Alaska Railroad Cars

Some of you may recall that several months ago, I acquired some decals for the Alaska Railroad.  Ever since I lived in Alaska, in 2009 and 2010, I have wanted to recreate one of their passenger trains.  Commercial models are available for Holland America Tours' private dome rail cars, but not for any of the Alaska Railroad passenger cars.  When I first acquired the decals, I was figuring I would just paint up a couple of cars.  At this point, the two Budd domes I originally acquired for this project have some company.

I found a couple of ACF dome coaches, from Walthers' Union Pacific City series, a couple of ACF 44-seat coaches, and a baggage car, also from Walthers' Union Pacific City series.  The other day I was in a hobby shop and came across some undecorated coach and diner kits, and forgetting that I already had a pair of coaches on order, I bought two of the kits and a diner kit.  It seems that I will have a pretty good sized passenger train when all is said and done!  Around Christmas time, my wife bought me an airbrush, so I now just need to learn to use that and I can go to town on the painting.  Out of the cars I have, five are undecorated, two are decorated, but are gray, and can probably just take another coat of paint, and three must be stripped of their paint before I can do anything with them.  Once I get some paint thinner and some more turpenoid, I will be ready to start.  In the mean time, I have been doing other prep work for the cars.

In addition to the cars, Steven also sent me a locomotive that I had completely forgotten that I even owned.  It was sitting in his train room and I had not seen it in a while.  It is an Amtrak E8B.  I have no use for it in that paint scheme, as I try to focus on post-2000 in my modeling.  My original plan was to sell it, along with about a dozen other items I have in my "list on eBay" pile, but then I discovered an interesting painting and kitbashing project for it.  The Alaska Railroad has an E8B they use as a power car.  Over the years, it has had its prime movers removed, and generators installed, and is used to generate the Head End Power (HEP), required by the passenger cars.  Now, the Alaska Railroad has some Geeps and SD70MAC's that also generate HEP, but sometimes a train needs a little more power, or for some reason a HEP equipped locomotive is not available.  Their E8B is P-30, and is an interesting piece of equipment.  Originally, E-series engines had six axles under them, but somewhere along the line, P-30 was reduced to only four, making it a pretty unique E8!  Most of the roof details were changed when it was turned into a power car, as four smaller generators replaced the original prime movers.  Since I only have one, non-HEP SD70MAC in Alaska Railroad colors, I figured I would need P-30 if I wanted my little passengers to have lights and heat!

When all the cars are finished, my Alaska Railroad fleet will look like this:
SD70MAC #4002 Spirit of Seward
E8B Power Car #P-30
Baggage Car #101
Coach #200
Coach #201
Coach #203
Coach #204
Diner #400
Dome Coach #501
Dome Coach #502
Dome Coach #521
Dome Coach #523
McKinley Explorer #1050 Kenai
McKinley Explorer #1051 Knik
McKinley Explorer #1052 Chena
McKinley Explorer #1053 Kobuk
McKinley Explorer #1054 Eklutna
McKinley Explorer #1055 Nenana
McKinley Explorer #1057 Talkeetna


I think it should make a great Denali Star, I just need to find a model railroad with convincing Alaska scenery to run it on!  I'll post some pictures on our Facebook page in the morning, although they will be mostly undecorated cars for now.