JSSX This Week

Trains are back in action this week here, after cleaning the track (again) last week and having everything cleared off of the rails to do that.  I spent a good couple of hours cleaning, using one of those grey Peco eraser thingies and running the track CMX track cleaner all over the place.

Nothing like a photograph though to help us see things that just don't look "right" on the layout.  So here we are, along the GTW tracks that run behind the scrap metal yard.  This angle of view is captured by reaching across the layout and laying the camera down on the track.

So the problems here, as I see them anyway, are the switch in the foreground isn't ballasted, and the back side of the fence on the right is just plain white styrene sheet. So there's that. But the tracks themselves look kind of cool with some dips and dives.  That diamond there on the left is Code 100, everything else is Code 83.

A closer view at the spur at Tri-State Paper and GTW 6212

I came across this gondola photo.  I like the weathering and aged graffiti on this one, and I've got a pretty similar, but clean gondola that maybe I could try to make look like this one.  It would fit in nicely on the layout here.

Photo credit goes to Dustin Faust.  Not sure, but it looks like Altoona, Pa.

And here's the car, maybe manufactured by Roundhouse, I could try to use.

This gondola is pretty close to the prototype one.  At least close enough for me.

That'll be it for the trains on the blog this time, but I've got this one other picture to show.

I know that's not much from the layout, but I want to show this picture that I took last summer of the lake freighter Cuyahoga as it passed beneath the Bluewater Bridges here at Sarnia.  This freighter was built in 1943, making it the oldest vessel on the Great Lakes.  It was here through the several winters for maintenance.

Anyway, my reason for posting it is that while sailing in Lake Erie in May, Cuyahoga suffered an engine room fire.  As a result, it was towed last week across Lake Erie from Ohio to Port Colborne, Ontario where it is slated to be cut up, likely for scrap.