Pretty much finished up a summer long project of making a reasonable Chessie Steam Special train. Reasonable being cost, time and likeness.
Spent some time lightly weathering the BLI T-1, putting silver highlights where needed. My son challenged me to have optional flags. Syringe needles have reasonably reliable inside diameters so they slip over the hand rails on the front, just like on the prototype. Time will tell how fast these get lost.
I rode and chased the CSS when I was in high school. A standout of memory and while looking at videos were the people and how when open, which they usually where, the window frames of the open window cars were painted yellow. I used a Dremel to cut out the plastic and a paint thin strip of styrene to make the "frame" which is glued to the clear plastic.
The concession car always had the doors open. I added a lot of those cheap figures from China to the train. I cut out the doors of an Atlas RPO and also opened up most of the vestibules on the closed window cars and added figures.
I was going to ignore the Aux tender, which in real life was a former NYC Mohawk tender, but Bachmann had a 30% off parts sale, so a Hudson tender was procured. It is too short and the Circus City decal set didn't include decals for it, but what the heck. The water tray gear on the bottom was cut off, an MT coupler added and a brass cover fitted over the coal section, which on the proto was a small shop area.
Most of the cars are "junk box" cars picked up at the spring Timonium show, but the tail end car was a MT car purchase at a hobby store I visited while travelling in Texas. I offered Ed K a ride on the platform, but I suspect he forgot about my offer.
Three cars came from the estate of past Bantrak member and modeler Bob Mohr who had a Concur CSS set and custom painted three additional cars for the set which I was able to acquire, including this foobie full length car (the later Chessie Safety Special did have a similar car). I repainted the yellow to match and added people to this (and other cars).
Matching the yellow of the BLI locomotive was a challenge. After several failures to produce a match with enough paint for the entire train, I finally took the locomotive to Lowes and the nice guy behind the counter took a reading from the BLI tender and mixed up a sample jar of interior latex. This actually worked quite well, but was a bit of pain, as once watered down enough to work in the airbrush, it took 3-4 coats to cover and since it wanted to run, I could only paint one side at a time.
This is my own photo I took while a Junior in High School. Parsons yard in Columbus, Ohio.
After converting couplers, swapping trucks and wheel sets, the next test is seeing how it runs at Altoona.
Now that I've done this, it should be perfect timing for BLI to come out with N-scale cars to match their HO CSS offering.
Bob
