New Toys!

Seeing the work Ian and the other modelers who had layouts at the St. Cloud show are doing jump started my modeling desire. A few weeks ago, while nosing around on ebay, I spotted something that I didn't even know existed. Once I saw it, there was no question I had to have it. Turns out that at one time, the BN "Aeroflo" bathtub gons were available in HO scale from LBF. I've always had a soft spot for this car, and so it passed that I became the owner of my first batch of coal tubs.



Fast forward to today, the third cloudy Sunday in a row. Seemed like a great time to head down to the basement and dig around on my unbelievably messy workbench, find the exacto knife, forceps, and plastic cement, and see what I could rustle up from a couple of those kits. Where are those couplers I bought three years ago, anyway? I picked one of the Aeroflo cars and one of the Coalporters (a special one, double rotary ends) to start with. Each one took about an hour to assemble, and when I was done I decided to take a couple of pictures.



After yesterday's show, my fleet of coal cars has reached about 20. Not quite a unit train, but far enough into the pursuit of one that it's no use trying to stop now. What a project I am beginning to envision-I'll need to expand the layout to run them. And they won't look right behind my motley collection of geeps-I can see some combination of MAC's and ACe's in my future as well. As a matter of fact, I think there is an auction for a Genesis MAC in H2 paint ending any minute...

Jim