I recently picked up another couple of cars from my local hobby shop (impulse purchase while waiting for my Tsunami decoders to arrive).

I was amazed at the amount of detail available on this 3 bay offset hopper from Athearn.

I also picked up an Athearn stock car.

After these pictures I took my usual steps and replaced the couplers with Kadees and painted the metal wheels.

I still need to weather them.

I have spent the last couple of days working on trees.  I borrowed a tree making machine and have started making armatures for evergreen type trees.  The machine helps in making the bottle brush type of trees.  It helps by twisting a pair of wires around fibers cut from hemp rope.  After twisting the wire the armatures get cut into tree shapes.  So far I have only rough cut one tree, but the results are stunning even before painting and flocking.  I intend to purchase one of these machines as soon as I can.  Until then I will twist as many as I can.  Half will be for my home layout, the Get Out and Push railroad, and the other half will be for the San Leandro Historical Railway Society.

I went down to the San Leandro Historical Railway Society last night for our normal Tuesday open hours.  I took the storage box I spent the last couple of days down with me.  Luckily, it fit in a decent location under the layout.  I have only three drawers in so far, but it looks like it will contain my entire collection with room to spare.

I also took the second building for the Del Monte plant for the San Leandro portion of the layout.  I had added roof details and completed some of the final details over the last couple of days.  The I still need to add the interior office and warehouse details and lighting.

I spent the rest of the evening test running my new Athearn Genesis GP-9.  It pulled a decent mixed freight train through the layout, but eventually skidded out when attempting to go up the helix at a 2% grade and a fairly sharp corner.  Overall I am very pleased with the operation and sound of this model.

I need to purchase the material to complete the shelves for my storage box.

I went down to the San Leandro Historical Railway Society last night for our normal Tuesday open hours.  I was able to run my new Genesis GP9 after I set it up using Decoder Pro (much easier to set all the variables and I still don’t have it set up at home).  I pulled two reefers and a caboose around the entire layout and switched in Colfax.  Overall it ran really well, no major hiccups other than the caboose kept derailing (need to check the weight I think).

Overall an excellent model for the price.

I hope that everyone had a good Christmas, I certainly did. The major gift that I received from my wife was a table saw.  She got it at a really good price through Lowes, it is a Skil 15amp with a 10″ blade.  It has a stand to bring it up to the correct height.   One of the best things about it is that it stores all of the guards and accessories under the main table so they don’t get lost.  Thanks also to my father in law for the help in picking it out.

I also received a small rechargeable drill, which will come in handy when I start on the scenery and need to drill a bunch of small holes.

Today I purchased a new locomotive, an Athearn Genesis Gp9 with the Tsunami sound in the Southern Pacific with the Black Widow paint scheme.  It will be nice to have a diesel with a sound decoder, and even better is to have a road switcher than I can use during the ops sessions (correct horn signals, etc.).