Weekend Update 1/15/17

[randgust]

Discussion of redoing the Rapido light units to track power got me to drag the train out, test the lights again,  and do some more night shots.    I realized I'd never tried this with the Iphone, only limited success with my normal digital camera doing night shots and usually had to add some ambient light.

Well.   THAT was fun....  I hadn't turned on the train for a long time and everything still worked.



No tricks here either.   And this is the way 'it looks', too, which is why I've spent an inordinate amount of time on lighting for night operations.  No additional light added, and no color correction necessary.

[chicken45]

Ah yeah. My remaining models will be loads as well.

Phrasing.

[mcjaco]

I finished up this pair of Alco's for a friend that used to work for the railroad.  They did not have any Alco's on the roster, but his favorite is the FA and he always wanted to see the paint scheme applied to one.






Doug

Very nice!

I did an E unit in the CFNR scheme twenty years ago!

[up1950s]

Dang, those Arizona & California FA's sure are purdy!

No human can do that so crispy clean . Who is this Dr. Hotballs anyway ?

[M.C. Fujiwara]

I did that, too, last summer.



But since I'm doing these as loads, they are best unweathered.

I dig yr dirt on the treads.
Wish I had made mine more mucky.
Just a thought: the engine blocks weren't painted yellow, right?
I found that a little NeoLube applied with a small microbrush helped make the motor more motorheady"
Treads too, if you don't want the yellow to shower through.



Rock on!

[peteski]

M.C. - every time I see that N scale vineyard I'm amazed with how good it looks!

[daniel_leavitt2000]

I'll probably start mold making the tender shells this week. I want to get the rubber done before I'm off to Thailand so I can get the parts back to their owners.

In the meantime, I got sick of looking at the giant gap between my 0-6-0 and tenders so I made several live drawbars from styrene and phosphor bronze.



The new run (middle engine) will receive a Rivarossi narrow bunker tender shell and become a MEC USRA 0-6-0:
http://www.riverraisinmodels.com/usra0_6_0/prototype/mec176-evt.jpg

The other two engines with the large motors will receive larger Model Power cabs and become B&M G11B switchers:
https://070727e4-a-62cb3a1a-s-sites.googlegroups.com/site/bostonandmainerailroad/home/boston-maine-steam-locomotives/b-m-class-c-d-and-e/b-m-class-f-and-g/B%26M%20Steam%20019.jpg
https://070727e4-a-62cb3a1a-s-sites.googlegroups.com/site/bostonandmainerailroad/home/boston-maine-steam-locomotives/b-m-class-c-d-and-e/b-m-class-f-and-g/IMG_0015.jpg

All engines will receive frame extensions under the cab to fill in that dead space.

[chicken45]

I dig yr dirt on the treads.
Wish I had made mine more mucky.
Just a thought: the engine blocks weren't painted yellow, right?
I found that a little NeoLube applied with a small microbrush helped make the motor more motorheady"
Treads too, if you don't want the yellow to shower through.



Rock on!

Beautiful!
But that's the thing...I think the whole thing WAS painted yellow.  I'm actually very curious myself. Google searches seem to suggest they all started yellow and weathered to dirty treads.

[muktown128]

Josh,

Having been to several plants where agricultural and construction equipment is manufactured and seeing how the equipment is built and painted, I believe the engine and tracks would have been painted yellow.  The paint would wear off the tracks very quickly once the equipment was in use.

Regards,
Scott

[narrowminded]

Never saw one that didn't start all yellow.  Except the seat, a couple of knobs, and the gauge glass.

[dmidkiff]

Thanks everyone!

@craigolio1 - I did not shoot white over the mask before the green.  On these, I used the raised edge of the rivet line to tuck the tape up next to.  Where I did not have the edge, I burnished the tape really well with a toothpick, I use Tamiya tape for all of my hard edges.  I try to spray within 24 hours of masking anything so that the edges are crisp and not wanting to peel, if I'm really lucky, I can mask in the morning/afternoon and spray that night.  I pull the masking off immediately after I have cleaned the airbrush and take a new Xacto blade and scrape off the new color as it's still somewhat soft wherever it may have bled trough.  Over the next few days, I'll come back and clean up anything additional with a 20/0 brush and touch up paint.

@mcjaco - Both your E unit and the GP15 look great!  I've got CFNR 201 on my list of models to do.  Working on a couple of GP35's for the A&C right now, it's taking some time to bend the brass handrails on those.

[MarkJ]

Dmidkiff, what brand of paint did you use and what were your mixing ratios and spray pressures?
The paint on you models looks factory applied, which in my experience seems nearly impossible to achieve without good technique, materials, and equipment.  I could never get those results with my Badger 350, that’s for sure!

Thanks, MJ

[seusscaboose]

Tennis anyone?

[Ed Kapuscinski]

You might have heard me complaining about the related escapades in the crew lounge (https://www.therailwire.net/forum/index.php?topic=40965.0), but I've spent a bunch of time working on turning a Kato PRR NW2 into Conrail 9253 (as seen in York, here: http://conrailphotos.thecrhs.org/Images/CR-9253-NW2-w-CR-N8-D-Caboose-22005-at-Windsor-St-Yard-–-York-Pa).

Here's the progress. So far I've filled in the cab windows, removed the footboards from the pilot and filled in the large gap, and added a radio antenna. Next stop is a date with some 90% alcohol to remove the lettering and paint. I've spent quite a bit of time cursing at it while trying to get a good fit with the window plug, until I realized I should just square off the area to be filled in. At least I didn't have to do any of the rear cab windows.

[wcfn100]

After some family illness over the holiday, I've not had a lot of motivation to do any modeling.  But I did receive my Tomytec TM-04 drive and have to say, I'm impressed with how it runs even though it is on the fast side.  This got me to at least do some drawing on the computer.  I'm going to render just the core so I can sand everythign smooth and then try and add details. 



I need to shorted the drive to a 2" truck center and make a decision on the rear truck.  The prototype had an 8' wheelbase passenger truck while the Tomytec is 7' 4" (which is correct for the front truck).  The issue is electrical pickup.  I didn't know that the drive truck had a traction tire on it and it runs so nice as-is, I think I'm just going to leave the original truck with the pickups but modify the sideframe to look more like the passenger truck.

I did do some work on the coupler pockets and hope to update that thread tonight.

Jason