Mark, Nice to see my Northern Pacific guy back posting. I really like that mike. Nice work.
Hope you get the boat improvements finished. I lived in Florida for 13 years and have a house in the Keys, but never had a boat. I had access to boats belonging to my friends though. They said that the second happiest day they had was when they got their boat and the happiest day is when they sold it, claiming that a boat was a hole into the water into which you pour money.
I have been getting quite involved with my model railroad club in Livingston and have been looking into more DCC equipment. I am still a DCC dummy and probably won't graduate to the next level. I did manage to get a good deal on ebay on a BLI NW2 for $80, new in the box.
It does have some excellent sound and a sweet runner.
When I was working on my North Coast Limited F-3, I also picked up a Stewart F-9 for $25..
I really didn't need the F-9 because I thought that I already had enough locomotives so I actually put it in a pile of items that I would try to sell in the train show that we have every April in the NP depot in Livingston. As youcan see, it really lacked details and even a road number, and I really didn't want to go through all of the work that the F-3 needed. I had been searching for months trying to find an NP road diesel to MU with my Atlas RS-1 because of the two and a half percent grades at th club. There just wasn't one to be had anywhere. I can't believe how neglected that the Northern Pacific is in the hobby.
A friend on the forum who is really into DCC and I got into a conversation and I took the shell off and sent him a photo and found out that the F-9 was DCC ready and also had a Kato drive. He now has the chassis and has installed DCC and says that it is a really sweet running locomotive. He is in the process of downloading a sound program for it.
http://www.digitrax.com/sound-depot/emd-567b-16-fp7a-non-turbo-roots-1500hp/
With that news I added the needed roof details and hand rails as well as numbering the locomotive. Here is aphoto that I took sometime in the 80's at the yard in Livingston where it was rebuild and was going to leave for the Mount Rainier Scenic Railway.
The road number was a no brainer for me, so the shell was given that number.
A few minor details still have to be added, but I can't wait to get it running at the club. Speaking about the club, here's a cab ride video I took at the club. At about 11:25, the train goes into the town of Gardiner, MT. The NP did provide rail service from Livingston to Gardiner to provide good to the town and take passengers to visit Yellowstone Park. The service was abandoned in the mid 50's. The town was all scratch build using photos from the Museum of the Rockies set in the 30's. By the way, yo may see a guy in a dark blue Navy T shirt and hat, that's me.
Glad to see you back in here posting. Good luck with the boat.