New Arrivals On The A.P.R.R.!!

Greetings followers of the Atlantic Pacific Railroad and my blog!

Once again, the A.P.R.R. management reached out again to the management of the N.Y.C.T.L. for some work to be done by the Patti-O Paint Shop. Orders were placed for painting on some gondolas and RBL Box cars. What came back was a great paint job and a few surprises!

First work order was on some Athearn 50' gondola cars. On the A.P.R.R. I have a train dedicated to servicing Shapeless Steel. My present rolling stock had a decent amount of cars. However, you get spoiled when you see your private road all decked out on the railroad for all to admire, and admire they do!

One thing I always make sure that each and every paint job Sir 1:1 John works on there's at least one or more cars to interchange for our virtual op sessions, depending on the request.

EB 509823 came to the APRR and as a bonus 1:1 Sir John added some custom pipe loads. They look great!

Next up were two APRR gondolas. They look great and included under separate wraps were scrap loads custom painted!

These loads look great and add to the realism of the freight car...

This car was a surprise when I unwrapped it. Prior to the delivery of this car, I was asked about the color of my ballast being added to the railroad. Now I know why...

Remember the commercial back in the day about Lay's Potato Chip and the saying 'Betcha You Can't Each Just One!'? Here's the commercial! Now I may have to reach into the AP inventory to see what other hopper cars I can have the Patti-O Paint shop repaint! 

Here's a video of the cars being moved over to Rock Ridge freight yard to be used in future PCCM virtual op sessions as well as my operating sessions.

The next project that was requested were more RBL box cars. Scaletrains.com came out with another run of these cars including undecorated. I know it's easier to paint these than ones already painted. 

1:1 Sir John is a master painter and here's why!

Note the special 'Return Empty' labels added to the white RBL cars. These decals were made by our late friend Engineer Ed for John to use on his railroad. John took it a step further and added them to all of his RBL cars and sent me some extra to add to the ones he previously painted for me. 

I did ask for more of the Orange RBL cars as those came out looking great on the first run. Here's the second run!

These care will be used in both virtual op sessions as well as the PCCM car movements.

But wait! There's more! Not only did 1:1 Sir John give me scrap loads for the gondolas, he also built six sets of pipe loads. I was asked where we could use them on the APRR and I told him that pipe loads can go to Cargill since we have corn syrup tank cars in Cargill. I do plan to add piping on the layout and these can be used for the 'underground' part of piping in Cargill. Some of these can go to Tropicana as well since it's a processing plant for that great Tropicana Orange Juice!

One more new arrival came this past week. I was searching Evilbay and spotted some Atlas Dual Mode DCC GP38 engines in Penn Central. An Atlas Dual Mode engine is one of their first foray into DCC. It has a pin that when moved, converts the engine to run on DCC as well as DC. There were two from the same seller. Both listed as new and had a 'But It Now' price on it as well as 'Make An Offer'. They were listed as 'New' with a fairly high price. I had to do some research as while listed as new, one had a number on it that did not match the original box and the other had a box marked with no road #. I checked the road numbers on the  Fallen Flags website, and they were in the range for GP38 engines. The engines on the bottom looked new, maybe test run, so I made an offer and came off the price about a 1/3rd of the sell price. They accepted, a reduced shipping cost and they arrived in two days. 

First thing I did was to test it on DC. No problem and they ran very smooth. I happen to like these engines since the have a decoder in them, and it's easy to make the change to DCC and program them. Then I made the change to DCC. First one programmed was 7757 and no problem, moves in both directions, headlights work just fine. Next was 7783 and the change was made. However, when I went to program this engine, I saw a two digit engine number already in the decoder! It was programmed to #83, to match the last two digits on the engine. On further inspection, this engine originally had road # 7786 on it and they changed the 6 to a 3! Now I was a little angry. The seller has 100% reviews and has been around for quite some time with a high score. I reached out to them and told them that I was a little disappointed on what they advertised as new and that before I would file a negative reply and possibly send them back, I asked them what they could do to make this right and not make me return them. They asked me what I was looking for and I told them make me the offer. I wasn't looking to gouge them and I really wanted to keep the engines. I added that if they made a fair offer I would not post a negative review. Everything I detailed here I detailed to them as well. I had a number in mind, and when they came back with the offer, it was much better than I expected. I accepted, posted positive with no details of this transaction. I really didn't want to hurt someone like this as it's not in me. They were more than fair and let's face it, these engines run like a charm! They will be added as a consist and run together. When I host and the guys see Penn Central engines, the stories of the PC come out and we all have a good laugh, and more....

Look for all of these engines and freight cars on future blog posts.

Here's how Sir John creates these masterpieces at the Patti-O Paint Shop!

A huge 'THANK YOU SIR JOHN!' and the Patti-O Paint Shop for the great work you've done on my rolling stock. Now if I can only find a way to get him up here to actually run all of these....!!