Headed to Des Plaines Valley yesterday morning and swung by the hobby shop on the way. I noticed a new R-T-R 40' box car scheme from SSA - the bright orange C&EI "Route of the Dixie Limited" (SSA #2501.1). There were a couple other C&EI schemes for the 5 numbers. It's the first new 40 foot SSA car I've seen in some time - aside from the convention/ S Fest cars. Always good to see something new, and yes I bought one...
Of late my modeling focus has been cleaning up old projects that I put back in the box years ago. Too often I reopen a box to find a mass of wires, parts and a disassembled unit. The instant reaction is, "What the heck was I trying to accomplish!???" This weekends clean up at DPV was a set of OMI brass FA/FB-2's I started converting to DCC and sound years ago. All six are custom painted in NYC Lightning Stripes and have been running on and off for 25+ years. First step was replacing worn out u-joints with NWSL parts, definitely an upgrade! Two units had NCE decoders with DSX sound and the remainder Tsunami's. And - "Oh by the way..."; one of the Tsunami's clearly came from a package labeled "Alco 244"; yet when install produced the rather distinctive sound of an EMD 567!! Dang! One more project...! Last night I finally got all the wiring, installations and programming complete. A nice lash up I've wanted to re-create in S scale ever since I saw a prototype photo of the same NYC diesels in a Don Ball book in 1977... Like fine wine - some things just take time... A new purchase and a project complete, hope your Saturday turned out just as well! Jim Kindraka Plymouth, WI
