Seems I've lost a lot of time this year, it's almost December and I've not posted in a while.

Seems that other things have taken most of my attention as of late. Not much has been done and my little side business has been booming; I guess enough folks want model train parts to build something unique. That is after all good news for the hobby.

The Arizona Southern Railroad has been busy acquiring ballast material from the good folks at Arizona Rock and Mineral. We've also sourced a few of the old MDC 30' flat cars and their lower sides that make a gondola for use on one very light railed section of track of the El Cobre Branchline. We have four so far, a couple more would be nice, but the prices are getting nuts.

The picture above is one of the cars we recently acquired. Sort of rough around the edges, but nothing some TLC and a little time can not fix.

Well, thanks for looking in, sorry for the longer than usual absence, things are not like they once were for any of us, and it shows.

Enjoy Your Trains,

John Huey

August 2021 News

It seems that with less things happening due to whatever this is, time for the railroad should be in better shape, yet it really is not. Other priorities have been raising their heads and a need to address them has taken some time away from other, more pleasant pursuits.

Recently though, AZSO just scored some more InterMountain freight cars, ones we'd wanted but were not able to catch when first offered.  One such car is shown here:

A few other, more modern type cars, are slowly joining the fleet. We are aiming at nicer cars with a bit more detail as the handling will be minimal from now on.

Thanks for visiting, write a reply should the mood strike you.

John Huey

Athearn's Latest Kenworth

Recently seen out back of the local truckstop motel was this Kenworth conventional with dry goods trailer in tow. Seems a bank and one of the regions regulars just entered into a fresh binding arrangement and now another trucker has traded the next few years of life for a shiny bauble. He'll work his butt off and some banker somewhere will enjoy the profits; it's the American dream!

Well, at least its red and bound to get noticed out on the road; hopefully by a young hottie in a Jag and not by Officer Lyle.

Seems the local Kenworth agency just took delivery of a few new tractors and they are making deals old Mephistopheles his self would be jealous of; just sign here and the keys are yours.

Take care,

John Huey

I Get A Warm And Fuzzy Feeling When I Look At These.

Howdy, it's almost mid February 2021 and the final few Moloco cars are on their way. The SP car shown below was in the first order, and a pair of SSW cars are bringing up the end of the order. Originally I had a little sticker shock with Nick's cars, that was until I got one in my hands. The level of detail is way beyond my meager abilities to accomplish consistently, not to mention the quality of the paint and lettering, they are in a word, superb.

The new Arizona Southern layout will not be aimed at running and railfanning as much as it will be aimed at operating and just plain switching the local industries. I figure fewer nicer cars are in order, since they won't just be going by the viewer at twenty miles per hour any longer.

Thanks for visiting; Enjoy Your Trains!

John Huey

The Search For Arizona Southern Ballast

When one tends to overthink everything, each choice can take a very long time. Take AZSO and what sort of ballast they'd use for instance. I thought maybe they'd use local stuff, but then there would need to be a way to process local stone into a useable substance. 

I did see a post from Arizona Rock and Mineral about a lot of Arizona railroads using a black ballast which resembles cinders. Well since I was leaving to photograph suitable scenery ideas for the new layout build, I decided to investigate this claim. What I found made my mind up for me; very cool.

Noting the black ballast, I placed an order with ARM Ballast when I got back home. On my travels I noted a lot of black ballast laid over other colors of stone, and this I intend to emulate with multiple ballast colors. Rather than obtain SP or ATSF ballast, I found a mixed stone called Kinzua that looked perfect for what I had envisioned. I have a few other colors too so things can be changed up by areas modeled.

Some of the scenery I went to Arizona to photograph is shown below. I obtained some cactus from ZYX Creative, both saguaro and western prickly pear; thus a desire to get ideas as to realistic placement. Modeling is an education to be sure, one need to be both a geologist, botanist, and an arborist if they wish to have believable results.

I figure the vegetation should describe the layouts location so the layout owner does not need to do it. I saw this demonstrated on the Tehachapi Loop layout in San Diego, I walked from location to location and knew where I was without reading the signs. That was amazing.

Cactus says desert better than almost anything else, saguaro says Sonoran Desert and Arizona perfectly as well. The big challenge will be modeling mesquite, palo verde, ocotillo, and cholla. The "castable" cacti are handled.

I was told that the young saguaro's have their best chance of reaching maturity by being under a mesquite or palo verde tree during its tiny vulnerable years. The trade off is, when the cactus matures it usually kills the tree due to taking any water more efficiently. Why does this remind me of something seen recently?

Thanks for reading, stay happy and be safe!

John Huey

2021 HAS ARRIVED!

 Happy 2021 to all. 

Just finished a little road trip to collect some photographic inspiration for the old railroad layout. While at the Arizona Railroad Museum the caboose which started it all was spotted. The late Ron Tarjany MMR, modeled the TC&GB and his articles for Railroad Modeler were the inspiration for the Arizona Southern that began back in the mid 1980's.  This caboose gave the inspiration to make our own wooden cars from kits available at the time. The roller bearing trucks of this car, not being available, we substituted the Athearn caboose trucks on our AZSO models.

Not having Ron's skill or patience, we opted for the Roundhouse / MDC kits of the day; in fact still using those kits today to round out the caboose needs of the AZSO and any subsidiaries. We did make all our older cars have a family look by adding similar details to each, yet keeping each wood car as an individual at the same time.

Thanks for reading this, comment if the mood strikes you.

John Huey