White River Division - February Update

Peter is photographing our MEC boxcar fleet for a future post. We built these cars maybe 20 years ago.

Peter Mumby and I have been spending a lot of this past seasons work days building rolling stock. These projects have also worked their way into the time I should have been spending working on the layout. I was hoping to get the yard started in the next room. Instead I am adding more shelving to my modeling case. I am heading away later this week for the warmth of Florida and probably will not return till early March. The new yard is just not going to happen this winter. I have changed my focus to adding the roundhouse extension to my Westboro scene once I return. This I think is a reasonable project that can be finished before spring. All the structures are already finished. A two foot frame, with track and scenery is still to be done.

On our last work session Peter and I spent most of the day photographing rolling stock we had built in past years...these I will post shortly. We also played around with my new photo, slide and negative scanner. I can now dig into my collection and add some interesting views.

 Here we see one of my B&W negative scans of the  CP office in St. Johnsbury, Vt. on May 13 1994. Really looking forward to go through my negative collection.

Lastly I am also building N scale structures for my friend Gary Pembleton with the first one now finished. It was a swap as mentioned earlier. I will also cover the kit and prototype structure shortly. I have a small backlog of posts which works out good as I can keep posting even while I am away...George Dutka

I just finished Gary's N scale Lyndonville, Vt. freight house. You will have to wait till the post is completed. I did pick up a few used freight cars to add interest to the scene. The foreground track is a second diorama for photo use and also a display track for my new fleet. The scale test car is borrowed from Peter Mumby. I did weather the cars up a bit...will fill you in on that later.

These two double door boxcars are Peter's models that I just applied dulcote to. Peter will finish his weathering job the next time we have a work day. These cars began as C&BT Shops shells that we added almost every detail we could think of or had on hand. If you remember we also built a P&LE boxcar using shells from the same source. We have a few others that are in the works using our parts and decals that have been laying around for years.