Wordless Wednesday #261

Belchertown, MA. 23 October 1950. M Usenia photo, M. McGuirk collection. 

 

Wordless Wednesday #254

 

Wordless Wednesday #252

 

Wordless Wednesday #248

 

Montville, Conn. Photographer unknown. Author's collection

New Life for an Iron Horse

 

Central Vermont 2-8-0 no. 472 is back in service after seven years sitting in a box! 

I mentioned one of my goals for this weekend was to get CV no. 472 back into service. 

This is an extensively detailed Bachmann Spectrum 2-8-0. It's actually a very, very early example of the model since it was the Model Railroader review sample. After Andy Sperandeo finished reviewing it he gave it to me 

This is how the locomotive looked immediately after being pulled out of storage. 

Iain Rice happened to be visiting Wisconsin at the time and I showed him the model and the drawings of the CV locomotive. We looked it over and noted the wheelbase and overall dimensions were pretty close to a CV N-5-a class engine. Iain mentioned it shouldn't be too difficult to get pretty close to a CV 2-8-0 starting with the Bachmann model. Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, I sent him back to England with the locomotive and a shoebox full of Cal-Scale, Kemptron and Bowser detail parts. 

I think the project was a little more involved than Iain bargained for - the photos here of the unpainted model show just how many details he added, moved, and removed, but it is remarkable how close it looks like a CV 2-8-0. 

Views of the front and rear half of the locomotive show just how much rework and redetailing Iain Rice did to get this engine to capture the look of the CV prototypes. 

During the several months Iain was working on the engine another exciting new product arrived - a Soundtraxx DCC steam sound decoder. After the locomotive arrived back in the U. S., I installed the Soundtraxx decoder before painting, decaling and weathering the locomotive. 

The original Soundtraxx decoder 

Number 472 was in regular service on both the first and second versions of my Southern New England. In 2015 I was getting ready for an op session when I noticed 472 was just not sounding or working right. I even mentioned it in this blog post. 

She was "stored, awaiting disposition" for the next few years while other projects took priority. 

A few weeks ago I dug the engine out the box and put it on the track. Not surprising the poor performance hadn't gone away with age. But I decided to swap out the old decoder and speaker. The nine-pin connectors made the actual decoder swap a simple matter. Swapping out the speaker was a little trickier, mostly because of the custom made baffle that I ended up having to remove to fit the new speaker in place.

I also took the time to dust the locomotive and tender off, and to clean the wheels and the copper pickup tabs on the engine and tender.  

I'm pleased to report that 472 is back in service, looking and sounding better than ever!

Wordless Wednesday #226

Montville, Conn. c 1956, Courtesy J. Paganoni

Wordless Wednesday #193

Finding virtual (and actual) stuff ...

N-5-a 463 on the Richford local, George Corey photo. 

Moving is ... well I was going to say "is an adventure" but frankly it just plain sucks....
But the weirdest part is the unboxing - it's like Christmas morning - especially when you find a few months have passed before you're reunited with your stuff. 
Of course there's a fair amount of "what did we save this for?" Followed by the amusement of discovering the movers carefully wrapped and boxed up everything - even the plastic knives and forks from the local fast food place that happened to be sitting on the kitchen counter on moving day!
Then there's this file folder of papers that I'm constantly loosing and finding again. I swear it has legs. In my case it's copies of three typewritten booklets listing the industries served by the CV.  I thought I'd included the folder in a small file box of reference material I brought to the apartment. Went to look for it a few weeks later only to spend most of a frustrating Sunday afternoon looking for them, concluding the folder must have gotten boxed up (maybe with the plastic knives and forks?). 
Of course yesterday I was emptying a few more boxes in the office, including that box of reference material I'd taken to the apartment. Sure enough, there was that stupid file folder with list of industries. It wouldn't be so bad except this isn't the first time this folder has gone rogue. It disappeared in the old house a couple of times. And I wouldn't be surprised if I went home tonight to find it's gone over the hill again.
In addition to the "analog" unpacking, there's also the fun of virtual unpacking. I'd packed up my large Mac desktop since there simply wasn't room for it in the apartment. Saturday I unpacked it, plugged it in, and turned it on for the first time in months. Thankfully, she fired right up - and I ran across several Richford branch photos George Corey had emailed me a few months back, including the one above. I think it nicely captures the spirit of the Richford Branch in the late steam era. 
It also reminded me I need to include a few wood pile trestles on the layout. 
And speaking of the layout, for ease of reference I've added a tab just below the header that should take you directly to the most current CV Richford Branch layout design. 

Wordless Wednesday #168

Richford Branch Maps 3, Sheldon Springs

In between painting the basement walls and boxing up household goods I did manage to find enough time to draw up Sheldon Springs. Sheldon Springs is located west of Sheldon Junction (see the close up map here). Highlight of Sheldon Springs is the Missisquoi Pulp & Paper Co. plant, which is by far the largest single industrial customer on the Richford Branch. The first map is an overall view of the area and shows how the various elements fit together. (Click on the maps to enlarge).

The Missisquoi Pulp & Paper plant was located on a spur that swung northwest from the Richford Branch proper. The mill itself was located downhill from the CV tracks at the base of a fairly steep hill. The paper mill had a small switch engine (even had it's own engine house between the mill and CV main). But the CV did switch the mill, although CV engines couldn't operate past the points denoted with the red "B" on the diagram below.

Typically the Richford freight required two engines for power. George Corey provided this shot of N-5-a 2-8-0 no. 466 shoving on the rear end of the Richford-bound freight at Sheldon Springs on February 23, 1957. Within a month steam would be dead on the CV. (And yes, freight car nuts should check out the GTW rebuilt boxcar ahead of the van). 

Wordless Wednesday #38