Introducing the Kings Port & Western

You may have noticed some references to the Kings Port & Western RR or seen some KP&W equipment in some of my previous posts.  It’s time for me to formerly introduce my freelanced railroad that interchanges with the Penn Central on my layout.

KINGS PORT & WESTERN RAILROAD

I can trace the initial motivation for adding a freelanced road to my Penn Central-themed pike from my enjoyment of the 2006 edition of Great Model Railroads.  This layout-packed issue includes articles about Eric Brooman’s Utah Belt and Matt Snell’s Conrail New Jersey Division.   Both layouts included small short lines (the Southern San Pedro and the Rahway Valley RR respectively)  to add interest . I liked the idea of having a colorful locomotive from another road rolling by in contrast with the black PC roster on the Kings Port Division.

The largest city on my layout is Kings Port so it seemed natural that the freelanced line would connect there.  Since my layout is loosely (very loosely) based on the Penn Central’s River Line along the Hudson River, I considered the PC’s western oriented branch lines between New York City and Albany and used them as inspiration for the “& Western” part of the new road.   The KP&W  originally wasn’t going to be very big.  I first imagined it as a short line that would have a switcher emerge from this hidden track next to the reddish building at Kings Port…

…drop off a couple of cars to interchange with the Penn Central…

 …and head back into staging.  

As time went by and I thought more about it, the KP&W has grown larger and I now see it as an independent railroad along the lines of the Delaware & Hudson, but more on that later.   For now, here are some of the locos and rolling stock in the freelanced KP&W scheme. 

First up is this dummy AHM RS3 I bought at a flea market for two dollars.  It was originally painted and lettered for the Penn Central, rather inaccurately.    I used this cheap model as my experimental canvass for painting and decaling.   The orange and blue colors reflect my love of the NY Mets (National League Champions this year!) even though I chose a more muted shade of blue.    The lettering was my first attempt at creating my own decals.   I used Testor’s white decal paper for the white letters.   This requires making a background color on the decal to match the body of the loco.  It took considerable trial and error to achieve the correct shade but I think I finally nailed it.     

Once I was satisfied that I could paint and decal a locomotive, I moved onto the Athearn  Baldwin S-12 (shown in the above pictures) that was originally painted for the New York Central.    

At first I was planning to have the KP&W switcher push cars from various roads into the interchange but I decided it was time to create some home road rolling stock.   I experimented on some old Tyco 50 ft boxcars and later purchased a six pack of undecorated 40 ft.  Atlas Trainman plug door boxcars.   Here are a couple of examples.

 The KP&W herald with the name of the line superimposed over an outline of the State of NY was the result of more trial and error with design and in learning the intricacies of Microsoft Word.   I've since learned how to add text over an image but my earlier attempts at creating decals involved applying the NY outline and then placing the name as a separate decal.  I was pleased to see that the double thickness decals weren't a problem.

I don't want this post to get too long so I'll finish with some cabooses, but more photos and descriptions of KP&W equipment will follow in future posts.

My early attempts at creating a caboose roster are now considered to be in the KP&W's "early scheme" with the blue and orange complimenting the similarly colored locos.

 As I attained more skill with decals, I opted for an all orange scheme so I could apply black lettering instead of dealing with the hassles of using white decal sheets.  These two wide vision cabooses were originally factory painted for the Penn Central although the PC didn't have any in this style.  The KP& W does, however, which is the beauty of freelancing.  You get to choose the rules and everything is correct!

One more before we go.  I cobbled this transfer caboose from spare parts leftover from other caboose projects.

More to come soon!