Weekend Update - 6/13/2010

[wm3798]

"Mike is Not involved"

But seriously folks...  Had a nice relaxing Father's Day, then after dinner went upstairs and broke a sweat cleaning up the disaster area...


Behold!  The Floor!  It Lives!


The new section that will house Cumberland.


I can finally step back far enough to get a wide shot.

The big achievement of the night was clearing off the old typing table I have to make a "crash cart" for the basic tools. 


This will come in handy when we have our work session.

If you are worried about what became of the Blob, don't worry, it's still around...  it just moved into the workshop area...


But it is getting smaller!

Lee

[pogopod]

MiNi is MiNi Mod-U-Trak   http://modutrak.cgwrr.com/

[bbussey]

Further progress on the NH turtleback baggage car.

[lock4244]

Wow Brian, that car is fantastic... if I had only half your talent I'd attempt a few of the cars unique to my roads.

No modeling for me (big surprise), I just foamed trackside. Been trying to nail as many shots of VIA F40's before the fleet is all run through the rebuild and gain that ugly, big a$$ hump and the tacky new paint. The F40 is no prince, but the R/B is turning them into toads 

Also caught a pair of CP's red barns on train 235, which is significant as I think it has picked the numbers that my two SAR shells will become... 9004 and 9018.

[daniel_leavitt2000]

Looks great Bryan!

Since we have X58 boxcars coming, I decided to start building my fleet of Conrail boxcars. I have several runs of Atlas's X71, though I wish they would run the "CR" brown door version. I really like the Atlas FGE cars, which were often used in paper service on the Boston line (the CSX cars are still very plentiful here).

My current project is a fleet paint of Evans X72s. I purchased four of the humble Life-Like cars painted by Bev-Bel for 3.99 each. These featured horrible paint, as only Bev-Bel could do. The cars were stripped. The interior received additional bracing on the shell and bolster area to keep the cars from wobbling. The weld lines were flattened down to a more respectable level using the but end of a straight razor. I also shaved a bit of material from the steps to make them a bit thinner. The cars were painted boxcar red with a silver roof. Decals are a combination of Microscale, Northeast Decals and custom made numbers.

Pics to come.

[mcjaco]

"Mike is Not involved"

Oh trust me.  He is!   

[cv_acr]

Decalled and weathered some Atlas cars that had been sitting around for a while.  Nothing looks better than a string of heavily weathered BC Rail green boxcars.

Weathering is kinda heavy on these. These cars also didn't actually make it to BC Rail, they were rostered from 1974-1981 and returned to USLX. The name change from British Columbia Railway to BC Rail didn't happen until 3 years later.

[BCR 570]

These cars also didn't actually make it to BC Rail, they were rostered from 1974-1981 and returned to USLX. The name change from British Columbia Railway to BC Rail didn't happen until 3 years later.

In their original scheme, yes.  However, some of them lasted well into the BC Rail era, albeit repainted for Mountain Pine Lumber Co. Ltd.  John Garden's book has several photographs showing still at work for interior mills on BC Rail during the early 1990s.

As these cars have been re-decalled, I suspect that Andy is pursuing a what-if scenario, especially as most of the railway's boxcars from the late 1990s/early 2000s are not available for him at present, and are not likely to be without resorting to scratchbuilding.


Tim

[Sokramiketes]

"Mike is Not involved"

Oh trust me.  He is!   

LOL

[BCRail_FSJ]

I can't sneak anything by this sharp eyed crowd can I?   Tim is right.  I am using a (rather tenuous) 'what if' scenario to assume a few of these cars survived into the 2000s.  

Big long strings of green BC Rail boxcars were the hallmark of most trains on the railway and I need a practical way to build up a substantial fleet without breaking the bank or spending the rest of my life scratchbuilding them individually. Since there are no accurate ready-to-run models and very few kits available, I am repainting 'close enough' models and kitbashing others in order to build up a fleet of 20 to 30  box cars that will capture the flavor of north end trains.   To me using a bunch of ready to run Railbox and CN box cars would be way more tenuous than having a train dominated by long blocks of kitbashed or repainted 'good enough' BC Rail cars that may not be strictly accurate when compared to drawings

Most prototypes running in the early 2000s were 50 and 60 foot double door boxcars painted either green or red oxide, some with the BC Rail logo and some with just BCOL reporting marks.   Initial experiments with old MDC Roundhouse kits show promise in getting somewhat close to prototypical, but if the sides are right, the roof is wrong.  If the ends are right then the doors are wrong...    You get the idea.  

I am currently working on a 60 foot double door car kitbashed from no less than 3 MDC Roundhouse kits.   It looks great ....from a distance...  

[BCR 570]

Andy:

Yes, those late Canadian boxcars are going to be tough to obtain because they were not very common and were often built to order. There is very little consistency in the 60 foot cars because the manufacturers went through several changes of ownership at that time and designs were changed.  That is definitely one of the challenges of modelling the era you have chosen.

One of the LBF hi-cube boxccars is a match for that last order of brown boxcars with AOK reporting marks.  Also, the 80-Ton rebuilds of the combination door boxcars can be done with the Kaslo Shops kit because it includes the free rolling door as an option.  The 100-Ton rebuilds are also doable but you would have to add the side vents.

I spent yesterday afternoon making a start on the first of my Kaslo Shops 100-Ton Procor gondolas.  That is a car you will need for your locale.


Tim

[sirenwerks]

Andy,

Ever consider kitbashing a castable core and getting sides etched?

[Ian MacMillan]

I got a crap load of Silfor from Scenic Express in the other day. This will get the ball rolling again as scenery in many places had come to a halt because I ran out of static grass a few months ago and just got around to ordering it. Going to be picking up a bunch of turnouts as well possibly this week so I can finally get the damn "loop" completed and get some trains going roundy round while I'm working.