Tolga's Railroad Repository

A last minute Christmas surprise, you could say. Since I abandoned any intent to build the FEC in LEGO bricks, that of which is coming back, and if anyone happens to remember, the two FEC SD70M-2s I considered active were stored, #100 and #106. #106 is already in shambles and not going to be rebuilt. #100 sat in a corner in my room by the computer. Well, #100 is rebuilt. It became a brief parts source and lost its trucks, radiator (somehow), and tail end. All were reinstalled and now the unit is back in running service on my annual Christmas layout. Image of the old #100: It got a new cab window design in late 2008 but now with it came a whole herd of dark blue that I scored within the past year, plus a newly assembled radiator.  Soon, the unit will get more adjustments. It will lose two plates vertically mainly off the yellow section to be more proportional. Even though the unit will leave the FEC in real life, I think this is a unit that deserves a permanent pla...

Eurobricks member Just2Good posted a slideshow of these sets and I thank him for taking the time to do so. I really like this line of sets. All repetitions aside, there are a select few that really stand out: 60076 Demolition Site - Don't think this is a first for City, but still a very creative and lucrative set. Really love the crane, uses classic arm parts previously seen in the 4565 Freight & Crane Railway, as well as the treads from Indiana Jones (Jungle Cutter) - which really eliminates juniorization from it. 60081 Tow Truck - While the tow truck is repetitive at best, and I already have two from 2013 and 2014 lines, at least this one uses a lot of SNOT technique and just looks very detailed. While still 6-12 material, I like ow the technique is continually used. It's very Road Rangers-esque. 60067 Helicopter Pursuit - I should call it Everglades pursuit ... feels very set in a South Florida environment LOL. While I don't particularly plan to invest in ...

The return of the academic year for me means the Holiday season is fast approaching. At this point in the year it is not too early, rather just right to begin conceiving how the annual Holiday display I do shall look this year. Past photos of the mostly suburban layout available here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/brickbuilder711/sets/72157637527799965/ This list of projects for the Fall-Winter is not limited to what's going under the tree but does set up well for that layout: Promenade resort and night club. The big centerpiece for the holiday display will be a beach resort with an outdoor version of a nightclub, probably similar in essence to LIV Miami. It will join a strip of a marina on the left side, hotel in the center, and lead to a beach on the right. The beach could be parallel to a double track section of LEGO track that turns around at the end. Similar in essence to Escambia Bay, FL or even stretches of the Pacific Surfliner. I even anticipate installing state of...

Not that it is going to last, but by utterly dumb luck I found a cleared lot on SW 2nd Street in the spur that CSX uses to deliver cars for Amerigas, that affords a decent vantage point of switching operations for the customer. This came up as I was chasing the shoving local, O717, which as some may know I have been trying and trying to model in HO Scale, when killing time waiting on a "coal train that never came". The very interesting thing is, this is a brand new spot, if you will. According to Google Earth, under seven months ago there were buildings there, but someone bought the land and razed the heck out of it. Here is a Street View image of the place circa 2011. What's also fascinating is a long ripped lead that involved delivering cars inside a warehouse. For industrial development and simply on the zoning of the property, this is prime real estate so let's hope some rail served business comes up. A multi spot boxcar warehouse could be a perfect ...

Recently, as with many developments, opposition has tried to bite All Aboard Florida's project bringing intercity passenger service between Miami and Orlando. People have a fancy for distorting the truth about what the project plans to do and bring to the communities involved. My efforts were combined with the High Speed Rail America Club to produce a video contesting the top 5 butchered claims about the system. Here is a summary of the top 5 misconceptions about the service: 5. All Aboard Florida will cause economic impact. There is no logical way that a city's economic health can be ruined. In fact, the contrary, due to the easier logistics and added service/hospitality that is to follow. 4. All Aboard Florida is Publicly Funded. All Aboard Florida's only gov't involvement is a loan. Other than that it is simply 100% private, run by FECI which is in the Private Sector. 3. All Aboard Florida is Noisy. Any noise impact by a light nine-car trainset cannot match ...

Friends; Many of us are aware and know that the current passenger rail system in the United States is not exactly living up to  systems that are seen throughout the world .  The High Speed Rail America Club is a group chartered within Florida International University and aims to bring high speed rail to the United States. While admittedly such a system is difficult, costly, and takes time to execute, it is NOT impossible, and quoting university president Mark Rosenberg, we as people have the power to "Turn the Impossible to the Inevitable". Our main goal at the moment is to produce a documentary that highlights the current state of rail travel in the United States and what can be done to improve and bring it up to High Speed standards. We would like to film our documentary on and revolving around present day passenger rail, while discussing within the film and later focusing on and cooperating with prospective systems such as All Aboard Florida, which we know that s...

This is a Trainz route that I like to work on in the fall. But, something just occurred to me that made me want to rework the track layout in Key West just now. I was looking around in Google Maps and noticed that the viaduct that connects the main island to one of the industrial islands, which is where Nikos laid the main yard, felt lower. This apparently justified making the track lift bridge a fixed span, but I felt that since there was a marina, the idea was no good. But it was worth the while to adjust trackwork in the area  to be more realistic. The first issue I attacked was the fact that the yard and the lead to Fleming Key needed a Wye lead so that engines and stuff can more conveniently turn around. If I were to turn power other than a turntable, I would need to run something through the docks. A wye track was constructed to also cross one of the industrial leads, which is something that works in modern cities. The diamond is manual and yard jobs would 'need per...

Nathan Sawaya's "Art of the Brick" will be returning to South Florida this June, and so will the biannual contest that supplements it. I have been a previous winner of the Brick Creation Challenge in 2008 , and am delighted to see this contest return, but stumbled upon this rather offensive and new  rule: "All creations must be glued together and completely secured with no loose parts. Each entry must be submitted on a clean and stable base of plywood, metal, etc. The Center will not be responsible for pieces which become disassembled in any way. No exceptions to these conditions will be accepted." Suffice to say, they lost me as an entrant. While there is some understanding that kids will have some temptation to destroy MOCs, as they sideswiped my 18 wheeler big rig (which is one of the few models from that entry which are still in one piece), the fundamental rule of LEGO is... YOU NEVER GLUE LEGO. That is, unless, you are building for say, the Downto...

I am happy to say that the Spring Semester of classes has come to an end at FIU and I am free for FOUR months... That is to say, I will be busy busy busy! at work with my hobbies, potential Learning Assistant job in the Summer A term, and other things. First and foremost, the big announcement is that I am finally able to focus on an effort to bring Tri-Rail service into the Miami-Dade suburbs. This has been much overlooked over the years, as SFRTA probably focused more on the existing improvements. However, as 836 and other east-west roads continue to be a pain in the behind, the sparsely used CSX Lehigh Spur should come to mind and commuter rail should be designed to allow an option to avoid the ridiculous traffic on our roadways. A fanpage has been started to kick off the efforts, which include a very sound and on-point vision of these specific transportation improvements. A dummy Trainz route has been tailored to simulate, to the best of my ability, this service. Traffic pattern...

The previous post has generated quite a bit of praise; now for the FEC edition;) You know you're a FEC railfan when: You can't handle railfanning in any temperature below 32º F.  You're up at the butt crack of dawn for some FEC action, which can vary depending on which part of the mainline you live in. North end: 226, 224, 905 and 109; Middle corridor: 109 and 210, with a local here and there, and South end: 335, 121, and 123 You eat, sleep, and breathe EMD. You don't believe that GE has any form of existence and deny that the railway has bought the Tier-4 Compliant ES44C4s Your girlfriend is named Ashley You can actually call a locomotive "Pinky" Freight cars are termed as Dead Loads You bow down to the gods (ie. President Hertwig) every time the Azalea, St. Augustine, and Power Car pass on the butt end of trains like 101 and 226 Nightlife for you includes clubbing around the destinations I mentioned in the previous list, as well as Fort Pierce, Ja...

Saw a kind of dated list called " You Know You're an Idiot Railfan if " and I wanted to incorporate South Florida into it... that is because we have developed a railbuff culture and our own railfan humor pretty unique and distinct from the rest. This is all in good humor not to be condescending towards anyone, and it is NOT to suggest that we would be idiots, much less the original list that this was inspired from. So here goes - and I'll update frequently: You know you're a South Florida Railfan  when... Nightlife for you is either Delray Beach proper, Hollywood, Midtown (as of 2014), or, if you can handle it, Ft. Liquordale, and maps to a certain FEC milepost number Your Friday night hangouts are the White Lumber Lead, Fort Lauderdale Airport Station, Hollywood Blvd, or Hollywood Amtrak Station You just have to check out East Rail, Pompano Market, or Downtown Spur when you're in the area You repeat and know verbatim the Power-Assisted Switches on the...

The Flame Yellowish Orange conversion project I considered back in 2013 is in full swing with two CSX General Electric MOC locomotives converted and scaled down. Scaled down as in, they were too big to scale and built very juvenile-ish-y-however you put it... The GEVO is PF-ready, the C40-8 not quite so as something else will need to take in the IR Receiver for it. The latest plan is to make my widecab SD70MAC a dummy unit and either lash the two up elephant style, or make them both trailing units; so that the IR Receiver can fit in. Note that a Battery Box can't fit in an EMD engine under normal circumstances. Two non-train-nor-quite-town LEGO videos are in the works, one which will be posted immediately.One of them is a special pre-Valentines video and the other is a special ceramic model which symbolized my mom's earlier return from Turkey for serious family business... which went smoothly and everything is swell now. You can see both MOCs at the same time once I g...

The Florida East Coast Railway has just announced that it will purchase twenty-four GE ES44C4s from General Electric Transportation . It sounds like the once-stubborn Shortline by the Shoreline finally listened to the pleas of its folks and fans and broke down about 55 million buckaroos to get some clean locomotives. The ES44C4s have different traction mechanisms than the popular ES44AH. This follows semi-official word from Jan 15 that the purchase was to be green-lighted. Many folks are had upset that the railroad is no longer a virgin to GE, and are puzzled that they are getting more engines than they need. It needs to be remembered that as it is, the railroad is power short. Plus, the SD70M-2s, which had left the company in dissatisfaction are going to be handed back to EMD soon. Needless to say, this might have been one of the draws  for the decision to switch to GE, absent the fact the engines are in some ways obsolete per ECH. They are also going to need it for the Port ...

Folks, with the new year setting in, I feel that it is time to bring forth new ideas and promote changes. I have been adamant over the past couple of months to push for a service expansion of Tri-Rail west to the Malls . Wait... that remark sounded a bit nerdy, right? In other words, I feel that the 25-year old commuter line needs to grow, and most importantly, incorporate parts of the city that promote nothing short of economic benefit to the service. It sounds all too easy to speak, but this push will strongly encourage the use of infrastructure that is quite similar to what exists for Tri-Rail (SFRTA) as it is to create a strong economic engine that will benefit South Florida travel for years to come. The first phase of my proposal, and the key focus of my video that will be put up really soon, is a three-station west expansion to greater Sweetwater. It seeks to use four miles of the CSX Homestead Subdivision and five of the seven miles of the Lehigh Spur, which is the stretch ...

Set #10241 , the Maersk Triple E, is officially released as of January 1, 2014 and, as part of the online listing, its parts list is officially out. Needless to say, this set is known to boast a number of Md Azure and Dark Red elements, the most remarkable being MdAzure. While it is sad that it's phasing Pastel Blue out, I prefer to have MdAzure on hand as it's a stronger color. Plus, it is the color of choice for my coming Tri-Rail series. With all of that said, several of the pieces in MdAzure are making their deep-sea debut. Included are: Part #3004 / 6004945 - Brick 1x2  This piece is great as it complements the existing 1x1, 1x4, and 1x6 molds. It should also benefit my Tri-Rail sets. Part # 2357 / 6052877 - Corner Brick 2x2 Similar to the old Maersk Sealand ships, this part is making a reappearance, probably best suited for the bow of the ship. It's nice to have more variety with the brick and this part is best suited for buildings.  Part # 47404 / ...