Heimatkurzbesuch

Visiting the German Generalkonsulat in San Francisco for official business is always a little bit like going home. There's German chatter in the waiting room and at the passport counter. The staff is friendly and polite. I got my passport application taken care of with no issues within 15 minutes.

"Looks like you got your pictures taken at Photo Plus on Polk?" -

- "Yes, they know how to make perfect passport photos."

"Indeed they do." -

"Here comes the sun ..."

It's hot. The Bearded Dragons are spending the afternoon outside for the first time this year and love the radiant heat from the rocks in their outdoor home.

Spessartrampe

This is a really cool video about pusher operations on the Spessartrampe between Laufach and Heigenbruecken on the busy main line between Aschaffenburg and Wuerzburg.
The German Wikipedia article gives much more complete information than the English version.

This will be history soon as newly built tunnels will make the trip over the hill obsolete. Note how highspeed, local passenger, and freight trains share the same tracks on this section...

Waiting for the bus

Yep, summer has arrived.

Paint Shop

Backdating Maerklin Schwenkdachwagen.
First step, get rid of the DB AG logo, and the car numbers on one car. I was unable to remove the logo and numbers. Maerklin's printing process appears to be optimized for protecting lettering and logos, contrary to other models I worked on. I tried a few different approaches with no luck, and in the end simply spray-painted over the offending bits.

Pollyscale "Rock Island Maroon" is an almost perfect match for the color of these cars. I will hide the the slight variance in color and sheen when weathering the cars. The photo above is taken with the light set to highlight the difference in sheen.

SEA - SJC

Time to go home.

Eastside Trains

Eastside Trains is an institution in downtown Kirkland. While downtown is changing a lot (see the crane), Eastside Trains has not. Most of the store is Lionel, MTH, O-scale, ... nothing wrong with that, but not my primary interest. They do have a fine selection of the usual scenery and scratch building materials, as well as a good selection of rolling stock and locomotives for HO and N.

Reset!

Caffeine for dessert

Lake Union @ Highway 99

Beautiful Day. I love the Seattle sunshine.

Seattle Gas Works Park

I decided to walk the 2.5 miles from the hotel to the office on Burke-Gilman Trail along the shoreline of Lake Union with very nice views of the lake and the city. The site of the former Seattle Gas Works is now a public park.
Unfortunately, the lens on my phone was a bit foggy when I took above photo.

Gas Works Park is a somewhat strange combination of city park and post-industrial architecture.

When I plotted my route on Google Maps, I thought "that looks like an old rail line", and indeed the Burke-Gilman Trail is built on the old right of way of the Seattle, Lake Shore & Eastern Railroad which connected Seattle with Bothell and points east by 1886. The line was acquired by the Northern Pacific in 1901 and abandoned by Burlington Northern in 1971. Some rails are still in the pavement here and there.

NP 2015 Caboose

Walking on the Kirkland campus this morning I was delighted to discover a bright red NP caboose between the office buildings. Looks like the inside is still being worked on, but the outside looks quite nice.

Digging some more, it turns out that this is a refurbished Santa Fe caboose, and #2015 is a fantasy number for the year the caboose was installed. Train Orders has a short thread on this. Even though this isn't authentic it made me happy this morning.

Good Night

As we climb out of SJC, the setting sun reflects on the wing. In the distance the San Francisco Bay.

SJC - SEA

A busy week in the Seattle area lies ahead. Alaska Air flight 319 is on-time.

New Almaden Quicksilver County Park

New Almaden Quicksilver County Park not only has some cool machinery rusting away in the open, it's also very pretty up here on Mine Hill, and the hike up the mountain was steeper than we expected ...

Kids these days

This sucks.

Well ...

I was scheduled to take Amtrak's Coast Starlight Friday next week from Seattle to San Jose.  Due to extensive bridge damage near Redding Coast Starlight service north of Sacramento is canceled through mid-May.

Update 16:30:
I just got off the phone with  Amtrak's customer service. Union Pacific had originally planned to have the bridge open for traffic next week, but it's now taking a little bit longer than planned. The reservation is now canceled. Maybe another opportunity will present itself in the future.

Update May 10:
As of this morning the Coast Starlight is back on schedule. Had I not canceled my reservation I would be boarding a long-distance train on Friday.

Dave Parks' Cumberland West - Piedmont Tower

My workplace tonight: Piedmont Tower.

With some gentle convincing I took the Piedmont Tower operator position which turned out to be quite fun. I got to run the virtual CTC machine controlling the B&O main line west of Keyser, WV all the way up the hill to Oakland, MD, working closely with dispatch to write clearances, train orders, and report passing trains back to the dispatcher.

I also got the Keyser Local assigned which I promptly ran on the main line without a clearance. We're in Yard limits, right?

"What is that train doing on the main line? Let me come over."
                            --- Dispatcher calling across the layout room

Uh oh! Time to become one with the floor under my feet...

10 minutes later I was appropriately advised about the procedures I was supposed to follow. Combining the Tower Operator position with the local job turned out to be an excellent exercise to get more acquainted with the layout procedures.

With the proper paperwork the Keyser Local has made it to its westernmost point, the Western Maryland interchange yard at Luke. B&O engine #906 is preparing to run around its train for the return trip to Piedmont and Keyser.

For the local to come back on the double-track B&O main line against the flow of traffic required writing out two clearances and two train orders. Phew.

Everyone was super-friendly, advising, and helping me work through questions and rookie mistakes. A very enjoyable evening and with the chats and banter after the end of the session, it got very late.

ET 420 312 (Maerklin 37501)

Maerklin's 37501 is a model of the ET 420/421 3-car unit as it ran at the start of the Stuttgart S-Bahn service in 1979. While I will set my planned rendition of the Murrbahn in 1972, the ET 420 will have a place on the layout and during operations. I spent way too much time in this train type during my college years to not model it.

I especially appreciated the pocket doors on the early train sets, which closed with a lovely "swooosh ... click" sound. The later series train sets used roller doors which closed with a "rrrrrrr BANG!", waking me up at every station stop. 10 times on the ride from Ludwigsburg to Stuttgart Vaihingen with a change of trains at Stadtmitte.
The roller doors replaced the pocket doors because the door pockets collected dust, grime, dirt, and in winter ice, making the doors prone to failure.

What did I do to myself ... ?

... Nothing yet, but this is going to be a fun exercise.

The challenge is to built T04 of the Wuerttembergische Eisenbahngesellschaft (weg), as it looked in the early 1970's. T04 is a diesel-propelled railcar built in 1926 and ran from 1954 until 1975 on the Kochertalbahn from Gaildorf West to Untergröningen. As such, it's a signature element of the Gaildorf West station on the Murrbahn.
Fun fact: Until its retirement in 2002 T04 was the oldest passenger equipment in regular revenue service in Germany. 

I ordered the kit from Lok Schlosserei, a small German company known for excellent brass kits. I've never built a brass kit like this before. Thankfully, the frame with wheel sets and motors comes pre-mounted ready to run, so I "just" need to build the body and the interior. This is going to take some time and I will take this slowly. ... Now I just need to work up the courage to start.