# Many, many pictures of my steamers on my club's layout



## fs2k4pilot (Jan 5, 2013)

To be clear, the Cuyahoga Valley and West Shore model railroad club operates using more modern motive power. All these steamers are mine personally. One night I decided to put virtually all my in-service steamers into the various engine servicing facilities and take some pictures of them (unfortunately I hadn't brought my two EM-1s, or my Union Pacific Mogul that night), and I also got a few pictures of the layout while following my UP steam-powered mixed freight around.

Apologies for bad lighting and shadows.

Here are my Union Pacific, Norfolk & Western, and miscellaneous other engines in the Matthews Engine Facility. Using parts from another tender, UPP 4014 has been converted to run on oil.






This Erie Railroad Heavy Pacific, along with a New York Central Mogul which we'll see later, belongs to my friend Ed.










3D printed water tenders from Shapeways.




















Matthews Engine Facility and Cuyahoga Yard, looking westbound.


My C&O steamers in the West Shore Yard diesel engine facility (yes, I know), including a Class H-4 2-6-6-2, a Class K-4 Kanawha, and a Class H-8 Allegheny number 1601. Not shown are my other Kanawha (it is off having sound put in it), and Allegheny number 1604 (not yet purchased at the time these were taken). Both Alleghenies are newly released from MTH, and after some minor shimming and breaking in, are outstanding engines. They look great, sound great, run great, and haul great.

Also pictured are my Chessie system, Nickel Plate, and N&W cabooses, and my Walther's Proto C&O Russell plow.










Onto my Pennsy engines (four I1Sa 2-10-0s, a J1 2-10-4, and an N-5 caboose), staged in the West Shore Yard engine house (at least this one has a coaling tower and water plug).












West Shore Yard and Engine House, looking eastbound.


West Shore Yard and diesel engine facility, looking westbound.


My buddy Ed using triple-headed Pacifics (two of mine, one of his) to run about forty empty hoppers westbound past West Shore Yard.


UPP 3985 and 4014 at the head of a 52 car mixed freight.


This mixed freight was so long (over forty full-scale feet) that it stretched from Switch One, down the full length of Cuyahoga Yard (excluding the westbound yard lead)...


...through the kitchen...


...and around the curve outside West Shore Yard.


Running west, passing through Valley Yard past a work crew. This is one of my favorite spots on the layout, because the scale perspective gives big steam power the chance to look as big as in real life.




The head end is just clearing Valley Yard, while the tail end hasn't quite cleared Cuyahoga Yard yet!


More perspective shots of 3985 and 4014, this time running past Nelm's Junction on the upper level. We use a helix track (which will be shown in another thread) to get between levels. This train stretched almost two full turns of that helix.




Running through Vermilion.








Running fast (since fast freight engines like the 3900 and 4000 classes should be run fast where possible) around the upper level, I forget the name of this particular area.


Running fast through Danville, and approaching Carbondale. After this, the train proceeds back down the helix, past West Shore Yard, and begins again.


And here's my buddy Ed's little Mogul that I mentioned earlier.


A list of my engines pictured:
Atlantic Coast Line USRA Light Pacific #1519
Atlantic Coast Line USRA Light Pacific #1523
Chesapeake & Ohio H-4 2-6-6-2 #1519 (which likely will be renumbered as C&O #1309)
Chesapeake & Ohio H-8 Allegheny 2-6-6-6 #1601
Chesapeake & Ohio K-4 Kanawha 2-8-4 #2718 (which will likely be renumbered as C&O #2716)
New York, Chicago & St. Louis S-2 Berkshire 2-8-4 #765
Norfolk & Western A-class 2-6-6-4 #1218
Norfolk & Western Y6B 2-8-8-2 #2197
Norfolk & Western Y6B 2-8-8-2 #2199
Norfolk & Western Y6B 2-8-8-2 #2200
Pennsylvania Railroad I1Sa 2-10-0 #4243
Pennsylvania Railroad I1Sa 2-10-0 #4249
Pennsylvania Railroad I1Sa 2-10-0 #4301
Pennsylvania Railroad I1Sa 2-10-0 #4394
Pennsylvania Railroad J1 2-10-4 #6488
Pere Marquette N-1 Berkshire 2-8-4 #1225
Union Pacific FEF-3 4-8-4 #844
Union Pacific Challenger 4-6-6-4 #3985
Union Pacific Big Boy 4-8-8-4 #4014

Not shown:
Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe 4-8-4 Northern #3784
Atlantic Coast Line USRA Light Mikado 2-8-2 #1504
Baltimore & Ohio EM-1 2-8-8-4 #7600
Baltimore & Ohio EM-1 2-8-8-4 #7629
Chesapeake & Ohio H-8 Allegheny #1604
Chesapeake & Ohio K-4 Kanawha #2760 (which will likely be renumbered "C&O #2765" )
Ely-Thomas
Norfolk & Western J-class 4-8-4 #611
Union Pacific 2-6-0 Mogul #39


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## Patrick1544 (Apr 27, 2013)

Really nice engines and layout. Thanks for sharing.


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## GN.2-6-8-0 (Jan 10, 2013)

Noticed that as stated you converted UP.4014s tender to oil,knowing this is in the plans for the rebuilt prototype am curious as how you went about the conversion.
I'm sure other fans of 4014 would also be interested😄


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## Shadowplayer (Oct 31, 2014)

Impressive collection!


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## fs2k4pilot (Jan 5, 2013)

GN.2-6-8-0 said:


> Noticed that as stated you converted UP.4014s tender to oil,knowing this is in the plans for the rebuilt prototype am curious as how you went about the conversion.
> I'm sure other fans of 4014 would also be interested😄


Thanks all, there's pictures of some of my other steamers in action here:
http://www.modeltrainforum.com/showthread.php?t=26399

As for how I converted the 4014 to oil, it was very much a case of lemons-to-lemonade, and it was some expensive lemonade. Between what I spent on the engine and all the repairs, and new and aftermarket decoders and parts, and the new tender, I could have bought one of the current production Genesis Challengers.


fs2k4pilot said:


> I actually have the 4014 from Athearn (jumped on it right when it was first released), and I managed to convert it to an oil tender recently, using parts left over from the misadventures of my 3985.
> 
> That one is from a previous batch that used MRC decoders, and I decided to upgrade it with a Tsunami. Worked well enough, until I discovered it could no longer handle trains of any appreciable weight. It would make sounds, but it didn't have the power to actually move the train. It didn't even have the power to spin its wheels. It made plenty of power in reverse, but not when rolling forward. I tried everything, I switched out decoders, tried reversing the motor leads, sent it in to Athearn twice, installed a brand new motor, even bought a whole new tender with factory installed Tsunami decoder, all to no avail. The other annoying thing was that if I tried to run it at high speed with a train behind it, it would chuff very quickly even if it wasn't actually going that fast. The new tender solved that problem at least, and since it doesn't have enough power to put up a fight with my other UP steamers, it double-heads pretty well.
> 
> But I digress. The other upshot to buying a whole new tender for the 3985 was that I was able to swap the oil bunker parts from that tender with the coal bunker from the 4014.


You might be able to call Athearn's service department and just buy the parts for an oil deck, but I don't know if Wayne has the parts, or if he'd be able to sell them. It's worth a try, though. Wayne works from 1 to 4pm, Pacific time, tuesday, wednesday, and thursday, at Athearn's phone number from their website, extension 106. He's their only technician, but he's knowledgable, and has been quite helpful to me whenever I've had problems with my engines. In fact, I need to call him myself and order a replacement crankpin bolt, and see if I can't get one of the twin turbogenerator parts from the 3985 to install on the 4014.


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## norgale (Apr 4, 2011)

Excellent pictures Pilot and the layout and rolling stock are super. You have a great mix of diesel and steam and plenty of room to run really long trains. I don't know how you can keep all those cars on the track. Obviously a very good job of tuning the wheels and trucks and excellent track laying. 
I really appreciate you taking the time to post all these pictures. I would suggest some brighter lighting in a few places and a tripod would help you a lot in getting nice clear pics. I wish others would post more pics like this. Makes it a lot more interesting. Got any videos of your trains in action? Pete


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## Rusty (Jun 23, 2011)

Nice locomotives and layout.


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## fs2k4pilot (Jan 5, 2013)

norgale said:


> Excellent pictures Pilot and the layout and rolling stock are super. You have a great mix of diesel and steam and plenty of room to run really long trains. I don't know how you can keep all those cars on the track. Obviously a very good job of tuning the wheels and trucks and excellent track laying.
> I really appreciate you taking the time to post all these pictures. I would suggest some brighter lighting in a few places and a tripod would help you a lot in getting nice clear pics. I wish others would post more pics like this. Makes it a lot more interesting. Got any videos of your trains in action? Pete


Thanks, both of you. I actually haven't had to do much tuning to my cars beyond putting Kadee standard head couplers in them (all of them are body-mounted, too). Most of them are quite good right out of the box, even the Bachmann cars. Pretty much everything came with turned metal RP-25 wheel sets right out of the box, and those which didn't got aftermarket ones from Bachmann, Kadee, or Walthers. I didn't even have to ream the bogies, or weight them to RP-20.1.

In fact, I have three Bachmann open-sided passenger cars that will free-roll all the way down the helix, and won't rip off the track until the very bottom, and sometimes not even there, even though they're probably hitting 100+ SMPH. What I don't allow in my rolling stock is excessive wiggle, side to side or up and down. I want the bogies to swivel freely, but only to have enough wiggle to allow the wheels to follow the ups and downs and rolls in the track, without letting the car roll back and forth. That makes the car and the train much more stable, because the weight of the car helps to keep it from rolling over.

Most of the track work on the layout is pretty good. There's some turnouts that need work, and a few places where Code 83 and Code 100 have been mixed without transition joiners (and Code 100 uncoupling magnets mixed with Code 83 track :appl::smilie_daumenneg, but most of it works, even at high speed (come on, you just can't run the 611 or the 844 at 30 SMPH on the straights).

As for the camera and lighting, that's kind of problematic. As you can see, the layout isn't uniformly lit, my camera's built-in flash just isn't up to the job of lighting large areas, and it has no provision for attaching or using an aftermarket flash unit. most of those pictures were indeed taken using a tripod, but because of the lighting issues, the exposure times were quite long. I tried using the timer function to avoid shaking the camera, but I guess two seconds wasn't enough time for the camera to stop shaking in some pictures.

I've got a movie or two of my coal drag, and I'll see if I can't get some other stuff.


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