Me and the boy built a couple

Me and the boy built a couple of sets of sheds and I painted them. nothing difficult but a good start for him to learn some tricks with prepping and assembling plastic models.

I also spent some time re organizing the train room,,,Meet William my eldest son...he got some supervised running time on the Old Ply spur.

Following

Following

Following

Following the thread

Soon....

I did it, I bit the bullet and I bought an Atlas VO-1000 off of Ebay. I still have Pacific Electric freight locomotive decals, and I can’t wait to remove the lettering from it…

Building the Tylick Tools kit

Lots of walls

Lots of windows

piping clones

I'm doing a batch of Sylvan Models CN aluminum tank hopper kits.  I have had to fudge the brake piping as it seems no one took photos of these cars in service and they are all long scrapped.  I fudged the pipes like this:

And wouldn't you know it, while scrolling through my slide and photo scans I cam across a photo showing that the assumption I made was wrong and at least part of the piping I did was wrong.  So I removed the incorrect piping and did it the right way:

If I didn't fix it it would have bugged me forever.  Of course once I finish I'll find the perfect set of photos or drawings that will show that all my other assumptions were wrong as well.

Marc Simpson

1,129 Blocks

Finished the two sides of a stone crusher building that will be seen when installed on the layout.

Next the mortar lines will be filled in with plaster.

Bernd

622 is still on my workbench!

But getting closer to being off the workbench every month!

More details on the MRH blog, and the full skinny on Wordpress.

Cheers,
Rene

Antici....pation

The dealer sent me the wrong loco, has the wrong cab, sending it back 

Rene...

NICE build you have going on there!

Andre

Andre

Thanks!

Rene

Have followed your wordpress blog for a long time now. Really coming together and a massive achievement you have on your hands there!

Progress

Progress Since last months post. I shared a photo of some open frame benchwork.

Im now working on a 4ft section at my bench that will be fixed in place once operational. Nice to be laying track. I find it soothing and relaxing some times but not sure how i will feel after a 10 x 20 ft double deck.

 

batey_1020

Thanks for the kind words!

Rene

No photos

Sorry, I didn't take photos of my latest project (I rarely do).  However, I found a somewhat rare locomotive for my Passenger trains, an Atlas FP-7A done up in Northern Pacific Butter Knife; or, Pine Tree Livery.  A problem was that Atlas made this loco back when horn hook couplers where the standard.  The end of the coupler opposite from the coupler end is much shorter than Kadee # 5s, which I use as my standard.  To replace with a # 5 would conflict with the Atlas Trucks and did not allow my locomotive to negotiate my 22-inch radius curves, so a fix needed to take place!   The Bronze spring used in the # 5 has its' spring action connected to the back end of the spring and this is the problem, making the coupler, spring and coupler box to long for this installation!  I reasoned that a Kadee # 148 Whisker coupler has the springs forward and to the side of the coupler shank.  By cutting off all but the hole in the coupler box, I could get these couplers to work, without limiting the swing of my locomotive's trucks.  This fixed the problem.

However, it made me think: Why do # 5s work on an Athearn F-7 A and B units without having to modify the couplers?  Is the truck placement different on the FP-7?  Or, is the truck placement on Atlas; or, Athearn F-7 type locomotives wrong?  Simply and interesting conundrum that doesn't matter anymore as I figured out how to fix! 

Daboo....

FP7's are longer and have a different truck location 

Bits and pieces

I've been installing small decal details on freight cars. I realized several completed freight cars did not have weigh data for a 1926 appearance. In the mid-1920s, wood sheathed freight cars were weighed every two years. A new weight would be stenciled onto the car along with weigh location initials  and date of the weigh. Older data was painted over with fresh paint before the new stencils were applied. The journal repack stencil was another frequently updated data stencil. This is above the right truck.

The Atlantic Coast Line boxcar is the latest model going through this process. Accurail produced this USRA double-sheathed boxcar with as-built lettering and a NEW date of 2-19. A prototype car would have been reweighed a couple of times before my late 1926 focus. A recent blog post dives deeper into the prototype practices and the decal methods I used to update these details.

For those of you who recognize this post title as a song title, here's the

Eric

Longer Passenger Loco

Yes, my FP-7A is about seven feet longer than my F-7A locos.  I was asking why the trucks are so close to the ends of the locomotive, so close to the ends that it makes mounting couplers more difficult.  If this is simply scale placement of the trucks, then that splains it!

GP38-2 work in progress

I think I posted a photo last month on this Long Island Rail Road Atlas GP38-2, about making the train signal box on the deck in front of the cab. I need to make a couple of new railings that allow for that and the brass wire I had was too thin. So I ordered some other sizes of phosphor bronze wire from Tichy Train Group. While I was waiting for that to come, I turned to some artwork for an emblem these locomotives wore shortly after they arrived in 1976-77, which was to commemorate the US bicentennial. In the meantime, I already had done this Cannonball drumhead that was used around 1982-83. The LIRR still runs this reserved service train on Friday afternoons in the summer. The current one starts in NY City’s Penn Station and goes out to the end of the line in Montauk.

The actual drumhead is now at the Railroad Museum of Long Island in Riverhead, NY where I took the second photo to use in CorelDraw. The HO version is 7/16” diameter.

Revell Maintenance Shed

Here is a blast from the past. One of Revell's brilliant structures of the 1960s. This one was (badly) assembled by me unpainted back in 1964 in my teenage years. After years of being packed away and in poor condition, I decided to dig it out, carefully pry it apart, paint and reassemble. It is now painted for the Santa Fe. The guy on the LHS holding the box on his leg is one of the original figures that came with the kit. After it was all done, I smothered the plastic base with Mod Podge Matte medium and sprinkled fine ballast over it.

Lyndon

That kit brings back a lot of good memories! You really did that little building proud.

Thank you Rick

I've now dug out the Revell farmhouse and barn sets and going to do a spruce of them as well. Everything seems to be there, but may have lost a couple of rabbits and chickens!

Trucks

Got a batch in from Bitter Creek. Now I have to prep 'em and paint 'em. Probably for my recent builds of BTS old time cars.

Nice Lyndon

Shows what can be done to a plastic model with some effort.