Amtrak's California Zephyr, 1995, CIRC layout

My HO scale California Zephyr train makes the rounds on the Central Iowa Railroad Club layout, still under construction as of August 2009. Some areas have permanent scenery, some have temporary scenery for the fair, and others have no scenery at all.

This train represents approximately how the Zephyr might of looked around 1995 or so, with Superliner II cars arriving in the new Phase IV color scheme. The locomotives are Athearn P42s or, in later scenes, Walthers F40PHs (which are still in need of some added details...). The cars are by Walthers, except for one of the baggage cars, which was an Athearn blue box kit from 2002.

All of the cars have received significant mechanical upgrades for reliable operation, and the locomotives are DCC equipped (no sound). The first Material Handling Car is equipped with a track cleaner pad.

In some later scenes, shot with my compact camera (they're the ones that aren't widescreen and have horrible white balance) the train has a Desert Wind section added on the rear. Lacking any good data on exactly how the consist was arranged in those days, I made a few guesses that are almost certainly wrong, but at least put the food service cars in the most accessible positions. Future runs will probably be more correct in this regard as I research this more. If anyone has a link to a good complete runby of the combined Zephyr/Desert Wind/Pioneer from this period, I'd love to take a look at it...

Category:

Autos & Vehicles

Tags:

• Amtrak
• HO
• scale
• model
• railroad
• california
• zephyr
• desert
• wind

[cow2pug]

last time i checked the cal zeffer only had a baggage car not so many handling car

[araquan]

@cow2pug It does *now* sure. But in the '90s there were quite often a lot of MHCs on Amtrak trains.

[Calebzilla]

nice layout.

[araquan]

@Calebzilla Thanks!

[prorobo]

Oh and per the video description, what did you do to the cars besides weighting them to NMRA standards to increase their reliability?

[araquan]

@prorobo Sorry for the delay in getting back to you. The cars actually didn't need any extra weight- I have yet to find one that weighed less than spec out of the box. Mechanical tweaks, therefore, were focused on coupler height and wheel gauge. Coupler height was taken care of when the original couplers were replaced with metal ones. Few problems there. Wheel gauge was the biggest problem as some cars had warped or loose axles... the former were replaced, and the latter tacked with glue.

[trinityct]

6:42 that phase 4 MHC car looks very wobbly....

[prorobo]

This layout will look wicked amazing when finished!

[araquan]

Thanks!

[slammin1down]

Great "S" Curve: 1:36 - 2:00! Great all-around footage!