{"id":150,"date":"2019-07-26T15:26:19","date_gmt":"2019-07-26T15:26:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/trains.matt5lot10.com\/?p=150"},"modified":"2019-07-26T15:44:09","modified_gmt":"2019-07-26T15:44:09","slug":"foto-friday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/trains.matt5lot10.com\/?p=150","title":{"rendered":"Foto Friday"},"content":{"rendered":"

With our vacation to France, and addition of Mr. Hobart to our family, we haven’t had a ton of time to work on the layout.\u00a0 Here’s a few photos documenting what we’ve been up to:<\/p>\n

Mr. Hobart himself:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

While Hobart is certainly a very sweet boy, he is nonetheless a puppy and one of his favorite activities is to abscond under the train table and look for things to chew on.\u00a0 As a result, I’ve had to block access under the table.\u00a0 Initially this was done with boxes and plastic container lids, but when I had time the other week, I built another “mini” shelf to block off the corner.\u00a0 Conveniently, the width of shelf fits Premier 18″ passenger cars perfectly:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

For the small gaps, my plan is to use some spare plywood and either stain or paint it – I’m also considering small skirts, but I’m not sure that will deter the little terror from going under the layout.<\/p>\n

After a meltdown (literally), I had to ship back my GP38-2 back to MTH for repair – it’s unclear what happened, but while on the track and powered up, the locomotive sounds started up on their own (despite being on a DCS-enabled track), then began distorting, then for the finale, a bit of acrid smoke leached out, and the locomotive shorted.\u00a0 It took a few months, but the locomotive has been returned to operation and is working better than ever:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I’m still running the UP excursion train on the main 1 – I have a UP RPO car waiting for me at Legacy Station<\/a>, I just haven’t had time to drop by to pick it up.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Lydia desperately wanted the Woodland Scenics post office, so we picked one up at Legacy Station and I got the buildings on the second level wired up – next up I need to wire up the street lamps<\/p>\n

\"\" \"\"<\/p>\n

My modus operandi is to typically check eBay once a week for anything interesting that pops up – being a sucker for tunnel motors, an MTH Premier UP SD40T-2 caught my eye.\u00a0 A little silly, as I already had a Lionel UP SD40T-2 that I picked up at a train show a couple of years back, but I was too tempted with MTH’s version and the fact it had PS3.\u00a0 I ended up winning the auction and am very pleased with the locomotive. After mulling it over, I decided to sell the Lionel SD40T-2 on eBay. I didn’t quite make my money back, but it helped offset the cost of the new MTH version:<\/p>\n

Side-by-side – Lionel in the foreground, MTH in the background<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

After having taken the Amtrak Crescent from Atlanta to NYC twice, I’ve been wanting to model the train we took up – unfortunately no O gauge manufacturers make Viewliners, which is what we rode in. MTH has however made Amfleet cars a number of times, so I picked up a set I had found on eBay, along with a modern Amtrak Mail car from trainz.com<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

In June, the missus and I took a trip to Belgium and France with some friends and we had the opportunity to ride a variety of TGVs – we really enjoyed the experience, it’s absolutely the best way to get around France! It’s quite a contrast to our experience on the Amtrak crescent – in France we averaged 280km\/h (173mph), whereas on the Crescent, we averaged 64km\/h (40mph).<\/p>\n

Thalys at Brussels Midi:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

TGV Duplex and TGV Sud-East at Gare de l’Est in Paris:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I would LOVE an O gauge model of a TGV – I’m keeping a close eye on MTH<\/a>‘s European lineup, but I don’t have my hopes high. I may use it as an opportunity to get into N-Scale (I’ve been toying with the idea of a coffee table layout), as Kato<\/a> makes a number of versions. Additionally, Kato also makes the Amtrak viewliner passenger cars, which are super tempting!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With our vacation to France, and addition of Mr. Hobart to our family, we haven’t had a ton of time to work on the layout.\u00a0 Here’s a few photos documenting what we’ve been up to: Mr. Hobart himself: While Hobart … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/trains.matt5lot10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/trains.matt5lot10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/trains.matt5lot10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trains.matt5lot10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trains.matt5lot10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=150"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/trains.matt5lot10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":164,"href":"https:\/\/trains.matt5lot10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150\/revisions\/164"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/trains.matt5lot10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trains.matt5lot10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trains.matt5lot10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}