Weekend Update 1/11/2009

[John]

Lots of work this week. The vacuum was out a lot, I took out 4 big bags of trash from the layout room, and worked a lot on wiring.

[Puddington]

After the "melting defeat" of the CPR A class diner project I was looking for something to "get me back on the horse".... so it is a surprise that I chose to try and breath life back into another failed project.....

Several years ago I bought my first brass sides kit; and what a choice it was. The Athabaska Sides Canadian National Baggage Dormitory car - wrong choice for a first attempt !

This is a shorter car; ergo you have to cut the American Limited Core Kit and size it for the sides - if you've never worked with sides or a core kit this isn't a good starting place - naturally I screwed it up; the core kit was cut wrong - I "glob" painted the brass sides (they are a different animal) and the whole thing was a "smozzle".......It went into the "later, dude" bin...........

For some reason, as of yet unknown, I hauled it out and began to breathe some life into it...

I started by stripping the sides - lots of fun... Next I built a new core kit; a lot more experience now made this an easier, if not tedious task of sizing it for the shorter sides...

Then I repainted the sides - they were not in perfect shape and had been bent a little but the job came out in the C+, B- range so we acccepted that and carried on.......

Decals, grabs, ladders and roof details (a 100% guess as I have no picture of the actual units....) and this is what we got.....





The baggage-dormitory is a "pedestrian" kind of car - non revenue, head end and not really noticed by many people (as witness I give you the dirth of photo's of them) but nevertheless it "makes" the train look more realistic; they are almost always present on long haul, "trans con" consists regardless of the railway (unless you change crews out at Division Points) and without one the head end always look "short".....

This Baggage-Dorm will fit right into my CN Super Continental consist and will ride just behind the last baggage car or RPO and ahead of the first revenue coach - a place for a weary waiter; cook; porter; trainman or engineer to rest their heads while listening to bagage rattle around just beyond the bulkhead.......

I've also started the "big boy" for the "Stampeder" consist... the Great Northern Great Dome....

Brass sides have been used to augment the old tried and true Bachmann full dome car - the sides were preped and painted and the GN rocky decals applied - the car name and number it pending...

The side kit requires you to sand smooth the super dome car - the fluting and window ridges have to come off - this is a tedious and tricky job because you have to be very careful not to round the ends.... (ask me how I know this....)

The window opening also have to be enlarged, a Dremel was used for this and then the new openings were sanded. The car was painted black and then the sides applied....

I haven't begun the interior; ends; weathering; window treatments or passengers and I haven't decided which of the "View" series she will be yet but here's what we've got so far...



Big Sky Blue Beastie..............

[up1950s]

[TrainCat2]

First production Southern Pacific C-30-6 ready for paint. I will be starting to ship Jan 15th. I lowered the deck and gave it a complete removable bottom to allow the builder access to the inside (lights, glazing, etc).

[MichaelT]

Nothing really to speak of here; we purchased a new storage shed for the back yard to hold our Christmas decorations so I would not have to climb the attic anymore; the two benefits of that;
1. The older shed, a 10x12 metal building will now serve specifically as a work shop type building, and
2. the new shed, a 10x14 will have about two feet of the left side open to house my large scale engines and some rolling stock; the outdoor layout shed, so to speak.

Getting all of the Christmas decorations into the new shed did empty out the layout room, so I can start dicing it up and taking it out to turn it back into the guest room per SWMBO's directive. The computer room, the 11x10 room with 2+ft of usable closet space will become the layout room of the future.

That's about it from a chilly Central Arkansas!!

Michael ;D

[Bob Bufkin]

Puddington, I love the work you do on passenger cars.  The first kit I ever worked on was a PRR P70KR in which I had to shorted the American Limited core kit.  I surprised myself and it fit perfectly the first time.  Painted it and let it sit before applying decals.  We had just gotten a new puppy and the next morning when I went to check on the car it was in hundreds of chewed pieces.  My wife had to hold me back from beating the dog.  That was 2 years ago and he's now big as a bear.  Today I was trying to replace trucks on a PRR D78 diner.  It came with body mounted trucks and after coming up with a track plan I can live with, I find that it derails a couple places due to sharper curves than I intended.  Can't really redo, since it would mean complete new benchwork (no way).  Anyhow it's not yet complete but I hope to come up with replacement trucks which will work on my tighter radius.

[central.vermont]

Not much for , just trying to finish this
MEC E7 for mec_fan. Still have to put on a few
more decals and then paint and apply the handrails.

Sorry John, my birthday party got in the way.  ;D

Jon

[MEC_FAN]

Sweet!!!!!!!!!!!! So when can we run it??????????

[wm3798]

Not much that's photogenic this week, although I did take a couple of evenings and clean engine wheels...  I've also got a couple more 70 ton hopper rebuilds to letter, and a couple of NE cabooses to finish up.

I also started moving trains around and spotting cars to get ready for the Feb 15 ops session.

Other than that, I've been sanding drywall...  One more week I think...

Lee

[Ed Kapuscinski]

Good work Lee. Remember, prior planning prevents poor performance!

Get em blocked well there buddy!

[James Costello]

Not much for , just trying to finish this
MEC E7 for mec_fan. Still have to put on a few
more decals and then paint and apply the handrails.

Sorry John, my birthday party got in the way.  ;D

Jon

That's some awesome decal work on the pilot/plow and nose Jon!

No modeling work for me last week. Been working on an assignment that's due in a few hours (damn summer semester!). In my breaks I dreamt about all the projects to work on this week and started watching Pentrex's Ultimate Cajon dvd...so far, so good.

[Iain]

A month ago I took a trip to Weldon, NC to get some photos of the old ACL depot for Lee.  When I tried to transfer said photos to my computer, nothing worked.  I've since figured out that the flash card died, taking Lee's photos with it (sorry, Lee; I'll try again soon).

Anyway, I finally bought a new flash card, and offer up this:


I still have to add the link to the brake wheel and paint.  This is the bottom of a Norfolk Southern boxcar.  Up until the Depression NS painted their boxcars green.  This car will receive the pre-1910 N&S scroll.  The body is being detailed to match an ACF car of the 2300 series.

[atsf_arizona]

SNFF 2009 01 11

Starting out the New Year....

As financial situation is extremely tight and new model railroad purchases
definitely on hold... decided to spend time doing layout scenery detailing.
After all, when money is tight.... we've got time!

Before:



And as you can imagine, somehow, fixing one little spot:





Turned into deciding to upgrade the whole scenery across the whole module:



I guess that's one reason why model railroading is such a fun hobby..... you
can never run out of things to do! 

  Have a good week, all.

[davefoxx]

John Sing,

What you can do with Unitrack has always amazed me.  If one didn't know any better, they would be hard-pressed to recognize the use of prefab track with integral roadbed on your layout.  Outstanding.

By the way, where are you hiding those beautiful FP45s? 

Dave Foxx

[asciibaron]

i started to rip apart my NTrak module scenery - i can do better.

-Steve