Weekend Update 6/29/14

[up1950s]

http://biglittlerr.blogspot.com/2009_12_01_archive.html

[skytop35]

Finished up another paint job on the Santa Fe 64ft baggage car castings available from Skytop Models.

[CBQ Fan]

That is really cool looking!

[Chris333]

Silflor time:


and vines to hide that the building doesn't touch the foundation in this corner. 

[bbussey]

Stumbled across a rarity while cruising the Roanoke Convention sales rooms that I never thought I'd see — a Red Caboose ex-Precision Masters steel ice reefer with hinged doors decorated for FGE.  The Precision Masters versions of these cars seem to be easier to locate, since Red Caboose didn't offer them very long before retiring the tooling, but the artwork is marginal at best.  Red Caboose artwork in general has been accurate over the years. 



The relief on the hinged door model isn't bad, far better than the plug door version, so I was happy to snag this one FGE car.  Just have to discard the stock trucks and dummy Unimate couplers, and add MTL 1015 body-mounts and Atlas Barber S-2A trucks to lower the ride height.  There were twelve numbers released originally but I doubt I'll find another.  A WFE car was with this one, but I didn't pick it up.  Probably a mistake, but I'm happy with the lone FGE car.

[Puddington]

Interesting car Bryan, is it a 40' or a 36'?

[arbomambo]

Hello all...
finding a little time to get these into gear...
after posting a question here about wire (I need to find a good source and the folks here have been tremendous with their sources.), I discovered that almost all of the hand and rail grabs I need for these are available on the Gold Medal Models fret 160-56...the steps are available on their 160-28.



all of the grab locations are dimpled on Bill's castings and most are even drilled through...just a quick twist of the #80 chucked twist drill and they're ready for the grabs. I use Gorilla brand super glue, applied from inside the shell, then 'fixed' with a drop of accelerator. The lift rings were borrowed from one of Roberto Martari's beautiful photoetched sheets (they'll be replaced with some GE-style lift rings from BLMA)
I'd like to have all three cars ready for paint by Sunday evening, but we'll see...lot's of yardwork and garage cleaning on the slate for this weekend!
Thanks for looking,
~Bruce

[GaryHinshaw]

I've been making progress getting the first permanent staging yard installed on Tehachapi BC.  The stub end of the yard is now complete:



while the throat is awaiting a few more turnouts (and a connection to the outside world...  ):



The compound ladder will give me nine 14-15' badly-needed storage tracks.

I'm having my third official ops/shakedown session tonight.  In preparation for that I've been reprogramming the loco fleet; I got Decoder Pro up and running and have been loading new speed curves to all the locos (what a difference!) and Rule 17 lighting effects.  More in the TBC layout engineering thread later this weekend.

[bbussey]

Interesting car Bryan, is it a 40' or a 36'?

40' steel reefer with hinged doors.

[CBQ Fan]

Stumbled across a rarity while cruising the Roanoke Convention sales rooms that I never thought I'd see — a Red Caboose ex-Precision Masters steel ice reefer with hinged doors decorated for FGE.  The Precision Masters versions of these cars seem to be easier to locate, since Red Caboose didn't offer them very long before retiring the tooling, but the artwork is marginal at best.  Red Caboose artwork in general has been accurate over the years. 



The relief on the hinged door model isn't bad, far better than the plug door version, so I was happy to snag this one FGE car.  Just have to discard the stock trucks and dummy Unimate couplers, and add MTL 1015 body-mounts and Atlas Barber S-2A trucks to lower the ride height.  There were twelve numbers released originally but I doubt I'll find another.  A WFE car was with this one, but I didn't pick it up.  Probably a mistake, but I'm happy with the lone FGE car.

I recently picked up a set of six of these cars (Red Caboose) for a really good piece per car.  They are nice filler cars to round out my BREX reefer train.  I am happy with them.  I still need to pick up new trucks for the wood reefer.

[hegstad1]

I needed a solution to the question of background trees for the layout.  I wanted to mimic the pines i'm doing for the foreground.  My friend Michael had a bag of 100 Busch "tannen".  These are basic bottle brush trees without flocking.  To improve the appearance,  I cut the lower "branches" off and thinned out the rest with a scissors.  After this I used gap filling CA to fill in the trunk so it doesn't look like twisted wire.  Finally the whole thing was painted brown and flocked with WS fine burnt grass turf.  All in All I'm happy with the results and this one tree took about 10 minutes.  Once I put the rest in an assembly line it should go pretty quickly. 

[eric220]

Got some work in on the passenger terminal. The main section of the platform tracks are in and the power drops are connected. I even put the city scene back up to illustrate what that will look like.



I've also started moving my passenger trains up there and out of the freight yards, which was the whole point of building this thing.

[CBQ Fan]

Got some work in on the passenger terminal. The main section of the platform tracks are in and the power drops are connected. I even put the city scene back up to illustrate what that will look like.



I've also started moving my passenger trains up there and out of the freight yards, which was the whole point of building this thing.

Looks great, I have plans for the same idea over my passenger station tracks.!

[basementcalling]

Silflor time:


and vines to hide that the building doesn't touch the foundation in this corner. 

Awesome quality pics, Chris. The building shows some skillful, neat assembly. Love the chop shop job on the corner to fit the space.

Question about the track. Hand laid turnout? I noticed the last tie that runs under the main and diverging routes seems to be under the rail joiner but also underneath the end of the track section connected to the turnout. Am I seeing things?

[Chris333]

I think I know what you mean    The last turnout tie only runs under 3 rails instead of 4. I just filled in the ties to look the best.