More weathering!

Well, with the basement FINALLY mopped up and reassembled, and the DCC system finally up and running, it was time to get some weathering and painting done while the weather holds.

That coal load in the tender is actual RGS coal, from the Rico yards.  You can purchase your own from Mike Conder.  I won't post his email here (save the guy some spam!), but his coal-selling information is available under 'Other Resources' on my modeling page, w/ a safe link to his email there.

So - here's a crop of hoppers recently weathered, and my first-ever steam-loco weathering job.

Goose 4 lives!

Just a quick note... Goose #4, the last Goose which isn't operating, started her motor today for the first time in 58 years.  There's a short video commerating the event on the Ridgway Railroad Museum's site, where the restoration is happening.

Lots more photo references!

I've spent part of the weekend digging through Otto Perry's photos, online at the Denver Public Library, and updating links.

The link additions to my Rolling Stock page alone resulted in many more photos of RGS locomotives #20, #25, #40, #41 and #42.  There were numerous additions to the route listing pages as well, including a couple of bridges I had no photo links for previously (18-A, 68-A).

A great resource lost

My website had quite a large number of links to photos and drawings from the John Maxwell Collection, which for a long time was available for purchase from colong.com.  But the site was run by John's son (I believe) Bruce, who recently passed away.

The website is gone now, and I don't know of whether these fine resources are available any longer.  I just finished updating my pages to remove all those links.  In many cases, his were the only photo references I had.

It's sad, because a lot of manufacturers, as well as modelers and historians, depended on this material for their research.  Perhaps whoever inhertied the estate will donate or sell them to someone who can continue to make them available.

New photos! And more cleanup -

I've found some time to get back to updating the photo links from the Denver Public Library on my site, and actually finished the 1000+ links to Bob Richardson photos, and started digging through about 500 Otto Perry photos.  In doing that, I discovered a number of locomotive photos that were new to me... all linked now on the Rolling Stock page.

These include a whole series of wonderful shots of #20, and a few photos of #3, #6, #17 and the 2nd #22.

On the home front, we're still cleaning mud from under various cabinets, nooks, and assorted crannies, but the end is finally in sight.  And hopefully huge storms are not.

Since I can't easily troubleshoot the remaining DCC conversion issues on the layout, I've also tried to be productive by continuing to convert locos from Keller to DCC, finishing another 3 locomotives in the last week or two.