Railflyer drive prototype

A while back I reported on Railflyer Model Prototypes, and their efforts to develop a new drive mechanism for their upcoming HO locomotive kits, a drive which will be housed inside the truck, leaving the entire shell and hood free for other things (many more details will be possible ).
Here's a picture of the latest test set up, showing the tiny motor along side an axle and wheel, to test the gearing set up. This looks great to me!

A paint disaster

It wasn't my day yesterday. I had masked off both the front and rear of the hood on my CF7, as I wanted to simulate 'warning' stripes on both of them. I had previously painted it white, let dry , masked off the areas to remain white, and then painted on the blue. When I removed the masking tape, there were several areas where the blue paint had leaked under the masking tape, ever so little but enough. I should note that I had forgotten to add another layer of white paint over the mask first, this will seal the edges of the masking tape and any bleed will be in the same colour, so can't be noticed, and after that , follow on with the next paint colour, I won't make that mistake again any time soon...
 I decided to try and touch it up with a brush and some paint, but while doing that the dog came in and 'greeted' me, with the result that my stripes turned into a white blob.....
I now have think on how to rescue this project, I may have to just paint the nose white for now, and use a stripe decal at some point... to be continued...

Athearn Genesis GP9 pre-production model

Here's a picture of the upcoming Athearn Genesis GP9 , it involves a pre-production sample here, but it looks very promising indeed.  Thanks to SP Aussie for providing a picture. I will have to have one of these at some point :-)

Some more info and pictures here!

C44-9W progress

It's been a while that I did some work on my UP C44-9W. While I've not done much, I've managed to install the ditchlights, and have programmed them accordingly. The UP does not use flashing ditch lights, so mine are only able to switch on/off as per prototype. I need to continue adding some more details and then I can paint the loco and do some weathering.

A few progress pics

As promised here's a few pictures of the shells of my two locomotive projects that I have underway currently.
The SD9E is showing a primer grey base coat, and the CF7 is showing CSX blue.
Obviously these two are still far from ready, but they're a small step closer to that goal. :-)
Again apologies for the picture quality, they were made with my blackberry, under relatively poor lighting conditions. I moved them near the layout to have a better light, but it's not great. The blackberry camera is the biggest culprit though, as it's of very poor quality indeed.

1950's Southern Pacific

My friend Brian has been busy lately, and added several new movies on his layout. Here's one of them for your viewing pleasure.

Loco projects

Today I had time to move two of my current loco projects a step further towards completion.
My CF7 finally received a new coat of paint, after the first two didn't work out well. I've now used a different brand of paint (Testors' Polly Scale ) , and have 'shot' the base coat of what is close to CSX blue. This seems to have covered much better than the previously used Tamiya paints, and tomorrow I'll be able to see if it has set as well as I hope it has, so I can put a second coat on for a smooth coverage. I've resisted the urge to put too much paint on at once.
The other project is the CFNR SD9E, this one had sun shades installed, and has received a primer coat of light grey paint all over. Once this is dry, I will attempt a coat of 'cream white' for the background area on which the 'California Northern' lettering and logos are placed. They will then be masked off, and then the green will be added.
I will try to post pictures of both locos in the next few days, once the second coat of paint has been added.