In the blink of an eye, my 4x8 layout has become part of the Southern Pacific RR--Picture Added

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
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That’s right. The Southern Pacific has just bought up the trackage rights between Rock Ridge and Train City.

History. My layout was built and designed to be Hogwart’s complete with Diagon Alley and Kings Cross Station. However, my daughter and my son, who were the main impetus of this direction tired of the layout. My daughter actually built a nice structure and painted the bridge pylons. But she tired of the work. Then my son’s Bachman Hogwarts 4-6-0 self-destructed and even though I built him a replacement MDC 4-6-0, he was no longer interested. So I decided to revise the layout into an Old West theme. I had a vision as to what it would look like and I started building.

I got my son a 2-8-0 I was going to paint Hogwarts but he wouldn’t let me paint it.

Today, a structure billed as a water tank on eBay arrived. It is either scratch built or is part of a craftsman kit. The base is wood and well detailed. The tank is metal. The plumbing makes me think it could easily be deemed a fuel oil tank.

Southern Pacific ran oil fueled locos across So Cal in the 1890’s–I have many old time SP cars, and a old time 2-6-0 lettered in SP.

It seems so obvious now.

Now I have more research to do. Anyone know the color scheme of the old time SP 4-4-0s–before they went to grey black?

Here’s the culprets:

2

Were the 1917 satelite pics too grainy to tell anything?[:o)] (sorry couldn’t resist!)

Here’s a starting point anyway (apologies about the horizontal scroll this link causes):

http://www.google.com/search?as_q=1890+photos&num=10&hl=en&btnG=Google+Search&as_epq=Southern+Pacific+&as_oq=&as_eq=&lr=&as_ft=i&as_filetype=&as_qdr=all&as_occt=any&as_dt=i&as_sitesearch=&safe=images

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SpaceMouse… A real nice guy who always answers my e-mails.

I believe SP was black with a gunmetal silver nose and red window frames before it went to gray and red. Sorry I’m not much help. Good luck in finding what you’re looking for.

Tracklayer

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Thanks Ken. I’ll get to those tonight.

TL,

My 2-6-0 is painted in that scheme. I’m thinking before that. I have a Arbor 4-4-0 kit that all of a sudden needs to be built. First step is paint.

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great choice of railroads space mouse!..ESPEE all the way…most of the SP steamers were plain black, silver fire boxes, and SP gray roman numeral lettering…all the sp’s had basically three to four paint schemes …the black of course then the SP daylight colors of orange, black, scarlett, and SP light grey lettering and striping, then came the diesels…Alco PA’s also used the daylight scheme, then the early yard swithers used black wih orange safety stripes and SP light grey lettering and striping, then the black widow came out found on most GP-7’s & 9’s and the F-7’s …black, scarlett, orange, and silver with SP light grey lettering and striping…then the more recent were known as “bloody nose” consisting of SP light gray striping and lettering, scarlett, and SP dark grey which turned basically a “grimy black” color from the many hours of road use…chuck

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Chip,

This site will wet your SP appetite:

http://espee.railfan.net/espee.html

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Might as well paint is Armour Yellow and Harbor Mist! You might be the next acquisition!!

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Wow…what a change, Chip. From Harry Potter to hairy men…Hehe, I couldn’t resist. But you get what I’m saying…[;)]

I’m not much on old times, so I’m not going to be a good source of info…

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Re color schemes:

Check these out, oh rodent of the heavens. They’re more or less correct for the pre WWI period.

Detailed MDC 2-8-0 (SP class C-6 #2500). Note: I think he grayed it a little too much, but that’s just a personal opinion.

http://markschutzer.com/Old_Time_Consolidation/DSCN0567.htm

SP P1 4-6-2:

http://markschutzer.com/Pacific_P1/DSCN0582.htm

NOTE: Small lettering on cabs and loco numbers on tenders.

If you go to http://markschutzer.com/index.htm, you can explore around.

Andre

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That oil bunker is cool. I need to make about a zillion of them–at least 5 right away.

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Lemme help you clean that up a bit:

http://tinyurl.com/9ax77

I’ve found tinyurl to be really helpful in forum posting. Whatever web page you are on, just go to http://tinyurl.com and you can shorten
up the link considerably (as you can see [:D])

Ray out