Christmas and Cabin Cars

Lisa gave me a Bachmann RS-3 that I have been wanting. I've always liked how the RS series looked and the model from Bachmann is very well detailed, nicely priced and comes ready to run for DCC layouts. I ran it on the track a few times, solo and then pulling a west bound freight train, using the default 03 address. I still need to program it to respond to the engine number, 8604.

Irwin Yard's newest engine, and RS-3, grabs a car from the cabin track for the next outbound train.

I spent the rest of Christmas afternoon finishing the four cabin car (caboose) kits from Bowser. I really like the price and details on these kits but they are tough to build! The ends are thin plastic that have to curve a little. I was getting a bit frustrated, breaking the small pieces but finally figured out that if I mounted them into the roof first, then I could attach the roof and ends to the floor a little easier than the other way around. Of course, I figured this out on the fourth and final car! I now have a cabin car track fully stocked for building trains in the Irwin yard.

Lisa and the kids also gave me some other great gifts for the railroad - a couple of books by Tony Koester, some cinder block walls for scratchbuilding and Model Builder software to print builds and paste them to cardstock. I built Vic's Bait & Tackle from the downloadable sample. Looks like I'll be pretty busy the rest of the Christmas break.

Merry Christmas everyone!