The On30 Guy

I’ve added a page detailing what may be the locomotive roster for my Corinna & Searsport Railroad. As with most model railroaders, I will have far too many locomotives — certainly more than the little railroad would ever need!

On30 version of the Victors Scale Models SR&RL #19 kit. Photo from Victors Scale Models web site.

Stumbling around the internet this evening, I found this — an On30 brass kit to make Sandy River & Rangely Lakes 2-6-2 #19. I’m very seriously considering ordering one of these, even though I need another locomotive like I need another hole in my head. The kit looks beautifully designed, and it’s set-up for sound from the start. I can see only one detail I would change — the headlight (and of course, that would mean having to add a generator).

More info can be found on the Victors Scale Models web site. At £245 (post paid), it ain’t cheap. But wow! What a beautiful model it makes….

John, the train pusher, dropped off my OF 4-4-0 at lunchtime today. What a thing of beauty! It shipped with the straight stack installed, and, while I had originally planned to put the balloon stack on, I think now that it will have a better “family” look to the Forneys with the straight stack. I’m also going to keep the more modern disc wheels on the pony truck and the “switcher” pilot. Again, more of a familial look to match my other locos.

Bachmann have made some definite improvements in other areas of this model. The tender truck pickups look as if they’ll actually work, there’s an actually floating foot-plate and the two cables between the tender and loco get neatly concealed in a snap-in firebox cover. The tender floor is pre-cut for a speaker and, according to the drawing, the grill can actually be removed to leave a big, gaping hole in the bottom, which will leave much more room for speaker excursion if a flat speaker is used.

Unfortunately, this model doesn’t have sound installed, so I’ll need to put another one of those wonderful Soundtraxx Tsunami sound decoder on my shopping list…

Our Alien Bees B400 monolights arrived yesterday, and I’m spending a couple of hours this morning working with them, just to get some idea of how they’re going to perform. So far, I’m pretty pleased.

This image is a difficult one, and it’s what I decided to attempt first — a mostly black subject with lots of detail against a blown-out white background.

 Our muslin backgrounds are anything but flat. In fact, they’re really, really wrinkled, and don’t really hang all that well. In this case, it’s also been flipped up onto the posing bench to act as the “base” for the model. So, I really, really wanted it to go away.

So, here’s the lighting setup:

• The locomotive is set a few feet in front of the background, and is primarily lit only with one strobe and a shoot-through umbrella, from about 3 feet above and to the left of the model. It’s at 1/2 power.
• The background is blown out with the second light, again about 3 feet above the model, aimed so the “hot spot” is directly behind the locomotive, and set at 3/4 power.
• The exposure is in manual mode, of course, 1/80th second at f/9.0 to maintain sharpness for the entire length of the model, which is at about a 30 degree angle to the camera. The ISO is set to 100.

This was all set up without the aid of a flash meter. I’m not 100% sure that it would have sped the process up any for this lighting setup, though maybe it would have. I guess it would have more easily allowed me to figure the exposure for the model, and how much more light I would need to blow out the background, by manually “popping” the flashes. In the long run, I probably will want one. There’s certainly no going “P for Professional” in this kind of rig.

Bachmann On30 RailtruckOriginally uploaded by gerenm2000.

One of my new Bachmann On30 Railtruck on the layout.

I really, really like this little model. It runs like a charm and is cute as the dickens! And, wonderfully detailed.

Even the drive-line is really neat: There’s a tiny motor concealed under the opening hoods. The motor is “wrapped” in detail to make it look like an engine. Behind the motor is a tiny gearhead that’s disguised as a transmission. From the back of the transmission is a real drive shaft that looks and functions just like the real thing. It feeds into a “differential” housing that drives the rear axle. It is v e r y cool.

Even the headlights work, and there is a single red tail light. Impressive.

My only gripe is the included DCC decoder (yes, DCC is pre-installed!). It’s functionality is limited in such a way that it neither supports CV2/5/6 for speed control, nor does it support an alternate speed table. That means it’s going to have to be replaced.

Fortunately, I always planned on replacing the stake-body with a box body, which will allow plenty of room for a Soundtraxx (or other) sound decoder and speaker. At least Bachmann provided a standard 8-pin connector on this bugger.

There are two “pilot” options that ship with the model. Standard is a grate or “cow catcher” pilot, or you can install this snow plow: