DOWNTOWN UPDATES

Here is Commerce Street, after all the buildings were finally completed and placed on the layout.

And here is Commerce Street after the street was finished and styrene sheet was used for the building bases/sidewalks. A noticable improvement. Now we need road markings, parking meters, and a meter maid!

Here is a shot I took of the Super Market from in between the hardware store and the Pawn Shop. Notice the bare foam board between the buildings.

I have since covered up the board with ground foam 'dirt'. Maybe next time I'll get a better photo!

Lastly, here is a shot of the parking garage from the alleyway between the Public Library and another building. The alley runs around the back of the buildings to the left and comes back out between The Pub and the furniture store. That car really shouldn't be parked there, but since there's no sign saying otherwise, it won't get towed!

THE ATHEARN UNIT

In 2007, Athearn celebrated their 60th anniversary by producing a special run of products, including an EMD GP40X locomotive decorated for Athearn and displaying their 60th anniversary logo. Being a big fan of Athearn, naturally, I had to buy one. I also got one of their '60th' boxcars; that was seen in an earlier post (and, unlike the locomotive, it's a replica of the real thing).

Here, the special unit rolls into Hillsdale yard with a short train of autoracks (car-carriers).

The unit rolls through the yard. Just as Athearn's 60th anniversary was unique, so was the GP40X. Only 23 were built by EMD in the early 80's; they were actually test units for newer technology. I added a front snowplow and a pair of BLMA A/C units to the roof to give it some character.


Here's the rest of the train, starting with an AP&W car on the head end.

BNSF and NS racks are also seen in the train.

Finally, on the tail end, are several articulated autoracks.

A STACK TRAIN

Intermodal trains are a common sight through Hillsdale, with a least two stack trains and one piggy-back a day in each direction.


Here, a domestic stack train passes through town with a variety of 53' containers, including these BNSF and Swift containers.

Here is a Pacer Stacktrain 53' container stacked on top of one of the AP&W's SCSU 48' containers. These are rapidly approaching retirement, as the intermodal industry has switched to 53' containers as the standard. The containers are riding in one of the AP&W's Husky Stack well cars. The 'Husky Stack' logo on the side identifies this car as being from the first order of 100 delivered by Gunderson in 1990. Later orders (300 more cars total) lacked the logo.

More Pacer Stacktrain 53' containers, along with two CIE Intermodal 53's, all placed in a rarely seen CIE Intermodal 3-unit NSC well car. The 'car' is actually three separate cars connected by drawbars to form one complete set. If needed, they can be separated, the drawbars replaced by conventional couplers, and run as individual cars. Delivered in 2000, CIEX 2002 is one of only 10 cars CIE Intermodal owns.

A close-up of the middle well car of CIEX 2002. All three have 53' wells.

Reinforcing that this is a domestic service stack train, is this shot of another rare bird- an Allied Van Lines 48' container! While the vast majority of Allied's fleet are conventional trailers, a small percentage are specially built containers that sometimes move by rail.