Most of those stories are rumors. I'm extremely skeptical as to another surviving B&M 2-6-0 in a river because Harry Frye, a big B&M historian has discounted these stories. There is a B&M 4-6-2 in the Piscataqua River in Portsmouth, that plunged off the open drawbridge in the 1930s. The locomotive number is 3666.

Only the GP9s and GP18s were delivered in blue black and white. The GP7s were painted into a simplified blue with white nose striping scheme as the Maroon & Gold wore off. I too would love to see McGinnis GP9s, as well as some Green & Gold MEC GP7s! Bachpeople, are you listening? 

Jeff,
The Atlas models are GS21Bs with 3 700HP engines instead of the 2 in the GS14Bs. I believe railroads are choosing the higher horse power option and that is why there are very few GS14Bs out there.

Not enough roadnames and eras to be reasonably done in plastic.

I've been slowly upgrading my rollingstock fleet with Full Throttle Z Scale Knuckles and new wheelsets from Fox Valley Models and BLMA. For those interested Will of Full Throttle may still have some "naked talgos" (z scale talgo trucks with knuckles, less wheelsets) available. Anyways, the BLMA wheelsets track beautifully in addition to looking far better than stock wheelsets. The couplers are a bit stiff, so I'm going to attempt adding weight to see if that improves coupling.

The hopper is an MTL car with BLMA wheelsets and body mounted FT couplers. The car on the right still has it's stock Atlas wheelsets, but has received BLMA wheelsets. Just as a side note BLMA wheelsets are only suitable for MTL and Athearn cars. Atlas cars need Fox Valley wheelsets (still very nicely proportioned) due to the longer axle length.

Brown 40ft Boxcars with roofwalks, 8k or 10k gallon tank cars, most 2 bay hoppers, and wooden SP cabooses.
Passenger equipment was often very specific to the railroads, and thus you may have difficulty finding accurate SP branchline passenger equipment.

Many of these cars were still in use in the early diesel era. Commuter trains out of Boston on the New York Central's Boston & Albany used heavyweight coaches into the 60s. I'd be more concerned over the paint scheme. Very few (if any?) heavyweight cars received the two tone gray paint with most dressed in a dark green.

The cars will be run out of the staging yard, to the cement company, where they will be emptied. The pit the cars dump into, will extend out the bottom of the layout. The cap of a jar with a hole cut in the top will be attached to the bottom of the layout. This way the jar can be twisted into place under the layout, and the cars will ultimately dump their contents into the jar which can then be unscrewed and taken to staging to load the empties. A conveyor may be added at the pit for show.

I do plan on modifying the track. These will be in service on my friends layout in sand/gravel service, where they will be pushed over a pit to be emptied. I'm aware of the Tyco cars, however those are more suited for ballast service because of their Clamshell doors. I was working more towards operating cars that didn't have to conform to that design.

This weekend I picked up a couple Athearn 2 bays from a friend, with the intent on converting them to operating cars. The cars when running, have each set of doors sprung closed by a spring, set between the two (and conveniently disguised by a piece of U channel styrene placed over it to simulate the frame. The bays are attached to the body by a hinge made out of a piece of rod withing a piece of tubing. The bays are then attached to a line which runs up to an eyelet at the "peak," or where the bays connect. This line is attached to a piece of brass rod with a ring bent into the end of it, which hangs down, with the ring just below the frame. To operate, an uncoupling pick (bamboo skewer) is inserted into the brass ring, and when pulled downwards, pulls on the line which pulls open the doors, against the pressure of the spring. This allows the load to dump, and when the contents of the car has been emptied, letting up on pressure of the ring allows the spring to push the doors closed again.

Today I removed each door,and filed the doors and the opening smooth. I also removed the current section of frame which runs between the 2 bays. Tomorrow I plan on stopping at the craft store in town and picking up the styrene needed for the hinges, so I should have an update within the next couple of days. Until then, and the point in time when I can find the decent camera, here is a computer snapshot of the current progress.

Enough with the hotlinking!

The full length movie is available in several parts on daily motion.
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1zxr4_oh-mr-porter-pt-1_people

So Jonathan, when do you start on the B&O T-4 Mountains! Obviously their B&M heritage means nothing to me and I'm not imploring you to model one based on that one bias... 
http://rr-fallenflags.org/bo/bo-s5651amm.jpg
http://rr-fallenflags.org/bo/bo-s754.jpg

Quote from: richg on September 02, 2010, 11:47:50 PM
Girl friend and I going to a small railroad museum to operate an old standard gauge hand car. That ought to be some good exercise.

Good exercise is right! My friends and I took one up and down the Seashore Trolley Museum mainline... about 2 miles each way, and up hill all the way to the loop. That was exhausting!

Ebay Link

4 P-70s, an RPO and an Observation. You can ditch the RPO and Observation, because the P-70s are what you want. You can also get some Con-cor P-54s because those were also used postwar by PRR in commuter service.