HO scale A&A photos

I took advantage of a sunny day to photograph my HO scale Arcade & Attica equipment outdoors and posted the images to Flickr:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/42675478@N ... 414168348/

Features locomotives 1, 3, 4, 18 and 113, plus complete excursion train, freight cars, B.A. & A. equipment and Attica & Freedom coaches.

FYI, on an unrelated topic...for those of you who might only monitor this forum...Buffalo Central Terminal is hosting a live(sic) "Ghost Hunt" at the terminal on Halloween this year:

http://wnyghosthunters.com/halloween09.html

The hunt is led by Chip Coffey and from SyFy's popular show "Ghost Hunters", cast member Brian Harnois. Sounds like a blast, to me. Ride the A&A during the day, go all 'Scooby Doo' at the B-lo C.T. at night.

Boo!

Great job! I like the throwback yellow gondola.

Thanks, Ben.

Yeah, apart from the fictitious diesel switcher, the whole collection is retro: from the no longer extant steam and freight equipment, to the retro paint jobs on the model of No. 18, the excursion coaches, and, as you mentioned, the gondola.

As you can see, some of it is still unfinished: the boxcars still require some lettering or numbering here and there, the ends of the gondola still need to be painted black, and I mean to black out the clerestory windows of the coaches. I hope one day that Boontons become available again; those wooden Victorian-era coaches bear little resemblance to the coaches they're meant to represent.

A Bachmann Spectrum 4-6-0 high boiler retro-trimmed to represent No.14 in her early 1970s paint scheme is on the way. The decals have been ready for months; I just have to get around to actually affixing them.

Can you tell what you used for the model of #18? I haven't been able to find an HO steamer that would fit it.

Alcophile:

I used a Roundhouse "Old Time" 2-8-0:

http://www.roundhousetrains.com/Search/ ... CatID=THLS

It's not perfect, of course, but it was close enough for me.

I actually found it very convincing, I'd like to do that some day.

Yes; it's not bad if close enough is close enough, y'know?

The main issue that would drive a more exacting model railroader to drink is the number of domes, their shape & size, and their positions (and there are any number of less glaring discrepancies that one could obsess about), but I don't do this competitively or professionally, and so my modelling efforts need only satisfy me. In my case, I have no abilities wih respect to scratch-building or kitbashing, so I content myself with painting and lettering reasonable facsimilies that are ready-to-run.

The Roundhouse 2-8-0 is a pretty good base model for a representation of No. 18, and I haven't come across anything commericially available that resembles it as closely. I'm sure somebdy with more skills than I have could do something pretty impressive with it.

I did add one structural element to this model, however: I extended the footboard to the front of the smokebox and put another footboard in front of the smokebox. That's such a signature "facial" feature of 18 that I had to have one on the model. Mercifully, it was easy to do. Less easy was hand-painting in orange the white dry transfer letters I used on the tender and cab in lieu of decals. Never again!

Mountcastle wrote:I took advantage of a sunny day to photograph my HO scale Arcade & Attica equipment outdoors and posted the images to Flickr...

Thanks for sharing, very nice stuff!

Thanks for the compliment. I'll have to get cracking on No. 14. So far, all I've done is put a big white "14" on either side of one of its two tenders (to represent E&LS No.14) using dry transfer numerals.