Everything about the N&W heavy articulateds is so much more charming than the Big Boy, they just look less overtly aggressive, same goes for their wonderfully bovine whistles

Very good point! I suspect that even the massive counterweight on that second driver may not have been enough for the job. The various 2-6-8-0 conversions along similar lines must've experienced similar trouble with balancing that front engine unit

The folding branch line layout is coming together, all the cork has been painted and track nailed down. Already, I'm loving the flexibility of being able to adjust various track sections. Now to do the wiring on the turntable section and figure out the turnout pushrods for the other side

And also, instead of a timesaver, this is the end of a branch line somewhere in Ohio/Pennsylvania, accommodating passenger and freight operations A train comes in, either pulling into the passenger station, or using the two sidings to deliver cars. Engine is uncoupled, turned, and goes back

Gluing down cork board to the newly rebuilt switching puzzle The flaw in the previous one was ballasting and gluing the track down the "correct" way, meaning when some things got out of alignment, it was impossible to fix. I'm just going to paint the cork grey and nail the track down lol

Dusted off the C-liner, I've always wanted to tidy up the pilot on this locomotive and convert it to use Kadees, and I think I figured it out I have a second shell and am still thinking about how I'd want to paint it. Demonstrator green?

One of Sally's friends is Mr. Brownhoist, a "Model 4 Locomotive Crane" with various bucket attachments for digging around in the limestone quarry. A bit more precise and methodical than a steam shovel, but, still fairly clumsy, startles easily #trainart #ttte #steamengine

A little more progress from yesterday's animation. Seems like Sally doesn't understand the whole "taking a break" concept

A shot I animated today - Saddle Tank Sally has to pause her usual antics at the quarry, as her crew are going on break. #steamlocomotive #trainart #ttte #animation

My strangest, greatest flex, never once in my entire life, despite many people twisting my arm over it, have I ever used Twitter

Borrowing @railfox.bsky.social to illustrate something that came to me in a dream, Isambard Inkblot and Zeppie having, er, unique ways of interacting with macro characters, given their small size and bizarre synthetic anatomy. I might have Inkblot stretch his legs like this more often

Exterior art of the two ships, currently working on another angle as well

Two backgrounds I just painted for the next Isambard Inkblot episode, where we see a pair of very different spacecraft meeting up

Been doing a lot of background paintings today for a new Saddle Tank Sally animation - Since I've got my background art mojo going, I might do some for a few other future cartoons

I don't think about Santa Fe stuff that much but my favorite era by far is their utterly strange turn of the century compounds Compound locomotive technology was popular during this era, but Santa Fe took it to an extreme and produced a whole fleet of weird locos And relatively normal 2-6-2s

A quick demo of how I swap over between two of my passenger trains on the HO scale, DC layout I've built, using the stub-ended terminal and a PECO turnout

The main thing I was testing today was a Kadee coupler conversion on the dummy unit, so that this twin unit GP7 could haul trains without needing a "translator" car added in. Also had the loco apart to do some maintenance, and I'm now tempted to do a bit of weathering and detailing on these two

For a brief moment today, I had three trains on the mainline, including two on the same track of my DC layout - The sidings at Union Station can be powered off. Usually one passenger train sits there while the other runs, but, in order to swap the trains, I time it so they don't interfere

Hocking Valley Scenic Railroad Number 3 Rode with this Baldwin 0-6-0 switch engine earlier this summer and I've always found it to be very charming, with strange, cartoony proportions - Was asking to be drawn! #steamloco #train #trainart #ttte

thank you to Mr. Beldar Conehead for supplying the display this year

A great time all round!

The big one

4th of July entertainment

Using 4th of July as a thinly veiled excuse to use my two train whistles outdoors (Both would've come from early electric interurban cars)

Happy 4th!

Dusting off this Isambard Inkblot vehicle design for a little 4th of July animation - This is ironclad submersible "HMS Seahorse XII" and will be part of a fireworks display of some sort, still not exactly sure of the plot, but open to suggestion

Slightly late Canada Day drawing, possibly my favorite Canadian locomotive, the suburban "double ender" tank engine 47, now preserved at Steamtown in Pennsylvania. Always thought this would make a fun character, given the cute proportions #trainart #steamlocomotive #ttte

Nice sunny day, so I decided to pull the Daylight out of the Union Station and let it out on the main while testing and troubleshooting the 0-8-0

One of my favorite model engines is back in service after having the motor brushes cleaned, this is an Indiana Harbor Belt 0-8-0, an extremely powerful yard switcher and transfer engine, which I love using on switching puzzle layouts. Now that it runs again, need to add a front coupler...

I dunno how helpful this will be, but, at times like this, I find myself looking at these two old drawings of Zeppie