Is $8 billion dollars enough to create a new high speed rail (HSR) system for the US? According to the Huffington Post this was added to the total package as a last minute deal, but Las Vegas is not included. Interestingly however, the map that the Huffington Post has in reference to their article has actually been on the U.S. Department of Transportation (US-DOT) Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) plans for some time now, in fact, the map is dated 2005 as found on their Corridor Descriptions web page. And the High Speed Ground Transportation for America commercial feasibility study (CFS) Report To Congress - September 1997, was written more than 11 years ago.
Now I am sure that a lot has changed since the 1997 CFS, cooridor descriptions and map were created, but this makes for a perfect starting point to develop a new plan with some start-up capital in building a new infrastructure for our future transportation needs. As of January 2002, the FRA has designated ten high-speed corridors under section 1010 of the Intermodal Surface Transportation Act of 1991 (ISTEA) and Section 1103(c) of the Transportation Efficiency Act for the 21st Century (TEA-21). Designation allows a corridor to receive specially targeted funding for highway-rail grade crossing safety improvements, and recognizes the corridor as a potential center of HSR activity. These designated corridors are shown on the map at the beginning of the document and are listed, generally from Southwest to Northeast.
I hope this actually becomes a reality, the US is sorely lacking a system of this type and would be a boon to passenger rail service in America!
This weekend I made my first attempt at weathering rolling stock using acrylic and enamel paints, Bragdon weathering powders and Testers Dullcoat. The hopper is an Accurail kit and it took about 4 hours from initial kit building to finishing up the weathering. This is an Airslide Center Flow (ACF) Kansas City Southern (KCS) hopper that was put into service in 1994 and is showing it's 15 years of use on the rails. One down and 200 + rolling stock to go...
Here is the before shot...
The image below is a High Dynamic Range Image (HDRI) and it is meant to approximate an early morning splash of orange sunrise.
This is the After shot...
Here are a few more images with some other weathered rolling stock too...
I also started a renovation on my grandfathers old Rock Island Pulpwood car. This piece of rolling stock is the only known surviving piece from his old HO layout from the 1950's, he took it down in the mid 1960's and donated it to a local Boy Scout troop in Alexandria, LA near where he lived in Pineville, LA. The decals had long since fallen off and it has some peeling paint and such, so I took the load off and sanded down the peeling paint, removed the trucks and repainted the shell. The pulp wood load is a bunch of old wooden matches that were cut to about 5' to 5 1/2' HO scale lengths and stacked and glued. I'll post some photos of the renovate and after when I get em sorted and loaded online. This is the Pulpwood car before I started the overhaul...
My grandfather had this piece on display on top of his dresser in his bedroom for years, I guess it was his only reminder of days gone by.
And another car I have, it's a BADX anhydrous ammonia tank car with a few tagging's on it....
Looks like the outlaws caught up with that one...
And thanks for checking out my work, really appreciate your comments too! Thanks!
After some thought on the matter the Piedmont Division (PD) will no longer feature the Kansas City Southern (KCS) railroad, but will added the Norfolk & Western (N&W) as it's replacement in the larger scheme. This change will be more fitting with the history of the initial formation of the Norfolk Southern (NS), which came out of the merger of the Southern (SOU) Railroad and Norfolk & Western in 1982. In adding the N&W as a replacement to the KCS I will emulate both rolling stock and motive power from the N&W heritage. All current KCS rolling stock that is in inventory will be saved for simulated through freight operations with the exception of passenger cars, however the motive power will be converted to either NS, SOU or Conrail heritage pieces.
With this decision to eliminate the KCS motive power comes a new project to convert them to NS and SOU road names. I have 7 pieces of KCS motive power units and all but 1 of them can be converted to either NS, SOU, Conrail or NW motive power. I will most likely strip the current paint schemes and re-paint them to NS and SOU schemes. The lone piece which will not be converted is the SD45T-2 unit, and since neither NS or SOU had tunnel units this one's fate is still yet to determined. Sell it? Keep it? Locobash it and make it a regular SD45? No decisions yet.
The 6 KCS pieces in inventory that will be converted are listed in the matrix below:
Located in Bryson City, NC just behind the Smoky Mountain Railroad station and depot this museum houses the largest collection of Lionel trains with over 7,000 pieces of locomotives, rolling stock, track side details and accessories. Some pieces dating back to 1918 and are displayed in enclosed floor to ceiling wall length cases.
We had the opportunity to tour the museum just prior to our departure on the Great Smoky Mountains Railroad excursion the morning of Friday, November 28, 2008, which is the day after Thanksgiving 2008.
This is my second video installment using editing techniques that I have newly employeed for use in post-production with added audio both music and oral commentary as well as transition frames, titles, and credits at the end.
On our family vacation during the Thanksgiving holiday 2008 we drove to Bryson City, NC early and I captured some video clips at the Great Smoky Mountain Railroad excursion on the morning of Friday, November 28, 2008. We arrived about 90 minutes prior to departure and we were able to witness the crew preparing the GP 9 for the trip. We also toured the Smoky Mountain Trains Museum before the departure, there is another video blog post on this massive collection and layout. The train departed Bryson City Depot at 1030 EDT and traveled to the Nantahala Outdoor Center (NOC) arriving around 1205 EDT then the GP9 moved along the siding to couple to the back of the consist for the trip back to Bryson City. Guests were allowed to walk around the NOC for about an hour then we departed at around 1310 EDT and returned to Bryson City Depot around 1430 EDT. I cobbled together some audio sound bites and added them to the original video based on some initial reviews of the first iteration of this video from the nice folks at the Model Railroad Hobbyist Magazine including Joe Fugate and others.
The image below is a High Dynamic Range Image (HDRI) and it is meant to approximate an early morning splash of orange sunrise.
This is the After shot...
Here are a few more images with some other weathered rolling stock too...
I also started a renovation on my grandfathers old Rock Island Pulpwood car. This piece of rolling stock is the only known surviving piece from his old HO layout from the 1950's, he took it down in the mid 1960's and donated it to a local Boy Scout troop in Alexandria, LA near where he lived in Pineville, LA. The decals had long since fallen off and it has some peeling paint and such, so I took the load off and sanded down the peeling paint, removed the trucks and repainted the shell. The pulp wood load is a bunch of old wooden matches that were cut to about 5' to 5 1/2' HO scale lengths and stacked and glued. I'll post some photos of the renovate and after when I get em sorted and loaded online. This is the Pulpwood car before I started the overhaul...
My grandfather had this piece on display on top of his dresser in his bedroom for years, I guess it was his only reminder of days gone by.
And another car I have, it's a BADX anhydrous ammonia tank car with a few tagging's on it....
Looks like the outlaws caught up with that one... 
And thanks for checking out my work, really appreciate your comments too! Thanks!