Seaboard Central 2.0

[davefoxx]

Thanks, Lee.  PM sent.

DFF

[wm3798]

And off they go!  Another Railwire Spare Parts rescue!

[davefoxx]

An eBay purchase and a very quick delivery brought this Seaboard caboose to the fleet.  While I'm fairly certain that this MTL caboose is not based on a Seaboard design, it does reasonably resemble some of the SAL's cabooses.  For the price, it's good enough for me to pair up with my SAL 2-10-2 for an appropriate caboose in the 1950s.  I installed Fox Valley wheelsets, clipped the (body-mounted!) couplers' trip pins, and pressed it into service.



DFF

[Dave V]

And so it begins...

[Smike]

Keep it up there Mr Fox, 3 more pages in this thread and you will eclipse that other layout thread started by that other Dave 

How times flies. Looking good!

[wazzou]

Keep it up there Mr Fox, 3 more pages in this thread and you will eclipse that other layout thread started by that other Dave 

How times flies. Looking good!

Yeah, but this one gets updated.   

[Santa Fe Guy]

Hi Dave.
I remember attending a clinic in Portland in 1994 (my first N Scale convention in the USA). Mr Hundman from N Scale Magazine fame did a clinic on scratch building a station using only styrene. He used a technique that only scribed the styrene once and then snapped the piece out. His reckoning was that if you scribed more than once you would never get a straight break. He would scribe around the window frame area then go (scribe) from corner to corner using a new blade. He would then press out the pieces. I tried his suggestions and it works with minimal cleanup. Might be worth giving this a try if not already.
His station turned out real cool.
Rod.

[John]

The engine house looks amazingly good.  Now.  Let's talk about that bridge some more.

You've got it way too chunky.  I was down in North Carolina this past week, and about drove Rhodana half crazy talking about concrete railings.  Now, I didn't go so far as to get out of the car with a tape measure, but I did get a picture with a car in it...



Compare to your model:


The railing only comes up to about the door handle of a regular car, and the vertical stanchions are never more than 8' apart.  We saw some that might have been as narrowly spaced as 6, or even 5', but never more than 8'  The verticals don't appear to be more than 8" square, maybe 10" on the outside.  The gap between the top of the curb and the bottom of the rail is about 16", and the rail itself looks to be about 4" x 8".

This bridge is a standard design from the early stages of NC state and interstate highways, probably dating to the early to mid 1950s.  They are everywhere from Asheville to Aberdeen, from Southern Pines to Roanoke Rapids. (The example shown here is in Boone, crossing the Watauga River)  You have to get this right.

My suggestion is to pull it up, sell it to an HO modeler, and lay out a scale drawing based on the rough dimensions I've eyeballed.  See how close you can get before you get too far down the path of least resistance.

Either that or send it to Vollmer so he can put it next to his GINORMOUS Caboose Industries switch throws... 

Sorry I couldn't get more accurate information, but I'll be back down there in a couple weeks... I'll take a tape measure if you like.

Lee

Dave .. some of those bridge rails that @Alaska Railroader is making with that wonderfull bridge might be just what you need .

[160pennsy]

@160pennsy,

You make a very good point about the thickness of the WS armatures' trunks.  I'm sure they're more meant for HO scale, but since most people don't make their trees tall enough, I thought they might work.  But, like you, I now question the thickness of the trunks.  I'll PM you my address.

Thanks in advance for the samples!
DFF

DFF,

Been working on your sample pine tree armatures over the past 8 days. I have enclosed a few teaser shots to show you my progress.
Still far from being done but I'll try to also include some half finished trees so you can inspect the construction methods. **Click on the photos to zoom in for a detailed view**

[davefoxx]

Absolutely incredible!  You do such nice work.  Thank you!

DFF

[davefoxx]

Thanks to the peer pressure and a donation from our very own Lee Weldon (@wm3798), I started over on my N scale Seaboard Air Line station project this weekend.  Lee very generously sent me some DPM windows to better represent the arch-top windows on the prototype.  Thank you, Lee!

In the following picture, you can see that I have cut new walls from 0.040" white styrene and started laying out the walls and some of the doors and windows on the plan that Lee also provided to me.  I still have number of windows that have to be cut out of the DPM styrene carriers, but the real fun will be locating and cutting into the walls to fit the windows and doors.  However, I don't have to be perfect, because I will apply 0.020" styrene "brick" veneer overtop these walls once the structure is built.  The veneer will hide the sins in these wall cores.  I did buy a Fiskars rectangular punch which should work well to help cut clean window and door openings into the brick veneer.



DFF

[wazzou]

I'll be interested to see how well that punch chews its way through .020 sheet and for how long.

[davefoxx]

Bryan,

It actually punched a crisp hole through 0.040" styrene, but that took some effort.  I don't think 0.020" will be that big of a deal, but we'll see.  How long it will last?  I dunno.

DFF

[davefoxx]

@wm3798,

This any better? 



None of the windows or doors are glued yet, as I think it will be easier to cut the openings for the styrene "brick" veneer by using the holes in the cores as guides.  The 0.010" x0.060" strip along the bottom of the structure is to represent the brick ledge in the foundation that supports the brick.  I'll need to add another 0.010" strip, because my brick veneer is 0.020" thick.  But, the placement of this first strip will allow me to go ahead with the installation of the brick veneer.

DFF

[Chris333]

This doesn't sound good for the Styrofoam depot