Weekend Update 8/29/2010

[Puddington]

Combines were a common sight on virtually every railway from the 19th century until the end of common place mixed trains in the 1960's and early 70's.

Most were wooden or early steel constructed cars that housed express freight and baggage as well as paying passengers. As many designs for "combines" exist as fleas on a dog; most railways having modified old wooden cars to serve when they were replaced by steel cars in the 20's and 30's.

The Canadian Pacific Railway used combines on numerous routes into the late 1960's; many were wooden cars built around 1900- 1912.

The 3250-3299 series of cars were some of the last wooden cars the CPR built. These saw service on branchlines for over 60 years.

Geoff Gooderham of Vancouver BC has produced a wonderful resin kit of a 3250 series combine and I have recently built his kit.

Resin cars are fun, but require patience and a moderate level of skill to clean and prep. They are fragile; and this car was extremely so; having only 0.020 thick walls.

6 hours of cleaning up, sanding filling and preping resulted in a primed model that was ready for final filling of cracks and bubbles. The frame was assembled; queenposts attached and gas tanks, brake gear etc.. were added. The truss rods would come later.



The car was painted with a mixture of tuscan and browns; I wanted a more weathered look to the paint. Black Cat decals, gold leaf, were used to letter the car. Grabs of 0.007 wire were added, as wereladders. The drop ladders would have to wait as they are currently in shipment to me from the LHS.



The car bears a very similar resemblance to this 3300 series combine; you can see the weathered look of this car; which was in good shape for 1966

The car was hit with several light coats of "Glosscoat" (They don't call it varnish for nothin)

The car was then weathered with powders and light coats of a wash and dullcoat. Rust and grime was added to bottom after the 0.007 wire truss rods were added.

The car is "all windows" so an interior was built of styrene; back to back seats and walls were formed and painted. The entire interior was built on a 0.020 sheet of styrene and set into the car, then glued, once the seats lined up with the window frames.

The windows were added and so were shades. The car needs some weight and I will form some small weights to go in the baggage and vestibule.

Marker lamps were added to the passenger end as well. MT 1023 couplers were used but the trucks interfered with them so the resin floor of the car was carefully shaved to accomodate the couplers (not a job for the feint of heart)

The car needs some ladders around the bagagge door and A end but these will have to wait until the post man arrives.

Here's the combine in revenue service on the Samuel Ridge Sub.







The kit is well made; fun to build and yields a fine model. It accurately represents a sadly under modeled part of railway history. The combine was the first train car many rode and was, for all intents and purposes, the "bus of the branchline" when passenger rail travel was king.

[Philip H]

Pud, That's outstanding!  You really need to think about submitting some of this to the hobby press.

After getting the oil out of my clothes, and finishing a lengthy list of piled Honey-Do's (!) I got back to layout work.  I FINALLY  got out the benchwork I got off Craigslist last Spring, and started re-sawing it for the remaining two benchwork segments:





I'll have pics of the final cut pieces later today.

I also started to figure otu whatelse I don't need form the pile, and have begun a virtual yard sale:

http://therailwire.net/forum/index.php/topic,22105.0.html

[DKS]

After over two years of on-and-off tinkering, plus a complete re-build, the East Theater is now 100% finished.
 

[up1950s]

Outstanding results Pud and David .

Work begins on UP ( OSL Oregon Short Line ) 4754 an oil fired USRA
 

 

 

 

[Puddington]

Thanks gents; Richie: that seems like a huge tender for an 0-6-0 in that picture; any idea why they would have what looks like and "over-the-road" tender on a yard engine ?

[up1950s]

Thanks gents; Richie: that seems like a huge tender for an 0-6-0 in that picture; any idea why they would have what looks like and "over-the-road" tender on a yard engine ?

It is just a modified to oil small USRA tender 31'10" long , both the real one and my model . I guess they were rode hard in the yards and maybe had enough water to last a days roundup before they had to go to the trough for a drink .

[BCR 570]

Nice work everybody!

Work continued on three fronts during the past week.

Since posting an image of the circuit breaker panel two weeks ago, I have been working out how to run the leads for the remote status indicator LEDs out to the barrier strips.  The terminals for these are located on both sides of each module and the modules are attached to each other.  I wanted to run the wires with a minimum of crossovers to simplify troubleshooting and replacement if necessary.

Each circuit breaker has a light for Power Available, Power On, and Short Present, to which I will allocate an amber, green and red LED respectively.  After completing the LED wiring for the inner four circuit breakers, I connected the whole panel to the command station and powered it up for a test.  The track bus wires for the two current power districts were connected to circuit breakers #4 and 5, and the LEDs were pegged into their respective barrier strips.

This photograph shows the LED wiring sitting in place for breakers #3, 4, 5 and 6.  Hopefully you can see the pretty Amber and Green LEDs at the top:




If we lay something metal across the tracks in power district #4 to short out the track, the Amber light goes out and a pretty Red light comes on:




Now that I know it works as it is supposed to, I can press ahead with finishing the LED wiring for the four remaining circuit breakers.  When the whole panel is installed, the indicator LEDs will be mounted in a panel out on the fascia which looks like this:




The other electronics project on the go is the helix occupancy circuit.  During this past week all of the wire leads to the various LEDs were soldered and covered with heat shrink.  It was then time for a test, this time with a moving train, to verify that this will actually work as designed:




In the above photograph you can see that the train has passed between the emitter and detector and the green indicator on the fascia panel has come on.  So far so good - now I can proceed with permanent installation of the whole thing.


Finally, in between work on these two projects, a LOT of time was spent manfacturing the crossbearers for my trailer flat car project:




Each crossbearer is an I-beam assembled from three strips of styrene.  The top flange had to be notched back to nest inside the centre sill.  A total of 32 per car are required - I am glad they are done!  Hopefully they will not take as long to install.


Tim

[wm3798]

Went over to Eric's on Friday night to test drive and critique his evolving track plan.  My favorite part of going up there is he lives right near BWI, so I plan to arrive a little early to hang around at the airplane park on Dorsey Road...



We ran around the loops at Eric's a few times, and quickly discovered some of the mystifying track diagrams he has been working with...  Many yellow post its later, there's real hope for this fun, basement filling layout.  The highlight was running real helper service on the big hill he's got...


Henry's RS-3's got some good break in time doing the honors shoving up the hill.

A splendid time was had by all... 


(for the record, Ed was there the night before on the first shift...)

Lee

[eric220]

The Altoona shops have been in the process of filling a new order for the home road.  The two ES44AC's were ready to go and had been forwarded to the paint shop.  Expectations were high that the newest locomotives would be out earning a living within a few days.  The shop Super was therefore surprised when the foreman of the paint shop walked into his office with his hat in his hands and a very sheepish look on his face.

"Sir, there's something I need to report."
"Whad'ya got?"
"There's going to be a delay in getting 1368 and 1302 out of the shop."
The Super put his pen down and looked the foreman square in the eye.  "What's the problem?"
The foreman looked down at his hat, spinning it in his hands.  "Well, sir... The, uh...  One of the cabs is missing."
After taking a moment to digest the comment, the Super repeated, "One of the cabs is missing?"
"Yes sir, one of the cabs is missing."
After a few moments' awkward silence, the Super asked, "How did you lose one of the cabs?"
"Well... uh, sir...  uh... you see..."
"C'mon!  Spit it out!"
The foreman looked up and blurted out, "We removed it as part of the paining procedure, and while the base coat was drying, the dang cat came along and knocked it out of the shop, where the robot grabbed it and flung into a deep dark corner of the woods, and we can't find it."

A week later the new paint shop foreman came into the Super's office.  He popped his head in and said, "We found the cab.  It was under the sofa."

About a week later, the new new paint shop foreman presented the Super with the PRR's newest locomotives.









Yes, the cat did in fact get a hold of the cab an knock it on the floor.  The Roomba promptly kicked it waaaaay back under the couch, and it was a good week before my wife found it.  I still have to fit number boards, which is why the railings aren't fitted.  I'm going to have to remove the cabs again, and I was in a hurry when I took these.

Ditch lights and sound courtesy of the folks at Top Hobby.

[Puddington]

I just love Eric's "Imagineering".......almost makes me want to run out, pick up a Big Boy and slap some Tuscan and Gold "Canadian Pacific" on it's massive tender.................almost..... :

[central.vermont]

Well I've been working on four GP9 torpedo tubes lettered and detail specific for the CV. They are going to
represent four different paint schemes. Red & Black, Red & Blue, Larson Green and the white Coast Guard
unit. Details are plows, winter hatches, bells, grab irons, horns, sunshades, rerailers and brake wheels. Once
they are complete they are going up for sale.
These two shots are of the Coast Guard unit.






Also got to go to the air show today at Pease Air Base in Portsmouth N.H. The Blue Angels were great!!!!!

[SAH]

Ballast, resin and first pass details for the Black River module over the past two weeks






Then I poured the resin.  In addition to the awful water color I discovered the trap I laid for myself with the uneven river bed.


The color of the water will change and I've added some land form to hide the uneven base.  The new set up blocks the view straight through the rivier section of the module.  Might work out OK.


Next week I hope to try out the grassinator.  Should be fun.

Steve

[choochin3]

Not much for me this weekend.(as usual)
I did mosey on over to Moose Caboose in Sykesville,and picked up 2 N freight cars,and 4 pairs of Atlas trucks.

[conrail98]

Not much on the benchwork front for me. I'm waffling on my chosen prototype and whether I want to go proto-freelanced or not and I realized, after a quick mockup, my shelf standards and brackets are about 2" too high to be comfortable viewing height for the upper level. So that looks like what I'll be fixing in the next week or so,

Phil

[Philip H]

Not much on the benchwork front for me. I'm waffling on my chosen prototype and whether I want to go proto-freelanced or not and I realized, after a quick mockup, my shelf standards and brackets are about 2" too high to be comfortable viewing height for the upper level. So that looks like what I'll be fixing in the next week or so,

Phil

Luckily, you have chosen a construction method that allows for easy fixes at this stage.  Something we all need to pay more attnetion to, me thinks.