Tolga's Railroad Repository

ECHOES member Tom Klimoski, who has been a major contributor to Lance Mindheim's R&D for the Downtown Spur layout built the Hawksridge Division proto-freelance layout back in 2000 . He had to discontinue and dismantle the layout in 2011 sadly when he moved out of South Florida, but do not despair; Tom's Georgia Northeastern layout is a masterpiece and truly masterclass material for industrial operations. I strongly recommend you check out his channel. On top of all this, three of the modules, which are designed to be compatible with ECHOES layouts, have been saved for use on club displays going forward. Up to five sections on the layout were removable by design as a condition of having the layout in a single car garage. If you look at the visuals on the link, and have seen the layout, you may recognize them off the bat. Two of the modules (Amtrak Station/KFC/Heritage Furniture) are in club standard 4'x2', and have been the thumbnails and backdrops for many shots I...

 A lot of excitement came when Atlas announced Trinity 3230 covered hoppers, which appear often in trains in Florida hauling cement. Titan America has a fleet of these with cars at various ages- whether built 2 or 20 years ago, you'll find it here. The latest ones that FEC received within the past 18 months became insanely easy to model, using stickered reporting marks and little more than standard railcar fonts.  As such, the more recent run was the focus with the Atlas 3230s. Part of this is easiness, the rest is longevity. These will likely last longer with the railroad making the cars more usable in present day model railroading. The process of decaling was tedious, but achieved with various sheets sold by Smokebox Graphics and one sheet by Switchline. The Futura condensed bold is extremely limited in black text, so be careful choosing cars to do with those graphics. The Atlas cars come with painted on safety stripes, but I decided to up it one level with the reflective st...

Pictures have been widely available as of late for the South Florida Mega Route's FEC installments; but now it's time for a sound element to be added! Here's video of 109 finishing up some of its last miles into Miami.

Many people who either live in, or drive around Hialeah are perhaps aware of FEC's notoriety for tying up crossings in the area. This is because their authorized speeds are limited as follows: 10 mph up to about the end of the TOFC switch at Hialeah Yard 20 mph from there through the Okeechobee Road overpass 25mph around the curve I had the pleasure of simulating this in Trainz. And so I tested the accuracy of this operation as well as some of the railroad crossings included. The test train in question is train #210, which runs at night, so once I got the shots at the beginning of the route done, I set the clock correctly. :) The train always crawls at West 8th Ave.  A perspective of how long the train is with respect to some of the major surface roads. It's a good thing that W 21 St is grade-separated!  A neat observation is, just as is done in real life, the HUD gave the go ahead to speed up when the nose was around Palm Ave/E 4th Ave. The physics work ...

It's not uncommon for a quality Trainz route to take years to produce. Without a doubt, my South Florida Mega Route falls under that category. I have actually had the route going for four years, but only got a few key locations on the Florida East Coast (FEC) mainline mapped thus far. With the time considered, it is convenient to follow the new Brightline/All Aboard Florida track charts... and that is what I've done. The documents are available for public viewing as part as the federally governed Environmental Impact Study that was done. While they may change as track construction progresses, they have been pretty accurate thus far. Note: signal will likely be redesigned soon. Also done is the scenery for NE 2nd Ave, which is at the point where the port lead branches off from the mainline. The line to the left goes off towards Jacksonville, and the line to the right wyes down to the Port Lead. The manifest yard job nicknamed  the "Downtown Job" als...

So, FEC offers an interesting curveball by way of their use of the Norfolk Southern Geometry Train consist. When they need that research done on their main lines, they usually borrow the stock research equipment that NS has to offer, plus usually one engine, which in the past has been a 4-axle NS motor, namely GP38-2 #5647 in most cases. Except, this time, which happened just this week, the NS power that came down to Miami was two 6-axle EMD motors, SD70M-2 #2663 and SD40-2 #3279. Whereas I normally skip the Geometry Train, this one was a must have.

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 ...

I don't usually railfan on weekdays, citing the fact that traffic is just plain a beyotch in South Florida, and usually I'm on campus until 5-6 PM except Mondays, where I'm there until 9 PM. This Friday would have been just like any Friday, but when I heard that FEC 109 was to have two heritage units and was a late runner, my mind changed and I was heading home much earlier. Thanks to my folks for making this possible (I'll be getting me a car soon though). FEC 109  109 ran into Hialeah at 4:50 PM in less than desirable weather. My photoshopping managed to make it a more colorful shot, but I was still unimpressed with the lighting and lack thereof. I'll make a point about the long string of racks later in this entry. I also heard something on the radio which will pertain to the last half of this entry. More related to this, Hialeah Yard on CSX was coming in with Y220 and O721 both building their trains. I decided on a whim to check out Hialeah Yard and get ...

Apparently today's not the day to chase around the Florida East Coast mainline as the line is mute... entirely. Before I become devil's advocate, the more heartening news. The South End of Gifford siding is now renamed in honor of the ailing veteran FEC signalman Robert Bougard. I really appreciate this selfless effort on the RR. He has been a dedicated employee and it is unfortunate that his health status is rough at the moment. Prayers are for a quick and speedy recovery. We remain hopeful and optimistic for him to improve rapidly. The naming conditions allow for the South End to be named "Bougard" and the North End to be named "Gifford". And now, the really negative stuff. Two incidents happened; one minor and one pretty drastic. In Hialeah, a car was stuck on the tracks, and hit by a local from Fort Lauderdale. I believe unfortunately this resulted in a casualty. This happened around noon, and I remember seeing the train lined on the monitor out of Dan...

WOW. This is why I strongly recommend railfanning at a safe distance. Apparently Andrew and his brother were out trainwatching at Boca Raton, when out of the blue, (no pun intended), the CITX leader's cylinders burst. It is presumed to be an engine failure, but quite drastic for EMD. I would expect that as bad as it was, they could fix this with a new prime mover. More on the 141 later.

One of the reasons I chose to reshape this blog is because of the dynamically changing transportation scene, which is indeed my cup of tea. Florida East Coast Railway is building a container transfer yard at Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale. It's old news and I saw the site myself when my mom and I were there on business. However, Local 10 has just had a story on it . video platform video management video solutions video player To hear that this project is finally inching towards completion is great news. It is a big economic plus for FEC as well as Port Everglades and South Florida. It will probably lead to the reinstatement of trains 117-218 as more capacity means more trains. Already, it will mean fewer trucks and less congested roadways. This project was something that should have been done years ago but the port lead in Everglades has been deteriorating. Now, it's being rebuilt and reshaped. Just earlier this year, ethanol made its debut at Motiva Enterprises ...