It feels like fall is arriving about now in the south and that means it's time to start operating my trains up in the attic. I had a name for my railroad when we lived up near Birmingham but it was related to a geographic feature related to local railroad history. So I have to come up with a name for my layout in the attic in Titletown and will work on that this fall.
But first thing is to bring in some new acquisitions to my layout - some new, some used, most have a personal connection. The first to arrive was an old fashioned hand car. I have actually used a hand car back in the summer of 2022. It's a workout, though lemme tell ya, especially on even the slightest grade uphill. It was this bright yellow one right here in the middle.
As I perused the secondary market for possible acquisitions, I saw a yellow hand car for sale and put that thing in my online shopping cart as fast as I could.
It's a Bachmann brand Large Scale product and while I mostly have Aristo-Craft rolling and motive stock, I will go to Bachmann as a second choice if AC is not available. In this case, AC never made a hand car.
I started out buying and running steam locomotives and passenger coaches but have branched into diesel locomotives and freight/reefer cars. Much of the AC product is available in the green/yellow/white Southern Railroad so I get that when I can. I had a small Southern diesel already but picked up a 'like new' bigger RS-3 in Southern colors and can't wait to see it going.
And the most recent arrival to my train layout is a 'Heavyweight Combo Car". These are cars in the passenger train times of the 20s-40s and came in a coach configuration (seating), observation (coach car but with a platform on one end as the last car in the consist), diner, RPO (rolling post office), and a combo (baggage section on one end and passenger seating on the other end). I already had a complete set of these in Southern green but I saw this combo for sale and had to have it. And you'll see why.
Did ya see the name on the combo?
As a Tide fan and a railroad guy, how could I NOT have this as a part of the collection?

The combo I already had had a 'Rufus Somebody-or-other' name on it which I can sell off some time.
More acquisitions are on the way and I have plans to improve the layout so should be a fun operating season.

ED