Flat Car Recon Trip to Fort Eustis

On Saturday I made a hastily planned trip to Fort Eustis. The main purpose of the trip was to photograph and measure a DODX 42000 series car in order to prepare a future kit for Alkem Scale Models.  I was alerted to the arrival of the 42000s at Fort Eustis by a friend (who prefers to remain unnamed) that works there. He offered to guide us on a trip.

I drove down from Alexandria, while Norm Wolf, who now lives in the Norfolk area, agreed to meet us there to help out. While we were there, our guide took us on a tour of most of the interesting railroad activities there. Ft Eustis is an attractive post set on the James River. It is now a joint base but it still houses most of the US Army Transportation school and museum. We did not visit the museum on this trip, but I blogged about it here before. 

After a late lunch we visited the Chesapeake Bay and Western Model Railroad Club open  house. This is a long standing club with a massive multilevel, mushroom type layout. It spans two floors connected by a several helices. The mainline run is about 16 scale miles. It has a lot of nicely detailed scenes

Here are some of the shots I took on Ft Eustis.

The object of our attention, a DODX 42000 series flat car. There were several 42000s present. Note the difference in colors. 

Two GP-10s in the engine house

An old Magor heavy duty flat car that the shop guys at Ft Eustis restored and use on post. 

A new single slip switch installed at Hanks Yard

WWII vintage car with expanding trucks and euro-style links and buffers

80-Ton engine in shop.