Rocking it on Godinez - The first Rock Island train hits the rails

After a busy weekend sent shifting boxes, unpacking boxes, repacking boxes and taking boxes to the charity shop... I finally cleared enough space in the man cave to start sorting out the rolling stock which has been accumulating over the years.  

First order of business was to get Godinez up and running again, this time with some Rock Island rolling stock instead of the random roadnames I usually run with.

I found I had put together a pretty respectable stack of Kadee rolling stock  from various second-hand purchases and ebay auctions, these gave me enough to run a pretty decent branchline train.  

 

The short Kadee hoppers are more suited to cement duty but a full-size grain car would dwarf the short spur track on the layout.

Once I was able to find my Proto GP9's one of them spent a good few hours testing the layout this evening.  The layout runs pretty well, aside from a slight connection problem that seems to affect the GP9 on one section of track. 

A GP30 handles the same section without any trouble, so I suspect the scenery is fouling the GP9 and causing it to lose pickup.

The good news is that the various accessories and crossing signal lights and audio still work, as do all the points.  The barrier gate and searchlight signal have given up the ghost and will need to be repaired.

I will strip and repaint the backdrop this summer while the weather is still dry.  It was originally covered in paper and the surface has bubbled over the years, a few coats of paint and some fine sandpaper should get the backdrop looking good as new. 

I will also need to refresh the trees and groundcover as some of it has seen better days.  I have plenty of woodland scenics in appropriate shades so I will be able to spruce things up without spending any extra cash.

Magazines on Doovd?

I recycled my collection of Model Railroader magazines as they were taking up too much space, I had a dozen years bound in official binders.  Turned out they had zero resale value as four listings on eBay didn't get any nibbles.

So of course, as soon as I dumped them I needed an article on the SD50, and I figured I would just go online and buy the 75 year DVD collection right?  Wrong.  Out of print and none in stock anywhere.  Turns out Kalmbach have replaced the DVD collection with a subscription service that runs alongside their regular subscription for an extra $3 per month.  Naturally there is no way to subscribe just the the archive, so the only way to read old back issues is either pay $36 per annum on top of a $60 subscription, or purchase back issues on eBay.

Good job Kalmbach.  Good.  Job.   Why not allow us to download individual issues for a small fee? Or give the option for a standalone archive subscription?

So I've been looking on eBay for a second hand copy of the DVD set for over a year and they just never seem to be listed, until finally this week someone put on up for sale.  £30 later and I have almost 900 issues of MR at my fingertips, including all the issues I missed in the 2000's while I wasn't active in the hobby.

The set comes on three DVDs housed in a regular plastic DVD case, with a single sheet of installation instructions.  The software is on the first DVD and the other two contain the actual magazines as individual locked PDF files.  Compatible with Windows Vista and Windows 7, the set is slightly cumbersome to use, and very slow to install, but as long as you know the issue you want (the Kalmbach website index comes in useful here as the DVD set search function is not much use) then it does work fairly well.

The magazine scans are a little low resolution and fuzzy, but perfectly readable - on a par with the Trainlife scans of Prototype Modeler, and apart from the plan drawing being a bit soft, they are mostly pretty good.  It definitely beats having a massive stack of heavy paper issues cluttering up the garage.