Weekend Update - Rolling Stock Added To The Railroad

Greetings followers of the Atlantic Pacific Railroad and my blog!

I have quite a few trainsets on the railroad in staging such as mixed freight, steel, intermodal, auto racks and more. One of the trainsets that I have is a TTX trainset. It stays on the lower level passing siding. This train comes only comes out when I have a new person at my operating session and has never run the railroad, or, when I want to see a train traverse the layout. 

This train had two different types of TTX box cars on the railroad. It had 7 ExactRail Trinity 6275 Plug Door Box Car - FBOX 2004 'As Delivered' and 5 60' Gunderson Box Cars. I've photographed this train a few times on the railroad with a car length from 14 to 25+ cars. 

Within the past year in order to have more trains run during an operating session, I shortened most trains to 15 cars with engines and a caboose. The latest train had a pair of GP35 APRR engines on the lead. 

I moved them to the Richmond Hill Engine Terminal to be used on another trainset when needed. Then I decided that I needed to do a freight car transplant to this train...again!

First thing was to remove all of the 7 ExactRail FBOX box cars. Easy fix. That left the 5 of the 60 Gunderson cars on the current train. 

The cars shown below are a combination of Athearn and ExactRail. The one closest in the picture is the Athearn version. Another one next to it.

Next I added 4 new Walthers 60' Gunderson F Plate Box cars. These were on order for over a year (actually forgot I had them on order), and of course they just showed up. These were made in their Mainline series and came with their ProtoMax couplers. I changed them out and added Kadee #148 whisker couplers. Four of them are now on the layout. 

Next, I added 2 of the first run Athearn Ready To Roll 60' Gunderson cars. I had already equipped them with Kadee couplers as the McHenry couplers they use are plastic, and are not a good coupler. They use them as the parent company of Athearn, Horizon Hobby bought the McHenry Coupler Company many years ago. One less thing to get from an outside source in China.

The last set of cars were a recent run of the Athearn 60' Gunderson cars. This run is in their new light blue and white boxes. I had 3 of them and had changed the couplers to Kadee as well. 

The train, with 14 of these freight cars is on the layout ready to roll, I wanted a more modern set of engines to run the train. I had brought back from the Florida a number of engines, including a pair of Atlas Dash 8-40B engines in CSX. These would now power this train. 

Now that we're ready to all, all that was left was to move it back down below to the lower level passing siding track. This train will remain below until someone comes over and would like to run it, or when I work on the layout and want to see trains running the upper level. 

Next up were 4 Athearn 30k Ethanol tank cars that were on a big discount from modeltrainstuff.com back in May. These are Canadian GATX tank cars. Only thing I did to them was to change the couplers to Kadee. 

Once on the layout I decided that while the railroad had many different types of freight trains, I didn't have one for tank cars. The freight yard had a few sitting on some tracks, so I grabbed 4 and had the switcher run them over. 

On more modern trains, just behind the engine, is a buffer car. While I don't have one labeled as 'Buffer', we added a Conrail covered hopper behind the engine. 

Next car to add to this train is a caboose. I added the Bluford Shops CSX shoving caboose to this train. 

The train is now assembled and ready for road power. I brought up another set of Atlas Dash 8-40B engines to complete the trainset. This train will head to staging below and worked into an operating session. 

Thanks for reading. Please check back often for more updates!