Running trains

Here are two trains running on the mainline. The foreground passenger train is pulled by a Union Pacific Challenger in the two-tone grey scheme, often called "Greyhound".  The consist is all heavy weight passenger cars.  You might notice that the two baggage cars at the lead are a slightly different color or shade of armor yellow than the passenger cars.  Different manufacturers and I suppose a different idea of what the right color is. Not sure how I am going to remedy this - maybe when I weather the cars.  And when I see a sample of the correct color.

The rear freight train is pulled a consolidation loco, #461 for the RGS (Rio Grande Southern).  In this time frame, the late 50's, the RGS was gone.  However in my world it continued in Colorado and upgraded their mudhen # 461 from the original Baldwin K27 to a more recent but still old consolidation - and repainted it with their herald and #461 loco number.  Hey - it is my world and it could have happened!

Everything ran perfectly so I will continue to test track and turnouts while I install the backdrop. I will be using 1/8" foamcore painted sky blue for the backdrop.  Once these are installed around the railroad, I will add photos of the mountains.  This is a little tricky but once complete the difference is huge.

First step - finish the backdrop in the staging yard including photos and building flats so that I can paint the rails and install ballast.  The staging yard will represent Denver and Salt Lake City - the "ends" of my railroad empire in one place.  My plan is to finish this area to store the trains I am running, while I build the rest of the layout. I promised myself that I would not bring out all the rolling stock and locos until I had at least a base scenery down for the staging ares.