Diesel Paint Schemes- Part 1

In January of 1947, the Mechanical Department of the Chesapeake, Wheeling & Erie Railroad placed its first order for diesel locomotives. For a railroad that depended upon the shipment of coal for its livelihood, indeed its very survival, this was a difficult decision. But recent reports from other lines of the incredible performance of diesel locomotives versus their steam counterparts made the decision inevitable. Management owed it to the stockholders to at least evaluate the potential of these new machines.

In mid-1947, the first six of a total order of ten EMD NW2s arrived on the property. These units were assigned to the large coal loading facilities at Hunters Bay, VA and were used primary to shuttle coal between the massive coal storage yard and the loading wharves. This job had been handled by the railroads venerable Class S 0-8-0 switchers that were purchased from Alco in the mid-1930's. These locomotives were showing their age and the increase in post-war coal movements required additional power to handle the tonnage.

The paint scheme for the NW2s was the product of the designers at EMD. With input from management, the talented individuals at EMD selected an overall color of Pullman Green with a yellow stripe on the hood. The railroad's name was spelled out in white Railroad Roman letters on the hood above the yellow stripe and the CWE herald was placed in the stripe on the cab side. The locomotive number was placed above the stripe on the cab.

Impressed with the performance of this first group of locomotives, the railroad ordered a handful of additional switchers from its long time steam locomotive partner, American Locomotive Company. The first two Alco S2s arrived in June of 1948 and were assigned to the coal operation at Hunters Bay along with the NW2s. The S2s were painted in the same scheme as the NW2s but with the road number below the yellow cab instead of above it. 

By the end of the month, another three S2s joined the ten NW2s already at work keeping the coal moving at Hunters Bay. And the writing was on the wall- there would be no turning back. Dieselization of the railroad was inevitable. The first handful 0-8-0s were sent to Richmond to be scrapped in August of 1949.

A Fun Build

Perusing pictures of freight cars occasionally provides me with inspiration. Such was the case recently with an Atlas 53' Evans double plug door boxcar that I purchased some years ago. I bought it used and wasn't sure at the time if the paint scheme was correct or not. As I found out later, Atlas does a pretty good job of replicating prototype paint scheme and this car is a very good representation of the prototype. I stumbled across a few photos of this car on the Internet and it appeared to have a painted roof, or at least a significant amount of overspray of the orange on the sides. I didn't recall that being the case with the model, so I grabbed it to compare to the photos. Sure enough, the Atlas roof is painted to represent galvanized steel. It occurred to me that I could mix up a color close to the color on the sides and paint the roof. So armed with a little inspiration, I set off to get this car on the railroad.

The first step was to add cut levers. Plano Model Products makes a number of variations of the type used on cushioned underframes and this particular car has the Stanray style sliding cut bar. These come as a kit with five separate pieces for each lever. Having never built these before, I was a little apprehensive. However, everything fit together perfectly and the kit was much easier to construct than I anticipated. The photo below shows the cut bars. 

After adding A-Line stirrup steps, I painted the trucks and underframe with Rust-Oleum Weathered Wood color Roof Accessory Spray paint. This line of paint is dead flat and comes in several colors that are great for model railroading.

Next, I masked off the sides and ends and painted the roof. The color isn't an exact match, but a little weathering goes a long way toward making it appear to be correct. The photo below shows the roof.

I added an ACI label, sprayed the entire car with Dullcote, and then weathered it lightly using artist's acrylics and Pan Pastels. This car was built in 1974 and wouldn't have had time to acquire much dirt and grime by 1976.

This was a fun build and the chance to add some prototype details to a ready-to-run freight car.

Of Heralds and Paint Schemes

It all started innocently enough. There is a group of us that are interested in coal hauling railroads and we trade emails back in forth. The topic of Alco RS3s on the L&N came up and there were a number of great photos posted. I made the comment that I just might add a couple of RS3s to the roster for a mine run. And that was the start of an amazing deep dive into the railroad's locomotive history and some beautiful first generation diesel paint schemes.

Before I go any further, let me introduce Dan Borque. As I'm sure many of you know, he is the owner and proprietor of the Appalachian Railroad Modeling website and you can find it here:  https://appalachianrailroadmodeling.com/. If you haven't checked out this site, you need to- it's filled with beautiful models, great prototype information and stories, and more track plans than you will ever find in one place. Dan is one of the most prolific track planners in model railroading and his plans have been featured in many publications. He is also an incredibly skilled modeler who is currently working on the St. Charles Branch of the Southern Railway. Here's a link to the website: https://appalachianrailroadmodeling.com/stcharlesbranch/. 

So shortly after the comment about the RS3s, Dan mentioned that it might be neat to do an "an Alco-designed lacquer scheme with lots of curves and stripes and a more practical grey and yellow for repaints." The next thing I know, there's a great looking picture of an RS3 in the proposed as-delivered paint scheme. After some input from the group and some back and forth between the two of us, Dan came up with what you see below.

Dan found some beautiful locomotive line drawings that are the work of Will Anderson. With a little bit of manipulation, he was able to add color to the drawings. Note that he also added credits at the bottom of the print.

In short order, Dan was working on the original scheme for the F units, the GPs, and a herald. Somewhere in all of this I provided him with the first diesel roster that I had developed when I originally planned the railroad along with a much later version. Dan then asked if I had ever done an analysis of total horsepower versus number of units over the years. This led to a deep dive into the roster- models, years acquired, numbers, horsepower, retirements, paint schemes- for the period from initial dieselization through August, 1976. The Excel spreadsheet that Dan prepared with all of this information is simply amazing.

There is much more to come on all of this. And I still can't believe I was fortune enough to have someone with Dan's talent pull all of this information together and develop such great looking paint schemes. But for now, I'll leave you with the steam era herald that Dan developed.

"Cause there's a fat man..."

No, not in the bathtub, but in the railroad room. During a recent op session, there were several instances of turnouts being thrown inadvertently. From all available evidence, it appears these were the result of a crew member bumping up against one of the pushbuttons on the panels. It one instance, it caused a massive derailment of a westbound MT coal train. And in fact, one crew member wrote up an occurrence, stating that he had actually observed a protruding belly commit one of these infractions.

The unnamed crew member who observed the pushbutton faux pas suggested a possible solution to the problem. His idea was to make clear cover with finger holes for the pushbuttons. I had some leftover Lexan clear plastic from a previous project, so I got to work.

The first step was to print out a copy of the panel to use as a template. I then measured the distance from the top of the pushbutton to the panel, substracted the width of the Lexan, and made stand-offs from Evergreen styrene tubing. Add some nuts and bolts and you have what you see below.

A close-up view of the Panel Protector (patent pending) shows the distance between the cover and the top of the pushbuttons.

I need one more of these for the panel at Summit Springs. Crews working the mines there need to lean in a bit to reach the cars and it would be easy to bump one of the pushbuttons while working a cut of cars. 

Now I just have to hope that the fingers of the fa.. er, waist challenged crew members will fit through the holes in the covers!

Track Plan

The CWE was featured in the June 2016 issue of Railroad Model Craftsman and the article included a beautiful track plan drawn by then editor Stephen Priest. I recently received permission from Otto Vondrak, the current editor of RMC, to post the plan on the blog with proper accreditation.  So here it is!

©2016-2020 White River Productions, illustration by Stephen Priest. Used with permission.

This plan is the result of Stephen's amazing talent and interest in the railroad, and I'm grateful to him and the folks at White River Productions for taking the time to make this happen.

Introducing... Hardy Coal Sales!

Some time ago, Anthony Hardy sent around a photo of a unique operation in the CSX yard at Ravenna, KY. Here's the photo along with his description:

Basically though what the operation consisted of was an old backhoe that permanently sat on an flatbed truck with no doors and beat up dump truck. And of course a siding.

CSX had a weigh in motion scale at Pryse about 4-5 miles from Ravenna yard. Sometimes they'd catch a car that was overloaded. Not every train...but somewhat a common occurrence. Just like a bad order, those cars had to be set out and corrected before they could continue.

Yard crew would work the train to pull the overloads, then set them out on the siding, which of course the crews referred to as "the overload track".

A local contractor, last name was Ballard, used the rear scoop from the backhoe to pull enough coal from the car to bring it into compliance. The coal was put in the old dump truck, then dumped on site. The dump truck was not used on the road, just onsite. There wasn't even a windshield in the dump truck.

My understanding is that the contractor was given the coal in exchange for making the car 'legal'. After enough was collected, they would sell the coal, bring in a tractor trailer truck, and bring a front end loader, and load out 2-3 truckloads of coal. I don't know who they sold it to...probably spot market stuff. I never saw them load it back into hopper cars, but that would be definitely plausible for shipment.

I also did see one time a centerbeam flat car loaded with fabricated i-beam floor joists spotted there. I don't know if the car was overloaded or if it got set out for some other reason but I can see where any heavy bulk load 'could' be overloaded. That was the only time I ever saw anything besides a coal hopper spotted there.

The other interesting thing was when the cars were lightened, many times they were part of a privately owned unit train. However, they would not get tied back on to that train next time it came through. It normally would leave via the one regular mixed freight that originated at Ravenna. So you'd see one or two aluminum rapid discharge cars leaving on a mixed freight.

It was a neat little operation for sure!

Of course, something like this just screams to be modeled, and I had planned on doing just that. The biggest challenge was finding the right backhoe and truck for my 1976 era. I spent some time searching the Internet but was unable to find anything that would work. Then Anthony came to my rescue with a picture of a backhoe made by GHQ Models and a link to their website. While the company is primarily a manufacturer of wargame models, they have a very nice line of HO scale kits of construction and farming equipment. Here's a link to the website: https://www.ghqmodels.com/ . I promptly ordered the backhoe kit and the project was on!

For the truck, I have a collection of old Roco military models that belonged to my father. One of the deuce and a half trucks seemed to be the perfect candidate as you could often find those in all types of service after they were sold by the military. Several modifications were made to the truck. The front axle was moved forward slightly in order to more closely match the prototype appearance and the sides of the bed were cut back to accommodate the outriggers. 

Modifications to the backhoe included removing the arms for the front bucket. As can be seen in Anthony's photo, the bucket has been removed and the front wheels have been turned in order to get the backhoe as far forward in the truck bed as possible. The photo below shows the truck and backhoe after being painted.

Next, the equipment was weathered using artist's oils and turpenoid. The pieces above were weathered separately as I wanted to make sure I could get into areas that might be blocked or difficult to reach once the vehicles were assembled. The photo below shows the results.

Finding a location for the operation was the easy part. There was an area of North Pierce that had never been finished because I couldn't decide what to do with it. One idea was to add an old boxcar as a storage shed. I also considered adding another building of some sort. And I was never really happy with the way the scenery around the truck loader turned out. There just wasn't enough coal on the ground around the structure and the tracks. The photo below shows how the area looked.

This area would be perfect- enough room for the equipment and coal on the ground and a place to spot a loaded hopper on the spur to the tipple. So the next step was to redo the scenery in the area. I used a combination of different colored grouts and real coal for the ground cover. The photo below shows the completed scene.

And here's a closeup of the truck and backhoe. Note that the outriggers have been added to keep the whole mess from tipping over!

Of course, there has to be some kind of paperwork for the crews alerting them to the overweight cars. Using the template I have for waybills, I made up some "OVERWEIGHT" inserts that can be slipped into the plastic waybill sleeve. The photo below shows a typical coal waybill along with one that has been marked as overweight. Note that it includes where the car should be set out along the line and the location at North Pierce with the TIBS alpha numeric code (Hardy Coal Sales N16). Crews will now need to be on the lookout for Overweight cars in addition to Bad Order cars

The photo below shows the MT's spotted at the tipple and the first loaded hopper ready to be relieved of some coal.

As for the name of the operation, it seemed only appropriate to call it Hardy Coal Sales. After all, it would never have happened without Anthony's photo, background info and help in finding a suitable backhoe. And if you know Anthony, then you know he has a wonderful sense of humor. When he originally passed around the email, he titled it "Ballard's Coal Scooper Outer." So this operation, while formally named Hardy Coal Sales, will most likely be referred to by the crews as the Scooper Outer!

Bunk House Update

 Now that the sailboat is put away for the season, it's time to get back to work on the railroad. I did manage to get a few things done over the summer, including some progress on the bunkhouses mentioned in a previous post. The photo below shows the current state of completion.

The tabs over the porches will be used to attach the porch roofs which can be seen in the middle left of the photo. The 2x4's that were painted the same color as the bunk houses will be used for the porch railing. The next photo shows the scratch-built doors.

These two structures will be located to the west of the yard office at Nelsonville. The photo below shows the area. The back of the buildings will be supported by posts in the same fashion as the section houses at Quinnimont. 

And now for a sneak peak at what will be a new "industry" on the railroad. 

More to follow on this exciting project in the near future!