The Valley Local: 2025

Sunday, March 23, 2025

Railfanning the Androscoggin & Western Maine Railroad

Last fall, I had the honor of participating in an op session on Mike Confalone's beautiful Allagash Rwy (featured on the cover of the January and March issues of Railroad Model Craftsman). I should have done a full-on post about my experience, but was frankly a little overwhelmed. All I could manage was an image dump for a Wordless Wednesday (cuz I truly had no words...). You can see those images here.

Little did I know then that that would be the last time the Allagash would operate(!) Just a month or so later, I learned that Mike was going to move his railroad ten years into the future (from the early '80s to the early '90s) and it would become the new Androscoggin & Western Maine RR. Gone would be the cabooses, and arriving would be patched-out former Guilford power.

And by a quirk of fate, I was on the first crew to operate on the new railroad. Nice little bookend there - and another great honor.

While I "wait for the film to come back" of all the photos I shot during my railfan trip, I was at least able to get the videos out of my Hi-8 camcorder... So in the meantime, you can at least enjoy these videos (captions included with each one).

Thursday, March 13, 2025

Rapido 44-tonner Sound Check - Dirty Little Deeds, Done Dirt Cheap

Sincere apologies that I've been posting more to The Valley Local Facebook Group than posting here - and given the current zeitgeist I should probably wean myself off FB (as many of you have, if you were ever on it) and post here more. A quick review of this here blog reveals mostly a photo album. My last substantive post was literally last year. New Year's Eve, but still 2024.

But there is LOTS to post and I sincerely hope to get to work on those posts soon. In the meantime, and as you may have guessed from yesterday's Wordless Wednesday, I've recently acquired a Rapido 44-tonner. A full review will need to wait, but suffice it to say it will be effusive - this model is one of the best locomotives I've come across in a while. The way it runs so quiet and smooth reminded me of the first time I saw an Atlas RS-3 running back in the day - which is to say, like a Swiss watch. But the details (as well as how I went about weathering it and reprogramming it for my ProtoThrottle) will have to wait another day.

This post is about how it sounds - specifically trying to answer the question of "what the heck is Sound Slot 30 supposed to represent?!"

Check out the video below and let me know your thoughts in the comments...