Weekend Update 3/7/2010

[Puddington]

That gon looks terrific, esp. the interior.

Ed

Thanks ! - I'm a 'wanna be" Tom Mann; without the skill; know how and talent....but hey; "ya can dream !"

[Bruce Bird]

I managed to reach the dreaded Slot=Max on my Digitrax and have spent the day resetting the layout.  And I also jumped into Lake Decatur with about 300 other Polar Plungers for Special Olympics.

[jsoflo]

That gon looks terrific, esp. the interior.

Ed

Thanks ! - I'm a 'wanna be" Tom Mann; without the skill; know how and talent....but hey; "ya can dream !"

That really looks great, I have always found Soo white hard to weather- for some reason it always ends up looking "extreme" so I really appreciate what you did there, so how'd you do it? Powders, acrylics, airbrush? I also was weathering gons, so I DOUBLY appreciate how good that looks!!
my best,
Jan

[Ryan87]

Say, David, what size it that prototype rail?

Not positive, but I'd guess it's around 80-90 pound. Odd, but I hadn't thought to measure it--I guess because I can't do much about the rail weight, model-wise (my Code 25 rail scales up to around 100 pound rail).

Measure it? it should say on the rail along with the steel mill and the date it was rolled...

[diezmon]

I finally got around to starting my fuel depot..

pvc conduit, styrene, and some solder for hoses.



weathering, and more details, to come...

[Puddington]

That gon looks terrific, esp. the interior.

Ed

Thanks ! - I'm a 'wanna be" Tom Mann; without the skill; know how and talent....but hey; "ya can dream !"

That really looks great, I have always found Soo white hard to weather- for some reason it always ends up looking "extreme" so I really appreciate what you did there, so how'd you do it? Powders, acrylics, airbrush? I also was weathering gons, so I DOUBLY appreciate how good that looks!!
my best,
Jan

Thanks - In this case, on the outside I used a wash of very light grey water based paint - let it dry so I'd have a good surface to weather. I used a needle to prick indentations in places I wanted rusted - I thus used a micro brush and rust powders and lightly rubbed in the powder, wiping off the surface. A light seal of Dullcoat on that. The I used light brown; light rust; tan and grey powders in overlaping layers. When I got the look I liked, I sealed it; then went at it with some rust powders with a light brush/microbrush. After that's done tape it off for the inside... messy stuff coming.

The inside was done with a muddy rust and brown paint wash; sealed and then as soon as the dullcoat hit the plastic a blast of a combination of rust powders. The surface was scored up with sand paper before hand; the powders are rubbed in hard and then tapped out, a few layer of differing colour powders and then a tan over powder, sealed and done.

[John]

No modeling .. but I did get 20 sheets of HardiBacker down on the kitchen floor and mudded up ..

[tom mann]

No modeling .. but I did get 20 sheets of HardiBacker down on the kitchen floor and mudded up ..

lol, I was doing the same thing.

[Ed Kapuscinski]

Finally got over my cold long enough to work on some trains.  Finished up a CRL C30-7 and a patched UP SD40.

Brian

That CRL C30 looks nice. I've never seen anyone do one of those before.

Thanks Ed,
I had an extra CR unit laying around and thought it would be fun to convert it to CRL.  Did these get the signal box's like the original C30's behind the conductors side on the walkway?  I know most of the CRL versions were previous ATSF C30's that they picked up.

Brian

I would assume so, since the hardware was required to lead over a big chunk of the railroad. But pics are the only way to be sure. I think we have some on the crhs site.

[Iain]

This weekend was the annual New Bern train show.  I sold off the last of my modern stuff from way back and a couple of brass GP9s.  With the money so raised, I purchased an equal quantity of HO and N rolling stock; a bunch of Atlas and Microtrains stuff in N and some HO craftsman kits from the Seaboard, Southern, and Norfolk Southern Historical Societies.  I also purchased a second N B-mann 2-8-0 for conversion to an E3.

[tom mann]

All in various stages of completion:



stay cool and repetitive...

[James Costello]

Man, why don't we have a SW1500 in N yet????

The rainy weather here gave me a break from the garden for a weekend and I made some decent progress on my SD70M demo project. Photos to come later today....

[Guilford Guy]

Do I spy sergents on the GP40X? Also, didn't those units have elephant ears?

[seusscaboose]

picked up a hard to find runner-pack of NKP Express boxcars that are out of production (Intermountian, Special Run) and decided that maybe it really is time to listen to the wife and buy a new camera.  :

[wm3798]

Pardon the shabby pictures... But here's the progress on the roundhouse since I posted the first pictures this morning...



I reworked the roof line to look more like the Hagerstown Roundhouse, including the clerestory over 8 of the stalls...  I've got 11.  Hagerstown had 22.  I'm prowling around ebay to see if I can scare up another 6 stall kit so I can wrap around the turntable a little more like the real deal:

http://www.wmwestsub.com/hagerstownshops09.jpg

I don't have room for all the backshop buildings (like I thought I did originally) but they wouldn't get as much play as the roundhouse will anyway.

Anyway, the Supervisor seems to approve of the progress so far...


I've got to get some windows drawn up and over to the copy shop to put on transparencies, plus make the mods to the middle roof panels I need for the second and third tiers.  This week I'm going to start messing with the yard modules to see how this will all fit.  At this point, the original Elkins roundhouse looks like it will become surplus...  If anyone's interested in it, let me know.  It's sized to fit the Walther's powered turntable with 7 stalls.

Lee