2026 UPDATE: On 10/20/2024 I gave a virtual presentation to the Potomac Division of the NMRA on upgrading the Proto 2000 GP7/9 three different ways. I go over this installation method as well as a couple other ideas. Check it out!
My friend, Tom Matty, who models the Thomas Sub of the Western Maryland Ry, a very skilled and talented modeler, offered to do a writeup of how he re-motors an old Proto2000 GP7/GP9 with a much higher quality Kato drive. It involves milling the frame, fitting the motor, linkages and worm gears and then installing your favorite flavor of DCC/sound. (we won’t cover the DCC installation here today). Tom gave me permission to post his process on the blog so I figured I’d share it with everyone who may be interested in this fantastic upgrade.
Parts needed:
1x Kato 956010 Motor with Flywheels and old style Motor Mount (1ea)
1x Athearn ATH90116 HO Dog Bone .805” F7A/B/FP7 Rear, 6 per pack
2x Athearn ATH34128 HO Worm Assembly, High Performance, 1 per pack
Photo from 2018. Not much has changed with it since then.
As you may or may not know, I have a helix to connect the upper and lower decks of my Georgetown Branch layout. I built the helix ages ago, back in 2003 for my previous layout. It was designed to fit below a set of stairs and as such is relatively tight, with 19.5″ radius curves and a 2.9% grade. (yikes!) Thankfully I mostly run small B+B locomotives! One thing that is lacking is any sort of protection for the trains as they traverse the helix from falling off the edge and cascading to the floor. I thought about cardboard or mat board strips but decided against them as I didn’t like the idea that they would crease or break if I had to reach in to re-rail a train. I have been kicking this idea around for ages and recently had the idea of using polypropylene folders. These are the flexible-yet-stiff plastic folders you find in a lot of school binders. When I was cleaning out a supply cabinet, I found a stash of old folders from my son’s grade school days. Perfect. So I got around to testing this out.
A nice stash of folders to slice up. I’ve got the entire outside and inside of the helix to wrap, so I will need several.
I first remove the inner folder piece (seen in the photo above as a lighter green) and then set the edge of the folder against a sheet of glass and lay my steel ruler down atop it. I then score until the sheet is cut through.
Next, lay the strips on the side of the roadbed, keeping it parallel to the bottom, and use a staple gun to fasten to the plywood.
Some of the staples will not go in all the way and I tapped them in with a hammer. Occasionally I would miss and have to remove the staple with a screwdriver and try again. I really like the way this is turning out.
Purple Line construction on the Rock Creek bridges. View is west, and in the distance you can see the new tunnels beneath Jones Mill Rd. Previously, the railroad crossed at grade. In 2019, after demolishing the trestle, they lowered the right of way and began construction of two new bridges across the Creek. From Facebook.This view from the 1990s and part of the Coalition For The Capital Crescent Trail collection, is a similar view from the years when the railroad was out of service.
The last several weeks proved to be some of the busiest for me at work and as such progress has slowed. Today, however, I tackled another milestone – completing all of the assembly for the trestle structure itself. I tacked on the final bracing, stringers and girts to complete the lower section. Here’s a few photos of what it’s looking like:
This means that the to-do list is getting shorter and shorter. Here are a few highlights of what’s left:
NBW castings on the side-facing stringers and beams. This will take a good amount of time as I will have to drill and install each one. Much like what I did on the bents, but a bit fewer. I’m not going to install NBW castings on the inner facing beams due to the difficulty in placing them in such tight spaces.
Attach a brace to the bottom of the middle two bents. This will serve as support when the model is turned upright.
Build a sort of cradle to hold the bridge when upright.
Remove bridge from base and flip upright onto cradle/steps.
Build two emergency platforms on the top side.
Install the two beams that run atop the deck parallel to the track, install NBW castings.
Install bracing/walkways that run along top of bents.
Weather and install on layout.
Build and install bracing around lower center bents and cribbing for the ends.
Exactly one month since my last update and I’ve made some great progress on the Rock Creek trestle model that I’d like to share.
All bents are installed and the model is ready for bracing and stringers to be installed.
On Friday I built a sled/jig thing to facilitate installing the bents perpendicular and square. More on this in a moment. First up, I needed to flip the top of the bridge over, as it was mounted with track side up. I then took the opportunity to extend the lines that indicated where the bents would be installed, as this would guide my sled/jig later. I also measured where I wanted the straight edge to be and installed it with double-sided tape.
I placed small rectangles of double-sided tape where the rails would lay. Aligned the rails to the plans and pressed gently to set in place over the plans.
Next it was time to install the center deck girder section (which I had previously built, painted, weathered and installed ties and tie plates). I prepared some 5-min epoxy and lightly brushed it to the back side of the rails. I carefully positioned the bridge in place and weighed it down while the glue dried.
Getting ready to fasten deck girder to rails with epoxy.Weights holding deck girder center section down on the rails while glue dries.
I then completed the blocking around the deck girder.
Close up of the blocking around the deck girder bridge section.
The sled/jig allowed for me to install the bents perpendicular and square to the base. This took a bit of finagling to get set up properly but made the job go fast once the system was in place.
Sled for aligning bents. Rides along straight edge. Overall view of sled and plans. Sled in action, installing bents.
Halfway there!
Nearly done with the East end. When I reached the center, I flipped the sled around and faced the center section to install the two bents at the end.
And here we are with the completed bents. It’s looking pretty good!
If you flip over the photo you can sort of get a feel for what the completed model will look like.
Ok – that’s all for now. I’m very pleased with how this is coming along and up next I’ll be installing all of the stringers and girts to get this over the finish line! Stay tuned…
Rich Pearlman shared these four photos with me that he shot as a kid in Bethesda. The car is sitting on what was the passing siding/team track in Bethesda. Thanks to some wonderful sleuthing by folks over on the Freight Car Enthusiasts Facebook Group, the car was identified. This is a General American Railcar 40′ mechanical refrigerator car, built 9/1957. I can’t read the rebuild date but similar cars have dates in the 1971-75 range. I also can’t make out the reporting marks, but I believe they are URTX based on what the FB group revealed and other photos that are online of similar cars.
This is an oddball to me. This refrigerator car parked in the yard in downtown Bethesda. Why? At this point, I don’t know what industry was left in Bethesda. I don’t think Maloney was even receiving rail cars at this point and most of the others had departed long ago. There was some LCL service and I’m assuming that’s what this was. But for who? And what was it transporting? A mystery that will likely go unsolved. Would love to hear your thoughts! And, thanks again, Rich!
Over on Lance Mindheim’s wonderful blog, he developed a track plan design for the Georgetown Waterfront that fits on a small L-shaped shelf. I really like this plan and think it captures the essence of the waterfront in a very small space. For me, the most fascinating thing about the waterfront in its heyday was the multitude of industries and how the B&O served them.
The track plan covers a lot of the industries and yards represented in Georgetown and would make for engaging and interesting operations. I could see the Georgetown Turn has left its string of cars on the long siding (staging) and the switcher is tasked to pull the cars onto K St. and begin classifying them. Meanwhile the empties are being rounded up and built into a train for the Turn to bring back to Eckington. These cars would be spotted on the staging track. The switcher then goes back to focusing on spotting all the loads that just came in. If another track could be added to the staging yard, a second “Georgetown Turn” train could be spotted there for the switcher to pull into town and work on, as the cycle would start again. Hours of work here to do. I dig it!
I know I haven’t posted in a while but as the Spring approaches, things are getting busy around here. Work has been nuts. HPDE season is upon us and I’ve got my first event at Summit Point with the Audi Club this coming weekend. Track prep time! Here’s the update:
Layout progress has been focused on cleaning up, organizing and working on the Rock Creek trestle, as well as devoting a large amount of time to working out the operations scheme in JMRI Operations Pro, with lots of help from Kelly R. The cleaning and organization tasks were accelerated by a visit from Ken & Bill from Spring Mills Depot. Ken and I chatted at the Springfield show and decided to get together to see each others’ layouts and share progress and lessons learned. It’s been very motivational seeing what Ken is doing and having them visit my layout to talk about my own process and future goals. I’ve got lots of good energy to move forward with.
I drove up from MD to Springfield to attend the big show with my cousin Eric. Here’s the status on the evening of the first day. It wasn’t too bad in Springfield compared to eastern MA, but it was still an adventure!
Coupled with the layout visitors, I have also been selling a lot of extra stuff on eBay. Over the last year or so I’ve really culled a lot of rolling stock and material from my collection. Much of it was sold at the GSMTS Timonium show, but much of it has been sold via eBay. As I clean and dig through my things, I find more and more to list for sale which really helps motivate me to continue to refine my focus and standards for the layout. Also, the sales help pay for the layout materials and new freight cars that I come across. Here’s a photo of the layout from a month or so ago:
The layout became staging for eBay sales for a few weeks.
JMRI progress has been a real roller coaster. Yesterday morning, in a fit of frustration, I was ready to swear off the program (both literally and figuratively) after running up against a string of constant, baffling errors. Kelly talked me off the ledge and offered to help rebuild and refine my layout concept in the software. I’ve realized that JMRI is going to be the best solution for what I want to do with the operations scheme on my layout; it offers pretty much all that I want, even though I have a long way to go before I get to my goal. I do have a document which outlines all of my “givens & druthers” as well as rules, specs and other details about my scheme. This will be published later for anyone who’s interested. Also, if anyone wants to talk Operations or JMRI, please reach out! I’m neck-deep.
A byproduct of the layout visitors and the JMRI work I’ve been doing was that I put together manifests for four trains that I refer to as the “Bethesda Turn”, since Bethesda is as far as the track currently goes on my layout. After the visit, I ran these four trains as I intend to run most of my trains, and it was fantastic. Yeah, not all the switch machines are in place, and some of the frogs aren’t wired, but the overall feeling of what it will be like to operate the layout was there, and it was really cool. A taste of things to come.
I find that in this hobby it’s important to have active projects in different areas of the hobby to keep things interesting. Last month when I got tired of installing DCC decoders and building trestle bents I switched over to building a freight car kit. The one I chose from my shelf-o-unbuilt-kits was an old Intermountain PS-1 50′ Double Door Box Car lettered for Southern Pacific #650159, kit #40607-10, with a 1955 build date; just inside my era. I found this kit on the shelf at the Annapolis area LHS, Star Hobby, for a had-to-have-it price of $10. Side note: I-M seems to be taking reservations for a re-release of this kit right now!
Trimming the grab irons from the sprue. A fresh blade was a necessity here.
I hadn’t put together a challenging kit like this in many years and I had a blast. I upgraded it with a Kadee Apex running board, some Tichy end grabs and Tangent ASF A-3 wheel sets. (The prototype apparently had Symington-Gould A-3 trucks, but I haven’t found a manufacturer for those in HO.) The kit didn’t come with instructions, but thankfully I found some on the I-M website. It’s really nice they put the instruction manuals up on their site!
This particular bracket decided to liberate itself into thin air as I was attempting to install it. I searched and searched and eventually gave up. The next day, I found it nearly straight away below my workbench. Huzzah!
Car weights came in the form of wheel weights I collect off the ground at track day events, which I glued to the interior floor with Liquid Nails. The body was badly warped at the top and required careful attention to straighten when gluing to the roof. The doors were also ever-so-slightly warped but once in place looked fine. All in all, a neat car. I don’t have many 50′ cars so this one will look nice delivering lumber to Galliher Lumber in Georgetown.
Lastly, a word about the NMRA Achievement Program (AP). Over the winter I was inspired to begin participation in the various AP areas. A few of the folks in my club are diving in and working toward their MMR so I figured I’d join the journey. So far, not a whole lot of movement on my end. I’ve started organizing and reading through the materials but that’s about it for now. I just haven’t been making this a priority, as I’ve had other things going on requiring attention. However, I have been taking photos of some of my projects in preparation for writing up articles. I will definitely post links here once that materializes. For now, I’ll keep planning and aligning my modeling efforts with the various AP certification qualifications. I think of it like merit badges for adult model railroaders. I’m enjoying the challenge!
Like I said, this is just a quick, off the top of my head update. I am hoping to be able to post more, but with work being so busy and other things vying for my time, I do what I can when I can. Be well and keep in touch!
B&O 9725-1 Silver Springs [sic] MD 04-05-66, By RNS
This wonderful photo by Russ Strodtz on Flickr came via Jeffrey Sessa over on the Maryland Division Railfans FB group. My money is on the train likely being a load of empties coming off the branch, perhaps from Maloney in Georgetown or Bethesda. Curious if they’ll pick up some cars from the Junction and head East or pick up loads and head back to Georgetown. REALLY neat view of the E.C. Keys lumber shed in the background. Gives me some great info for when I build that model! Thanks, Jeffrey!
