PHOTOS BY THE AUTHOR
A D&RGW work train is out on the mainline of the Western Bay Narrow Gauge Railroad and actually preforming work (above). The kitchen car and commissary car are each equipped with track cleaning devices. The crane mounted on the flat car serves as the
club’s “Maximum Height Gauge.” Before their conversion, the work train cars (below left) had underbody detail, but were sel- dom used. Likewise, the original track cleaning cars (below right), because they were not RGS or D&RGW specific, seldom saw use.
Rebuilt work train cars that actually do work
Inspired by an article in the October 2013 RMC, I turned my idle m.o.w. cars into actual work cars on my On30 layout/Al Sohl
R
eading Ben Swope’s recent arti- cle, “Maintenance-of-way trains and equipment” in the October
2013 issue in RMC gave me an idea. The author remarked that some model- ers have mounted track cleaning pads under a plow car to wipe off dust and dirt before it accumulates. He went on to write, “Couple another track clean- ing car behind the locomotive and you will have yourself a true work train.”
That line hit home hard and fast! The Western Bay Narrow Gauge Rail- road (
www.westernbayrailroad.org) has two Aztec track cleaning units that came mounted in Bachmann boxcars. Howev- er, during the operating sessions that our club runs once a month, we operate only cars based on Rio Grande Southern and Denver & Rio Grande Western pro- totypes, so these cleaning cars, which are not prototypically correct for our ses-
sions, sat in a siding in our hidden yard, rarely used. At the same time, sitting in our dual gauge Denver yard were two scale m.o.w. cars that had been built from craftsman kits about ten years ago. They looked good, but had no true func- tion, so they sat there never to be used, either. That is until an idea to combining the track cleaning mechanisms with the craftsman work train cars came to me as I read Ben’s article.
60
JANUARY 2014
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100