The Whiskey River Railway

Bill Nelson

Well-Known Member
Bill,

Out of all the options, I'd have to go with a display piece outside of a VFW. From my quick research the VFW was started in the early 1900's to support soldiers returning from the Spanish-American war and the Philippine Insurrection so it'd be in place during a WW2 setting, such as the Whiskey River Railway is. However, being that I have nothing permanent yet, I think that a VFW post on the club layout would be a neat touch. It would also be a neat little way to show the club's appreciation for the vets that do walk in too, as well as Bob, Jesse, Eric and myself... and anyone else I've forgotten.

Just a thought, and thanks for thinking of me.


I may be a selfish ******** but this monster is for my layout. If we were to do something at the club, we could use a more modrn piece of equipment, but with my 1928 time period, options are much more limited. . thanks for the historical info on the VFW. I was prety sure it was old enough to fit in my time period, but it is nice to know for sure.



Nelson



Nelson
 

gbwdude

General Manager, W.R.Ry.
Happy New Year to everyone! It's been about two months since I've last posted on here, so time to catch up a little. Before I came home before Christmas not much was accomplished, with minor work being done on the Bachmann Trackster van that Bob from the Clarksville MRC gave to me. The front wheels were out of round due to crappy manufacturing, so I swapped axles and added metal wheels all around. At some future time I'll add pickups to the front wheels so all four wheels conduct electricity.

While at home I visited my old model rr club back home while in Wisconsin during their open house. At first I did some switching in our paper mill area and then took a break since a lot of guys were running their stuff on the main. I was bs-ing with one of the guys in our maintenance office and while I was out playing.... or should I say operating... someone donated three boxes of train stuff. Needless to say about half of the stuff was your typical Tyco and Model Power junk from the mid to late 70's while the other half was decent Train Miniatures, Athearn and MDC stuff. The club was in the process of thinning out their inventory as it was so they let me have first dibs. I managed to save about a dozen boxcars, about a half dozen reefers, a tank car, a flat car (this sucker looks ancient, maybe a Red Ball or earlier as it has cast metal dummy couplers and the trucks are three piece screw together brass beasts with a full cast metal frame and real wooden deck), a 2-4-0 Bowker, a AHM tiny diesel and a Mantua 0-6-0 Big Six switcher. The club, looking to thin their collection, also donated a Bachmann 0-6-0 and a boxcar that was missing a door (which I think I have a spare). With all that being said, I think I had a pretty great Christmas!

I already have a few plans for the stuff I've acquired. The club's old 0-6-0 is currently in the UP's grey stripe scheme and will be repainted for my daughter's train that I've been slowly working on for the last two years. There was also a Hershey's Tyco reefer that I grabbed for her. The Mantua Big Six will go on to the Whiskey River Railway roster as that's a locomotive I've been watching for on eBay for a while but couldn't find one under $40. It does need a connecting rod bushing to be fully operational. Many of the cars will also go on the WRRy roster while some will stay in their original paint and be used while others will hang out for future employment.

I've started disassembly on the Mantua Big Six and the AHM switcher. The drivers on the Big Six need to be quartered and with my NWSL quarterer at home as well as the bushing issue I'm setting it off to the side for now. The AHM switcher surprised the crap out of me when I popped it's shell off, the thing already had a can motor and was insulated on both sides of the frame.
ahmbuildersbiblepage092.jpg
It also has four wheel drive and four wheel pickup which I think I might convert this to DCC. All that I needed to do to get this thing to run fairly well was to clean the commutator and the track it was on and it ran back and forth at different speeds pretty well. However I'm not sure if I want to keep it painted in it's current paint job or not, the Soo Line number it wears (714) is actually supposed to be a GP30. We will see though.
1141.1290358611.jpg


I have also brought back a few tools to Korea, to include a set of tin snips, a jigsaw, a set of squares, a set of woodworking chisels, a pair of big clamps. Hopefully I'll have enough time to use all of them to make at least one module while I'm here. I have put the snips to work already, I've made a few removable loads for my gondolas. I'm cutting the bases for the the loads out of 1/8" aluminum which I have an abundance of since that's what the old signs are generally made out of saying who commanded units and what not. One load is general scrap and the other is a load of scrap wheels. The scrap load is just stuff from my scrap box that I figured I'll never use again mixed in with some crumpled tin foil and some other stuff. The wheel load is all my wheel sets that I've kept for a while with plastic wheels and metal axles so it was easy to remove the wheels.

Pictures will follow as Zealot is acting up and not letting me upload pictures right now.
 

Doctor G

Well-Known Member
Nice haul

Hi Tyler,

You got a lot of good stuff during your Christmas R&R. Way to go.

Building modules is the way to go with moves and transfers in the future.

Looking forward to some pictures.

Doc Tom:thumb::thumb:
 

gbwdude

General Manager, W.R.Ry.
IMG_20140111_210406.jpg IMG_20140111_210353.jpg IMG_20140111_173907.jpg IMG_20140112_110305.jpg Gents,

I have been keeping busy over here doing odd jobs and making random things. One of those random things is a pair of gondola loads for the WRRy gons that I purchased before coming to Korea. One of the goals on the WRRy is to make every visible load removable. Using what I had available, which was 1/8" aluminum sheet, I cut it to the size of the inside of my MDC 40' gondola. I decided to make two different loads, one being scrap metals and one being old railroad wheels. I Gorilla Glued everything in place and then hit it with both a coat of rusty dirty brown and a coat of the Japenese equivalent of Dullcote. And here's how they came out.
 

Bill Nelson

Well-Known Member
Looking good, little stuff like that will come in handy; when you are working on a layout, or on a fleet of cars later, it is hard to find time for loads. Even I did not have enough log loads for my old operations, much less my new ones. red auto body primer, and flat black sprayed close to simultaniously will mix on the work surface, and make a good aproximation of rust. thake care!


Nelson
 

gbwdude

General Manager, W.R.Ry.
It has been a hot minute since I've posted here! Since then, I have almost totally finished my daughter's train set I've been prodding at for the last two years (almost three!), separated the shorty caboose from WRRy Heisler #10 (Dr. Tom's old lokie) and am working on adding eight wheel pickup, finished a few more WRRy cars, bought more rolling stock and still have no where to run it.

Either way, my time in the Army is almost over. I'm not sure where I'll be living afterwards but I know I'm not staying in Texas. I cannot stand this heat! Anywhere north of here is dandy. So if anyone is hiring within the next 60-ish days and wants to give me a job shooting the bull on train stuff all day, I'm your man.
 

Bill Nelson

Well-Known Member
Good to here from you , we miss you down at the club. all wheel pick up will help that heisler a lot! I have made that conversion to one of my three truckers, trying to convert it to dcc and sound. the motor I have draws too much current. the gear motor I have tried is too slow, it may go back to DC, and the sound decoder might migrate elsewhere.

are you going to share photo's of your dauyghter's layout? I made a layout tor some OO Thommas trains for Forrester. he liked to push them, so I took the motor out; and then he preferred to play on my RR ( who wouldn't). I still have the leggs I made for his RR tyhough, and my portable HOn3 layout is now on them.

I need to photograph them. to show off the design.

Good luck in your post Army endeavorsd!!
 

Doctor G

Well-Known Member
Hello Tyler. I am glad you are back in the United States and away from Korea. I too am looking forward to for their post from you here on this interesting website . Thanks. Dr Tom
 

zathros

*****SENIOR ADMINISTRATOR*****
Staff member
Administrator
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Glad your back, and doing well. It will be nice ro read the updates on this thread again. :)
 

gbwdude

General Manager, W.R.Ry.
Gents,

Thanks for the warm welcome back. It'll be nice to post here again and get feedback from my rail buddies from Tennessee as well as Zathros and others that I've yet to meet face to face.

Bill, as your requested... 20140913_143859.jpg
That's the whole project I've been working on for the last almost three years. Most of the cars had paint, it was just a matter of finding time to apply the dry transfers/decals (most are dry transfers from my mom's artsy collection from when she was in college), adding weight to cars, adding Kadee's, and doing detail touches. My daughter's train has the reporting marks MTX, Madalyn's Train (privately owned). The hopper, tank car and caboose still need to have Kadee's added, and the tender needs some major paint cleanup as my masking tape started coming off while I was painting (leftover Korean brand masking tape... not 3M quality at all). 20140913_144051.jpg
Also I have a Hershey's reefer that I'll let her borrow since I kinda like it but I'll see how she likes this first. It's just a Tyco car that I've fitted with Kadee's, added weight to NMRA standards and weathered the trucks. It's simple and I like it. I'm not sure if there's a prototype for this car, but would be neat if there was. Once the construction of the WRRy starts to take place it will make the occaisonal guest appearance on the ice track or the team track in town.
 

Bill Nelson

Well-Known Member
I got a Tichy icing platorm, and it is very nice, will add it along the east wall of the RR room (toward the river bottoms) in Harlow. will need to get more Reffers.
 

gbwdude

General Manager, W.R.Ry.
Bill,

When you get around to it, try to snap some pictures of it. I'd like to see how it turned out. The W.R.Ry. only has a pair of express reefers so the odds of them leaving home rails would be unlikely. I only have those because of the fact that the Army camp needs fresh produce delivered bi-weekly and the occasional shipment of cranberries and beans in the fall to the Seymour Canning's plant.

Tyler
 

Bill Nelson

Well-Known Member
I have not built them yet, and it may take a while building benchwork, and laying track is likely to be more fun

it is very nicely designed, set up in modular form so it can be built to any length. I'm going to make a very short one, perhaps two cars, or three at the max, long. I don't have to many delivery locations for refers, perhaps the company store in Crooked Creek, and the frieght house in Harlow. might have some tru refedgerator trafic of the Marietta and North Georgia, that I could ice up before it went to the Southern, or visa versa.
 
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gbwdude

General Manager, W.R.Ry.
Gents,

Looks like I'm back almost a year later. Talk about big changes that have all happened within the year. After eight years of duty to my country I'm out of the Army now. I landed my dream career with Union Pacific as a conductor up in Cheyenne, WY. My normal route is from Cheyenne, over Sherman Hill, down to Laramie and over to Rawlins. Right now I'm working the yard because I don't have enough seniority.

Just because I play with 1:1 scale now doesn't mean that I've stopped playing with 1:87 scale. I've worked on a few more of my W.R.Ry. cars and locomotives since I've last been on here. Most of my updates have been posted to the W.R.Ry.'s Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/Whiskey-River-Railway-183968593063/. I'm not 100% sure but I think you'd need to sign up to see everything. Anyways ex-Caseyville & Scouttown #4 got its repaint into W.R.Ry. colors finally with a Mantua tender swap. 20150911_132755.jpg 20150928_170749.jpg
I've drilled the tender frame for sound and I'm toying with the idea of switching the cylinders to slide valve. As of now it seems like a straight-forward project but we'll see how much adjustment I have to do to the valve gear. I also need to fit a headlight to the top of the smokebox per W.R.Ry. protocol. However since I'm using a Precision Scale headlight that's completely empty I need to know how to either fill the headlight with clear epoxy or which MV Lens kit will work. I think it's the 3293 headlight I have. Any suggestions?20150928_170842.jpg 20150928_170954.jpg
 

Doctor G

Well-Known Member
Hi Tyler,
You lucky dog!!! Working for UP I am GREEN with envy. Do you need a medical assistant?

I cannot wait to hear more about your 1:1 adventure in railroading.Models are great but you hit the jackpot and on an interesting route to boot. Do you all fight snow in the winter? Pictures, pictures and more pictures are needed.

Taking down the garden RR for more indoor train stuff. Train club is in ne digs with a very modern layout.

Doc Tom
 

gbwdude

General Manager, W.R.Ry.
Dr. Tom,

While Union Pacific wasn't exactly my first choice I'm still glad I took the job here. Being the history buff as well as train knob I am this fit both categories quite well. The transcontinental railroad was huge, and being that I hired out where they had the toughest time figuring out how to get through and around Sherman Hill is really neat.

Bill informed me of your decision to end operations outdoors. It was fun while it lasted, and I definitely enjoyed operating when I had a chance. Hopefully you'll either keep that WRRy boxcar or pass it on with the story of my fictional road.

Here's a little teaser for now as my computer is no longer able to access WiFi and has the majority of my pics from along the line, this is my daily driven 1973 Dodge D100 Adventurer with the 360 engine, three on the tree, A/C, power steering and AM radio. 20150924_074336.jpg
And whatever that big school bus looking thing is in the background. ;)
 

gbwdude

General Manager, W.R.Ry.
Love that headlight casting, now to make the number boards !!!

Bill,

If you were me, how'd you make the numberboards? Naturally the headlight will have a light in it, I'm thinking a golden white LED to not give off heat.

Also it would need a lens for the headlight, again suggestions are welcome.
 

Doctor G

Well-Known Member
Hi Tyler. I do LIKE that schoolbus!! Your pick me up truck is pretty cool too.

What kind of Dismal is that? How many horses? Inquiring minds want to know.

Enjoying hearing from you again. Tom
 
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