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I'm Randy Gordon-Gilmore, and ProtoTrains is a very part-time business to make kits of the 1930's streamliner passenger trains in N scale. The "Proto" in ProtoTrains denotes two things-- the prototype, or pioneering, nature of the trains, and my desire to be as prototypically accurate as possible ("fanatical" is a term that has been used ) in modeling the trains. The main focus of ProtoTrains will be the Burlington Route's shovelnose Zephyr trains.

Projects

Renascence poster The Renascence poster, a longtime dream of mine to print, is produced and for sale! This poster is a full-size reproduction of the Burlington Route's 1935 calendar top. NEW 1 Oct 2008

Pioneer Zephyr ProtoTrains started with my collaboration with Dick Billings of Fine N-Scale Products to develop the very popular and successful Pioneer Zephyr kit, which we introduced at the 1996 Long Beach convention. With the release and popularity of the Con-Cor ready-to-run PZ, FNS has discontinued the PZ kit. UPDATED 2 Oct 2008

Flying Yankee The current project I'm working on is a similar kit of the Boston & Maine/ Maine Central Flying Yankee, a very similar train to the PZ which ran in New England from the mid-1930's to the 1950's. I'm really going to try to have the model ready by the time the prototype is back in operation!

McKeen Cars I have started work on the knife-nosed McKeen Car. Although not quite in keeping with the other trains, they are pre-WWII and they are streamliners. UPDATED 6 Oct 2008

EMD E5 shells I was planning to make E5 A and B shells. Microscale already makes E5 decals in N scale, included in their set 60-98, Burlington Passenger Cabs. In 2005, Gregg Scott of GHQ created E5A and B shells from the Life-like E6 and Joe Valerio is casting them in resin. The shells are available for purchase from Joe Valerio. You can contact him at trainutz@excite.com. They are a drop-on fit to the LL chassis. If you are a member of (or join the) Yahoo CBQ group, you can see pictures of the shells (both raw and finished) in the folder http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/CBQ/files/N%20Scale%20E5/. (As a "fantasy loco", I'm still considering making the original-concept, shovelnose E5A shell.)

Other possibilities After that, we'll have to see. I am working on a body shell for Burlington's streamlined Hudson Aeolus. I already have artwork completed for the first Twin Zephyrs (#9901,9902) and the Mark Twain Zephyr (#9903) which, together with the Pioneer Zephyr (#9900) and the Flying Yankee (#6000) comprise the first-generation Budd shovelnoses.

I also have the layout completed for the General Pershing Zephyr, which was a four-car non-articulated train using #9908 Silver Charger, which still exists in the National Museum of Transport in St. Louis, as the power car. Kato has released the prewar corrugated Budd cars, of which the coach and obs are based on the GPZ design, so the task is really just to produce a Silver Charger E-unit kitbash.

Other candidates include the New York, New Haven and Hartford Comet and the Gulf, Mobile and Northern Rebel. The postwar General Motors Aerotrain is out, because Con-Cor has announced it. I wish them the best of success with it.

An ultimate project has to be the semi-articulated 1936 Denver Zephyr, pulled by the very elegant EA/EB shovelnose locomotives.

My equipment

Photoetching

• A Home Photoetching Operation, Chapter 1
• A Home Photoetching Operation, Chapter 2

  Please note: I'm sorry, but I am not in a position to undertake custom or contract etching at this time. Your best bet would be to contact a commercial etcher and inquire.

• Photoresist Update
• Laminator Update
• Photoetching Clinic Overheads
  • I gave a clinic on my photoetching at the N-Scale Gathering in San Jose on 3 and 4 August 2000. These are the overheads which I used as the outline of my talk, formatted four-up for printing and saved in PDF format.
• A brief note on PnP Blue.

Machine tools

• My mill is a Tormach PCNC1100, which I purchased in October 2006.
• My lathe is a Feeler FSM-59, a Hardinge 2d-op clone, for which I'm fabricating a CNC table. NEW 17 Jan 2009
• I formerly owned a much-modified Sherline 5400 CNC mill and a Techno-Isel gantry (pictured above) with Sherline milling head, both of which I sold when I bought the Tormach, and a Sherline 4400 CNC lathe.

Other articles

• First-generation shovelnose Zephyrs (Flying Yankee too!) comparitive side-view drawing with car lengths: UPDATED 2 Oct 2008
  • N scale Three-page on 8.5x11 inch sheets (164kb PDF file)
  • HO scale Four-page on 11x17 inch sheets (176kb PDF file)
  • Z scale Two-page on 8.5x11 inch sheets (182kb PDF file)
• Some of the Patents issued for the shovelnose Zephyrs (and the Pendulum Car) UPDATED 29 Sept 2008
• Railroad Easement Template program
• Railroad Turnout Drawings in N and HO scales.
• Stub Turnout Template program
• I am interested in finescale N, and am starting to work on turnout soldering fixtures.

Links

Links verified 28 Sept 2008.
Article-specific links appear in their respective pages.

Prototype railroad

• Burlington Route Historical Society

General model railroading

• The 2mm Scale Association Finescale, largely scratchbuilt models, based in the UK
• RailFonts Benn Coifman's excellent railroad fonts
• Proto:87 Special Interest Group High-fidelity modeling in 1/87 scale

DCC and computer control/interface to model railroads

• The DCC-MB Home Page An older page on using a PC as a DCC controller
• Tillorps Mekaniska Werkstad A site which expands on the PC/DCC concept

Coded by hand in Alan Phillips' excellent PFE32 freeware text editor.
(Alan's website is offline, so just do a websearch for "pfe101i.zip")
Checked using HTML Validator.

This website should be viewable using any browser that you have;
if you can't see everything properly, please let me know and I'll fix it!

This website and all its contents is ©2002-09 Randy Gordon-Gilmore.
Established 4 July 2002. Last updated: 17 Jan 2009.