After the LD-SIG meeting I headed over to my first clinic of  the day, "Making "Ready-to-Run Freight Car Models Really Ready to Run" with Richard Hendrickson. Richard models 1947 - October, IIRC - and he showed how he brought ready-to-run cars up to his standards as ready to run on his railroad. This included scale-sized Kadee couplers (#58 or #78), some basic weathering, code 88 metal wheelsets, weight added as necessary, coupler box covers secured with a screw, not a clip, and truck type and bolster height checked and corrected as necessary. All of the models that were presented will be in the RPM meet here at X2011 this week. 

 

The next clinic was "Choosing, Using, Maintaining, and Troubleshooting your Airbrush" by Ken Schlotfeldt. Ken is the current owner of Badger Air-Brush Co. (it was founded by his Dad) and he led a very informative beginner level clinic on identifying the types of airbrushes and what each is best for, their components,  various accessories, some information on paints, and finally a comprehensive class on how to clean an airbrush - which, at it's most basic, means running cleaner fluid through it often - his rule of thumb is that if you're mentally asking yourself, "Should I clean the airbrush" the answer is always yes. By doing it often you rarely have to do a total disassembly cleaning - indeed, most of the time, except when preparing to store your airbrush, you shouldn't disassemble anything that isn't touched by paint. While he's obviously and understandably got a Badger bias, he is well acquainted with the other manufacturers and was able to present a well balanced clinic, as opposed to an hour long Badger infomercial.

From there I hit Wolfgang Puck Express for lunch and got up to the staging area for my first ever bus tour of local layouts - the tour is called the Rocklin Rocket and included 6 layouts scheduled inside of 6 hours. I'll do a post on that a bit later - I've got some videos uploading. The one problem with using a Netbook for this stuff is that I can't play Quicktime videos reliably on it lots of stuttering - I just have to hope that they came out okay and upload them to YouTube. 

 

Returning from the bus tour I beat feet up to the second floor of the Sheraton Hotel, where I was scheduled to attend Scotty Mason's hands-on airbrushing workshop. When I got up there I was happy to see, and sit next to, Leslie Eaton, MMR, who, while a professional airbrush artist, was attending what is basically a beginners workshop with the philosophy that she can learn stuff anywhere from anyone - and she really respects Scotty, and from the comments Scotty made during the workshop the respect is truly reciprocated. Scotty is basically a spokesman and salesman for Iwata Airbrush, and he's unashamed of promoting them as the best airbrush on the market (Leslie agrees with this sentiment - she's owned her top of the line Iwata airbrush since she was in college in 1978). There was definitely some overlap with the information provided in the "Choosing, Using, Maintaining..." clinic that I went to earlier in the day, but not all that much. Plus this was all hands on - we got to handle the airbrush, put paint in it, and practice, first on a sheet of paper to learn basic technique, then on a G-Gauge boxcar provided for the clinic by Bachmann. Previously Bachmann has provided Scotty with On30 and HO scale cars, but this clinic they really provided something off the wall - Bachmann G-Scale Boxcars decorated for their 175th anniversary. Let's just say that weathering that thing takes a lot of paint - which was the Com-Art acrylic weathering paint kit from Iwata. Great fun - and between both of the airbrush clinics I've started thinking a lot harder about what I need - and what I need to do, in order to better utilize both my airbrush and my new paint booth. 

Some photos from the workshop:

 

 

Leslie Eaton - Master Model Railroader and all-around nice person.

 

 

 

Scotty Mason, proprietor of The Scotty Mason Show, the first model railroading podcast, as well as a series of weathering DVD's, shows off the G-scale boxcar model that Bachmann provided for us to practice on. 

 

 

 

My car, pre-airbrushing.

 

 

 

My boxcar, post some overly heavy weathering... 

 

 

 

And the end of the car - with rust streaks. 

 

Okay, it's well after midnight and not only is there a full slate of clinics I want to attend tomorrow (and Joe Fugate's Online Resources for Model Railroaders, which I usually participate in), but we'll be setting up for the National Train Show, which begins on Friday.