Weekend Update 3/26/17

[cbroughton67]

Built this little dude over the weekend. Still need to come up with some decals and add details & couplers, but it's mostly complete. Thanks @randgust for offering such a great kit!


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[sp org div]

I have been working on a Resin kit from @Rasputen of a Kenworth conventional tractor.  The kit includes the chassis, fuel tanks, wheels, cab and brass wire and tube for exhaust.
I used a Trainworx horn, scratchbuilt an air cleaner, turn signals on the fenders, added etched stainless mirrors and used a spare Trainworx exhaust stack. 
The kit, like most of Brian's has minimal flash and the fit is good.

Looks good Bryan.

Another fine addition... it will be for the Weyerhaueser fleet, right?
Almost looks like its riding on Modeler's Asphalt... good stuff with some additional weathering.

Jeff

[160pennsy]

Built this little dude over the weekend. Still need to come up with some decals and add details & couplers, but it's mostly complete. Thanks @randgust for offering such a great kit!


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Where did you fit the decoder?

[Dave V]

I have been making steady progress on the Pro Patria Mill kit.  LEDs are in, and some of the roofs are now attached.
While several are just set in place for this photo opp. (BTW - sorry about the poor phone pics). 
Also, I applied a first pass on rusting up the aluminum siding, but it needs to be toned down and blended quite a bit still.
Here is where I'm at now:

   
And here it is lit up (light leaks are on set in place roofs)

That's one hell of a structure!  My version of Rico will have to go without...I don't have anything close to enough room for that.  I plan to splice a pair of Grandt Line stamp mills with some extra dormers to serve as my abbreviated Pro Patria mill.

[nkalanaga]

David: "sorry about the poor phone pics"

Are you old enough to remember the quality of the pictures in most model magazines into the 1970s?  Even the cheapest phones do a better job than most modelers of the past could dream of.  Yours look fine to me, in focus, colors are good, what more can one ask for?

[robert3985]

David: "sorry about the poor phone pics"

Are you old enough to remember the quality of the pictures in most model magazines into the 1970s?  Even the cheapest phones do a better job than most modelers of the past could dream of.  Yours look fine to me, in focus, colors are good, what more can one ask for?

Welllll....since you asked (1) More depth of focus, (2) less contrast so the dark areas reveal their details (3) more natural white balance (4) finer resolution...

In the 70's, my camera body of choice was the Nikon F2AS, two of which I picked up from a fellow sailor who needed money and had bought a full Nikon 7 lens, two-body outfit while in Hong Kong.  I bought the whole outfit.  My previous camera was a Minolta SRT-101 with four lenses, and they worked great too.  Technically, the bodies and lenses of these 70's cameras are light years ahead of any cell-phone camera except in the area of availability.

Even a non-pro camera such as my old Minolta takes more technically advanced photos than even the very best DSLR's until a few years ago...and better than any cell-phone camera ever made so far.  Effective megapixel size of a Kodachrome 25ASA slide is calculated to be, depending on your method of calculation, to be between 80,000 80MP and 25,000 25MP, with a few nay-sayers saying that your old Kodachrome transparency is only around the equivalent of 8,400 8.4MP...which my eyes say is hogwash.

Of course, with any old film camera, unless you were shooting with a $10 Instamatic, allowed manually setting the exposure so you could expose a bit more for the shadows, or stop the f-stop down to increase depth of focus.  Most cell-phone cameras won't allow you do have full manual control, and force you to use a menu and pre-set exposure choices.

In photography, modern technology has taken a while to get close to the quality of film and the Nikon, Leica, Canon, Hasselblad, Mamiya, Rollei bodies and lenses in use from the 60's until the early 21st century...and there are plenty of photographers who still insist digital isn't quite there yet.

Sooo...when I was taking photos of my model ships and military figures in the 70's, the technical quality was much better than mere cell phone photos taken today...by ANY cell phone.

However, Dave doesn't need to apologize for his cell phone photos, since they serve their purpose of showing us his excellent model work!

Just sayin'!!   

EDIT:  Late night sleepiness caused me to incorrectly write the film vs digital sensor MP equivalent numbers by at least an order of magnitude in my film vs cellphone mini-rant.  Thanks Missaberoad & Peteski for a$$-hatting me into getting the numbers as I originally intended them to be.  Actual film vs digital sensor resolution numbers are subject to many opposing philosophies about how to calculate accurate numbers so there is also a lot of disagreement as to what numbers accurately represent reality. However, the corrected numbers still do not change the conclusion of my post.

Cheerio!
Bob Gilmore

[cbroughton67]

Where did you fit the decoder?

I didn't install one, since it's for a 1'x4' logging / switching layout I'm building. Given the layout's size, it'll be a one-locomotive operation, making DCC unnecessary. If I did install one, I think one could be hidden well-enough in the cab just in front of the water tank. Mounting it to the underside of the roof would probably keep it out of sight for the most part, too.

[Chris333]

I didn't install one, since it's for a 1'x4' logging / switching layout I'm building. Given the layout's size, it'll be a one-locomotive operation, making DCC unnecessary. If I did install one, I think one could be hidden well-enough in the cab just in front of the water tank. Mounting it to the underside of the roof would probably keep it out of sight for the most part, too.

ooooh  more on the logging layout

[CNR5529]

The Ntrak Roadshow hosted the M³T this weekend at the Doubleheaders Layout Tour, in the Kitchener-Cambridge-Waterloo-Guelph area. We were set up in the main registration hall and got to display the special train all day long. It was remarkable how many people (non n scalers) recognized the consist and/or the PVR gondola.

Anyway, we wanted to take a crew shot with the train, but half the group had left before we got to it...

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[nscaleSPF2]

That is flippin' awesome! It's gonna look great when it's finished!


Chris

Thanks, Chris.  That means a lot, coming from you.

[160pennsy]

I didn't install one, since it's for a 1'x4' logging / switching layout I'm building. Given the layout's size, it'll be a one-locomotive operation, making DCC unnecessary. If I did install one, I think one could be hidden well-enough in the cab just in front of the water tank. Mounting it to the underside of the roof would probably keep it out of sight for the most part, too.

Hello Chris,

I've heard of the under roof decoder mount as well as behind the motor (if your kit has the large square tank) decoder install as well. For my Randgust Class A Climax w/DCC build I decided to go with the method J Starbuck used back in 2006 - remove the brown PC board that holds down the phosphor bronze contact strips, cut a rectangular hole into the Kato power chassis floor and mount the TCS M1 decoder flush with the top of the frame. With the stock Kato PC board now gone, holding the springy phosphor bronze pick ups down into their correct position was a challenge until I made my own miniature u-shaped clips from modified brass square tube stock. Testing came to an abrupt halt this weekend when I tired to hastily solder the Red & Black decoder wires to my brass clips while installed in the chassis (too high heat caused the thinned plastic Kato frame to melt) instead of taking my time, removing the brass clips & solder the wires away from the frame - lesson learned & I can still proceed with a back up Kato power chassis.

[randgust]

Built this little dude over the weekend. Still need to come up with some decals and add details & couplers, but it's mostly complete. Thanks @randgust for offering such a great kit!


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Thanks.    I've had really mixed results with decoders in these - there is just enough room above the drivetrain and under the roof to fit in a "Z" scale sized one.  The first ones I put in with TCS Z2's worked just fine, then they 'improved' the decoder and I got very choppy performance results even after disabling the BEMF and asking for tech support, which was unsuccessful and I abandoned the attempt.   My conclusion was that while there was room for a Z2, you needed something else that small, and good luck with it.

[Ed Kapuscinski]

Added some details to the PRR 0-6-0.

The headlight is from Keystone Details.  The other parts came from the junk box.  I gave some serious thought to upgrading the valving, but the parts I found required a large amount of work for a relatively small improvement in appearance.  I did make a small spacer that snapped onto the cross-slide to connecting rod pivot.  It keeps the cross-slide more or less centered on its rails.

I will have to do something about the front side of the pressure cylinders.  Not sure what, though.  Something to make them look less toy-like.

  time. This is looking great. I love little PRR steam. But, I'm not in love the with the air tanks under the cab. They don't quite look fat enough like the prototypes.

[mplsjct]

David: "sorry about the poor phone pics"

Are you old enough to remember the quality of the pictures in most model magazines into the 1970s?  Even the cheapest phones do a better job than most modelers of the past could dream of.  Yours look fine to me, in focus, colors are good, what more can one ask for?

Color pictures in magazines in the early 70's would've been manual color separations done on the camera, a slow, labor intensive process. The photography itself was probably fine, but until Color Scanners came along, color reproduction in the printing world had serious limitations. When looking at old magazines, it looks to be the mid seventies when Color Scanners came into prominence.

[Lemosteam]

Added some details to the PRR 0-6-0.

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The headlight is from Keystone Details.  The other parts came from the junk box.  I gave some serious thought to upgrading the valving, but the parts I found required a large amount of work for a relatively small improvement in appearance.  I did make a small spacer that snapped onto the cross-slide to connecting rod pivot.  It keeps the cross-slide more or less centered on its rails.

I will have to do something about the front side of the pressure cylinders.  Not sure what, though.  Something to make them look less toy-like.

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Jim, looks great.  Were you able to wire an LED in the headlight through the headlight and bracket passages?