Rick is building a flat car with headlights. Eventually, the flat car will hold his GoPro camera and will provide well lit views during night operations or while passing through the tunnel.

Last train night Rick found buckling in the south curve approaching TwentyMile bridge. He pulled track nails, did the necessary straightening and then soldered the rail together.

No one else cares for you like these hash browns do! The train night crew was treated to breakfast for dinner including (how can you ever go wrong with) bacon, scrambled eggs, hash browns and homemade bread. #hashbrowns

Rick has almost finished his "built from scratch" GoPro flat car with head lights. This should make for some pretty cool night time videos!

However, tonight we had issues at the north Anchorage yard switch. Several cars derailed as they pass through the switch. Shown above is caboose 1087's front wheel set dropping down from the rail.

After scrutinizing a long list of factors, Rick found caboose 1087 and a tank car had wheel sets with different tread widths (W). To help see this clearly, I put two whites lines at the bottom of the left wheel. I then put the same two lines at the top of the left wheel. You can see the top tread width is smaller. Once we swapped the top wheel set out for one with a wider tread width our derailments ceased.

John ran trains throughout the week hunting for any problem cars. This video shows a 19 freight car consist passing east of Portage depot.

This video shows the same freight train passing through the mountain divide. This beautifully scenic area made an excellent backdrop for an Alaska freight!

John painted the bridge decking slats black and then replaced them on the bridge.

It is time once again for track cleaning and this Maintenance of Way (MoW) train made 26 passes through the entire mainline. This video captured the consist at Whittier depot.

Rick ran his lighted video flatcar with his heritage black and yellow locomotive. The car at the opposite end provides power to the lights. Each truck of this car provides power to the lights so if the power from either set is intermittent, the other set will provide power. The bottom line is this Frankenstein looking configuration will provide constant power to the lights. Rick ran the consist through the tunnel to ensure there were no clearance issues.

Video: Rick took these hoppers home last week to modify their plastic air hoses so they cleared the turnouts. Additionally, we are now on a hunt for wheels with narrow tread widths as they cause derailments.

.080 tread width wheels cause derailments. John bought 100 .110 tread width wheels to replace the narrower wheels.

Part of the evening was spent replacing the narrow width wheels. John removed the trucks, swapped the wheels and then remounted the trucks.

Rick test ran a multitude of trains. This freight consist ran flawlessly.

Although I thought I'd replaced all plastic wheels the first Difco dump car still had them. Once the wheels were swapped the consist ran flawlessly.