I watched another installment of Trains and Locos on RFD-TV last nite and saw something I thought was interesting.
The first segment was about private rail cars, some from the Super Chief, Broadway Limited and Hiawatha. These cars were used for excursions and for conventions, and were made into trains that were pulled by various motive power from several railroads.
It ocurred to me that this would be an excellent subject to model…various types and roadnames of coaches, observation and dining cars all hooked up behind whatever power you wanted.
Seems like there would be endless possibilities and a chance to mix-n-match all those passenger cars we seem to have lying around.
What was the second segment about? I started watching the 2:00am (or was it 3:00am?) airing and fell asleep after the private railcars. Was very interesting and would make for an interesting train and to think it could be run on modern era layouts. That one tail-end car (forget what it was called) with ALL those little windows was especially neat.
I agree completely. I want to run a steam excursion train on my semi modern layout. I was going to use all green Pullman heavy weights. But after seeing a few shows, I figure if the prototypes mix and match, why not I.
RFD stands for Rural Free Delivery, and is a channel that Directv customers get that shows an assortment of rural type shows including animal auctions, country and blue grass music, farm equipment, train and model railroading specials, etc. Here where I live it’s channel 379. I’ve recorded probably over 50 or 60 hours worth of train related programs off of it over the last three years…
I enjoy T&L. I’ve recorded lots of episodes over the last 6 or 8 months. I wish they had more modern stuff, instead of mostly reruns, though. I’ve got a friend that’s a traction nut, so I recorded him a whole tape of trolley and traction episodes and sent it to him.
Last year, or maybe the year before that…RFD-TV had some really good modern Trains and Locos shows on. Lots of modern stuff, and some yard ops. This year it’s been mostly steam and ‘‘transition era’’ videos.
Some of the videos of the modern equipment were Herron company videos that are well done and give you lots of info. Excellent for research and giving you ideas on layouts and ops.
I think that each year the station buys rights to show videos and they pick what they think folks might like, they do a good job for the most part and all of the videos are informative.
If you’d like to see more modern diesel vidoes you might drop them an email and let them know, I’m sure they would welcome any input from viewers.
LD357-They seem to group things a month at a time. It seemed like one month was all traction. The next was steam switching. It seems like this month has been early diesels.
This is a small station that listens to it’s viewers. They post a survey about once a year when it’s time to buy new programming. I guess more people wanted to see 6 hour blocks of auction cattle on parade this year than trains.[V]
[(-D] Yeah I saw the cattle auctions on in place of interesting stuff. I guess if your job is cows then you might be interested, my only interest in cows is when they’re grilled and sometimes fried! [C=:-)][dinner]
…And occasionally having to call the neighbor and tell him that some of his steak-on-the-hoof is in my yard. [(-D].
I “herd” that! My neighbor left his gate open and I had 6 cows in my front yard. They ate a bunch of flowers and plants and licked a few windows that they could reach. They actually climbed the steps up onto my front porch and ate the potted ferns! I had cow crap everywhere!
I have been trying to get our Cable company to carry the RFD channel here in MA for over 5 years without any success, 999 channels, most of which are crapola, and we can’t get the ones we want. NICE !!!
Don’t feel rained on. Every time I turn around one of my neighbors cows has jumped the fence and is standing outside of the window looking in at me and chewing her cud. I try and keep peace by not blowing my stack about it, but it’s hard to do when they leave patties all over the place and six inch deep holes where they step in soft ground out in the yard… Dang it!. Oh well. This is Texas after all.
You All aught to get yourselves some Geese. They do a great job dispersing cow patties. Of course then you have the goose poop to contend with, but at least it’s smaller. [(-D]
We raise miniature Zebu cows. My wife is really into bottle babies, and I admit they are pretty cute little critters.
As for RFDTV…it sure doesn’t hurt for as many folks as possible to e-mail them requesting more train shows, for both full scale and models (they call them Toy Trains). I do several times a year, for what it’s worth.
RFDTV, my friend, is a satellite only network; on 1 November they are activating RFDHD and maybe we will see more railroad oriented programming then; their promo for this new network - and this may just be puff, of course - claims much more additional programming. It is supposed to be on Channel 400 something on Dishnetwork - don’t know where it’s going to be on Direct!
One of the things I like about the new “Hiawatha” cars coming out from Walthers is that a couple of them are models of cars currently owned by the “Friends of 261” and are used on railfan trips behind ex-Milw 4-8-4 no.261 and rented out for other trips too. For example the “postergirl” of the new Walthers line, the “Cedar Rapids” obs car, is one of the 261 cars. These cars have been seen throughout the country - see the recent coverstory in Trains.
I rode in these cars on a fantrip on the old Erie Mining Co. line in northern MN, behind an EMCO F-9, DMIR SD-18, and Soo Line FP-7 about 5 years ago. [:)]