Weekend Update - 9/13/2009

[John]

What did you do this week. I started to build a helix ..

And this ..

Doswell Va



Ashland Va

Juice Train



Manifest


Richmond

[asciibaron]

in that last shot, did a driver try to make a right turn  ;D

i'm saving all my progress for October.

[John]

Yes .. actually .. then he went the wrong way with the checker flag

[Puddington]

I finished a couple of projects; namely another couple of Canadian Forces Lord Strathcona's Leopards on flat car....................(I know they are mark 2's but I'm not an armour guy......)







I also finished weathering another Hobbycraft Canada GP 9m in the (yuck, yuck) CP Rail Pac Man scheme....... nice switching units.......





Pulling some 40' empties for grain service........



I like the tuscan and grey better but they were very, very rare...............

[Chris333]

I used the shrink ray to make a Z scale copy of this Blair Line building.

David helped by reworking the signs.

Also tried to blend some trees into the backdrop:

[Chris333]

Bob,
Is that a Hulett unloader?

[asciibaron]

looks really good Chris.

i have a straight section that will go under a bridge into hidden trackage.  i'm trying to figure out a decent way to address the backdrop - maybe a 1 inch gap between the bridge and backdrop to give it some "space"

-steve

[asciibaron]

Bob,
Is that a Hulett unloader?

that's what i was thinking too



the teaser looks like the base frame.

[inkaneer]

 
 

Looks like someone in the grandstands had a bad case of flatulence.

[wm3798]

Good stuff as usual gents.  Pud, I love the geep.  I especially like the one coming out of the grain bins.  Nicely played!

After my article published in N Scale Magazine, I was contacted by a modeler who had several more of these cars he wanted to unload. He offered me 5 cars at no cost, provided I did one up to return to him as a Laurel Valley car.

The original car in the magazine article is in the rear, two of the newer ones are in the foreground featuring loads I built from scraps I had around the workbench.



I used actual scraps, bits of sprue, leftover MT shim plates, some wheels and springs and other crap I had laying around. I glued the pieces to a styrene base, then sealed it all with a wash of clear matte acrylic. Once that dried, I went over it with a few washes of black, brown and oxide red to give it a good junky look. The load is removable and also fits in my MT gons.  Even the ones that are lowered!


Also made with actual scraps. To get the effect of shreds of sheet metal, I scraped along the edge of some styrene with a sharp X-acto blade to get some "curly cues". These were stuffed in and among the sprue bits and other scraps I had glued to the base, then brushed some Plastic Weld over it to crinkle it all up and bond it together. Followed by multiple washes of black, brown and oxide colors to "flavor" it.

I need to get more decals run so I can do the rest of the gons.
Lee

[tehachapifan]

Great stuff! ;D

I did some more street trackage work this week.

This time I was trying for a patched concrete and asphalt look inspired by the HO scale City Edge layout.

I used Woodland Scenics Smooth-It for the concrete and asphalt....







Russ

[James Costello]

That's some good looking pavement Russ!

My SD70M project continues to offer lessons in character building. Spent the week stripping my botched paint work from the shells - I used Isopropyl for one and tried to speed up the process by using a local paint stripper that is supposed to be safe for plastic models on the other two. You can see where this is going can't you? Cleaned the shells up on Saturday ready for primer and the other two had crazed pretty badly. I reinstalled the lift rings that were lost in the stripping process (more character building) and gave the shells a prime yesterday, hoping the primer would cover the minor cracks, but no joy. The one stripped in isopropyl looks sweet though. So it'll be off to the Kato website today for two replacement shells (more character building). At least the time waiting for the parts will be well spent preparing for the masking process, but I'm not looking forward to drilling out the fans again and all those #80 drill holes.... Fortunately the cabs weren't affected and I won't have to redo any of them.

On the other hand, I followed Steve4's advise and practiced the Demo paint job on an Atlas SD60M shell in the reverse order - silver first, then red etc, focusing on thin, light coats. This went well and I took the masking off the unit last night and was happy with the result - no loss of silver underneath all that tape, which was Steve's main concern. I use this to practice the curve on the nose once I get the masks developed.

Whilst I was playing with isopropyl, I got two Red Caboose autoracks disassembled and stripped, ready for paint this weekend. Also got some Atlas Pines trailers dullcoated and ready for some weathering treatments and while I had the airbrush out got a coat of white on some Walthers X-Post containers. Should get these masked up and some silver on the ribs during the week.

I tried out Tamiya's "Fine Surface Primer" in a spray bomb over the weekend too, which I am happy to report worked well. Extremely fine and good finish.

[DKS]

I helped Chris with these signs.



I also entered the TrainBoard photo contest, just for the heck of it.



http://www.trainboard.com/grapevine/showthread.php?t=112778

[asciibaron]

damn David, that's hawt.  and Z scale no less.  wow.

[MEC_FAN]

Wow some really awesome stuff tonight guys. David that photo is hot and Lee  I really like the scrap loads.
Here's some boring shots of the east end of the staging yard that Central Vermont and Pete helped me get started six weeks ago. This weekend I layed all the track coming off the ladder and some of the double track coming into it. I also installed thirteen Tortises. Need to drop all the feeds in and solder up alot of the track and then lug it upstairs and install it. Then we'll build the west end after.