[bargetanika]

Get on YouTube, search for md whistles, and spend a pleasant afternoon. You get to identify the sound with the visual , which you can then compare to MP steam engine photographs.

[bargetanika]

From the 20’s on, MP used cast steel 5 and 6 chimes on almost everything except 4-8-2’s and up which appear to mostly have had steamboat whistles. There of course are exceptions to everything.

[bargetanika]

Learn to identify by sight and you can see what is on the the engines by looking at the photographs.

The best I can tell , single chime (hooter) whistles were on the earliest 19th century engines, like most other US roads. 3 chimes, usually identifiable as a uniform height cylinder with 3 scalloped cuts around the bottom of the bell, came into favor throughout the US maybe around the 1890s until right before WW 1. The taller the bell, the deeper the tone. In the early teens, you start seeing a lot of multiple chime step top whistles. These were most often made of cast steel by the appliance manufacturers. In general, 5 chimes were shorter and higher pitched than 6 chimes.

The biggest modern engines with higher boiler pressures had deep toned steamboat whistles, which avoided squealing on the highest tuned cells if overblown. They seem to have been mostly 3 chimes as best I can tell.

I hope this oversimplified over generalized explanation helps. I’ll post again after while about what I see myself on Mopac steam engines. And refer to photos in Collias’s book.

[bargetanika]

I slipped. There are 7 and 8 rung ladders in the kit. Sounds like 8 is right, right? Seems like I remember there was some date where they changed from 7 to 8.

[bargetanika]

The M&NA stone depot at Leslie AR survives unrestored and neglected within a lumber company property. It won’t last long without some attention.

[bargetanika]

Everything about that clip says 1950 instead of the 1930’s.

Travel used to be elegant in every dimension . Airline travel: 😮 😯 😥 😡

[bargetanika]

I’m thrilled to have the Athearn Jenks Blue Geeps come out. They are the power we saw in New Iberia in the years (1961-66) I was still living at home and watching that little MP branchline line closely. They were it, save for a single F unit and single SW1 and S2 I saw at different times. I never saw them run MU, although they may have on the night train up to the NOT&M in Port Barre, which we never saw, we were kids eating supper at home when it would leave around 6 or 7, we could hear it from the house.

When I was first old enough to ride my bike over to what folks called the “roundhouse”, the grey and blue geeps were still around but Jenks blue took over pretty quickly. I seem to recall those engines in both paint schemes being numbered 100-something but I could be wrong, I was 13 years old and didn’t understand the value of note taking.

The most I ever saw these geeps and the dodgers they pulled was through high school classroom windows, running down East Pershing Street at 2 MPH with a flagman walking in front, every day almost I saw this, but of course could not photograph it or run out to see it.

There’s so much I could say about this railroad that only lives in my memory now, and that I wish I’d looked at and documented more closely, but that’s for another time. In the words of the song, “those were the days, my friend, we thought they’d never end.”

[bargetanika]

I got it figured out. The Frisco ones don’t have that hatch. Wouldn’t they need it too?

I really don’t know much about diesels. What are the 4 tall exhaust deflectors for? And weren’t spark arrestors put on later? Did they really throw off that many sparks? Why?

And, if someone knows….. which Frisco striping came earlier? The more complex one I presume. PF

[bargetanika]

I saw the Athearn newsletter link somewhere but didn’t know where it came from. Thought it was here, sorry.

Excuse my ignorance. What is a “winterization hatch?” I wouldn’t know one if I saw one. Would it even be needed in Louisiana and South Texas? PF

[bargetanika]

Please publish the link again. It seems to have disappeared.

[bargetanika]

I’ve been waiting for these for a very long time. Can finally represent the MP dodger that passed my high school every day, running 5 MPH in the street with a flagman at every intersection.

Getting two Frisco ones too.

[bargetanika]

How do you get the cast on ladders grabs and brake rod off so cleanly? I don’t think I could do that. Whose ladders, grabs, and stirrups? Did you do brake rigging underneath? Looks like you took a fish belly off the side.

That kind of detail looks so good. I’m retiring in 4 months and will have time for this kind of work and won’t be traveling every weekend.

[bargetanika]

Beautiful- yes. Do I have the patience and skill to build it? No.

[bargetanika]

I know this model isn’t prototypical but it’s good enough for me. But I think the color, of the smokebox which fairly well represents an average graphic job, is pretty close to what appears in b/w photo gradations.

[bargetanika]

Very cool photo. Date?

Is this the same as the AMB water tank? It looks really huge.

Why three pump houses? That much traffic?

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