#901 locomotive

The Athearn EMD GP7 arrived wednesday!

an older train that looks great and works very well is bringing the living room back to life again.

as i have said before the living room train has entertained the boys through their early years and even though a bit older they still enjoy the train making its rounds. since the chessie loco died the living room was really missing some of its vitality.

  yesterday i cleaned and polished the track. the track sat unused long enough that i had to dust then lightly touch it with a 600grit sand paper and then rail-zip the rails.

all is in order now.

you can see the telegraph lines i started reinstalling.

the rope light behind the train was a nice addition.

 one of my maybe near future projects is to rebuild the covered wooden bridge.

 this train house was a gift that had to be used somewhere. i do plan to rebuild the stilted platform sometime. 

i removed the old telegraph lines and started to install new ones. i use black thread. the only rub is that thread is near impossible to dust (it just balls up. yes, i just said "balls up") so i have to replace every now and then.

when i built the track around the top of the living room, i wanted it to have a furniture feel to it.

i decided to use wood, bamboo, copper, cork and waxed string.

here is an example. the telegraph poles. one bamboo skewer, split a quarter of the way down, inserted a copper triangle and tied off.

simple and clean.

telegraph pole 1

telegraph pole detail