a few days after that, I decided to do something about hopper car 44 (one of the wood kits I built at the start of the pandemic) which had issues on one track switch (turnout), it’d often ‘split the switch’. I thought it was the turnout itself (and dreading the very idea as of course it's the least accessible) but then it occurred to me that one of the axles might be out of gauge. I swapped the wheel sets on one truck and sure enough, that seems to have done it.

Here I am pushing it back and forth, coupled to 36 (the new 3D print from Western Rails) which sailed through with no problems.

 

[p51]

Recently, I finished what I think will be the last new hopper cars for the layout. These are 3D prints made by Western Rails. Each had to have 20-22 individual decal placements, so that of course took a little while (thankfully the board and vertical support placement made getting them in the right spots much easier).

I found that the plastic molded 'coal' loads for Bachmann gondolas will drop right into these cars if you break off the spacer tabs from underneath and cut notches into the underside of each end. I then covered them with real scale-sized coal.

I already had five of these types of cars, wood laser kits from On30IMA, and now I have eight of these cars which were very common on the ET&WNC.

These are numbered 36, 43 and 1. All are numbers of hopers that were running on the line to the end of operations in 1950.

36, because that's the birth year for both of my parents. 43 because it's always 1943 on my layout, and 1 because you hardly ever see a freight car with that number even on small railroads, so I had to have it.

 

[p51]

A big surprise came in the mail yesterday, an ET&WNC spike recovered from work on the right of way just before you get to the first tunnel and covered Deck Bridge while heading toward Hampton from Elizabethton, just shy of milepost 13 on the old 3-foot gauge line. The man who sent it to me is with the crew clearing the old railroad right of way to extend the hiking trail from Elizabethton (I assume with new bridges eventually). That line never had standard gauge tracks on it, so now I know for sure I have a 3-foot gauge spike from the ET&WNC!

I had bought a couple of badly-worn spikes a few years ago from when they ripped out the tracks downtown Elizabethton, and I was surprised to see those matched the one I just got. Clearly they came from the same batch. While I assumed the other two (which I had cleaned up and painted) were from the steam era due to how badly pitted they were, I know for sure this one is as it came from a spot that was nowhere near the dual gauge and was ripped up in 1951.

Front to back:
1. Spike recovered from the Doe River Gorge from the 'Hillbilly World' tourist operation
2. ET&WNC spike recovered from the right of way between Valley Forge and tunnel one heading toward Hampton
3. ET&WNC spike from downtown Elizabethton
4. Modern sample spike, chromed
This shows the two ET&WNC spikes I painted with my latest narrow gauge one:

As I had no way to know if the first two were around the narrow gauge era (as they came from the standard gauge tracks in Elizabethton when they were ripped up in the early 2000s), preservation wasn't that big a deal to me. But this known narrow gauge spike, there's no way I'll paint it.
I'm looking for something to mount it to so I can hang it on the wall in my ET&WNC layout room.

 

[p51]

Last week, I took some photos for a layout feature for O Scale Trains magazine, and while shooting a cover shot, I got this shot which didn't work as there's fascia on each side. So, I put it through some filters and really like how it turned out:

 

[p51]

I took these videos on the layout a few days ago, using my tripod head for my cell phone: https://youtu.be/aeoZ6LO0DhA
https://youtu.be/VVD8wpDirlE

 

[Robieman]

I took these videos on the layout a few days ago, using my tripod head for my cell phone: https://youtu.be/aeoZ6LO0DhA
https://youtu.be/VVD8wpDirlE

I enjoyed that.

 

[p51]

Greg Nidifer runs his train past an opposing commuter train bound for Buladeen with 'Captain' Cy Crumley waiting out back impatiently.

 

[p51]

Last night, I was playing around with my cell phone and managed to get a halfway decent shot with the main lights out...

I've not done much with the layout recently as I'd had a pinched nerve in my neck that made my left arm very uncomfortable, but it's much better now.
Very soon, I fully intend on completing the Quonset hut for the Army railroaders. I'm really looking forward to this project.
My layout is on the Jan/Feb cover of O Scale Trains magazine, which is just now getting into the hands of subscribers.