N scale question of the week 29 june 2011

[S Class]

That Station is AWESOME, you should look back on the trial and never giving up as a massive positive when viewing and showing off the finished product - got a link to the layout it's supposed to sit on?

I haven't modeled long enough to do anything particularly bad - save for destroying an atlas turnout trying to fit the throw bars and soldering another to a piece of joiner track rendering it useless without some major attention from Dr Dremel.

I have a 2nd hand mech full of chipboard, a heap of LL locos needing their wheels ground down to C55 size and a bunch of aussie rollingstock kits expect my list to start growing very soon

[Denver Road Doug]

Daniel, beautiful model.   I think you'll find that a lot of fellow model railroaders have similar multi-year and/or multi-decade projects.   I'm sure a lot of them get so discouraged by not getting a large project finished that they eventually bow out of the hobby altogether.   I know I have several that are lingering into the 5 year area but I figure....eventually.

Which segways into my "flipped expectation" story.   I wanted to build a rock train that utilized Greenville rock hoppers among others.  The closest thing at the time were the old Atlas peaked end 2-bays, so I figured why not, they'll give the general idea until something better comes along.   So I started buying them at trains shows for $2-3 each and had about 7 of them that I had done nothing with, when I came across a lot of 8 that gave me 15.   Game on!   So I started working on them.   A few from the lot had heavily glued in ballast loads (actually completely full of ballast and BB's) so I had to clean all that out, the strip the paint off them, then file off the peaked ends.  (all of those three items were a PROCESS...lemme tell ya)   Then I filed off the heavy stirrups to replace with BLMA....things were progressing nicely!  Ordered decals (some patched together) to build SP, MKT, UP, Golden West, and Gifford Hill varieties.  Found close-to-correct paint in cans since apartment living won't allow a compressor.   Rolling along!    I was sure that I was gonna get these cars DONE....they were almost ready for the paint shop.   Just finished up final sanding on the filed down peaks and was about to start drilling holes for stirrups when....BAM!   Walthers announces.....Greenville hoppers.   

But really...I wasn't too terribly bummed...I learned a lot about various methods of stripping paint, (seems the variations of the car from Atlas, Roco, et al all used different paint or at least application methods) and filing/sanding, and got a lot of decals I needed for other stuff too.   Only thing is, I wish I'd picked another project during that time but like I said I might not have learned some new things.

[jnevis]

I am currently on the third iteration of the radiator section of a UP SD59M-2.  The original intent was to use the flare section from a Kato SD70M and shorten the grills.  The grills didn't come off well so I had to find something else and fill in the hole in the casting.  Figured that and shaved down grills from an Atlas SD60 that shortened up and looks OK.  I've tried four types of etched louvers for the small access panel forward of the grills but NOTHING looks right.  It went back in the project box months ago.

I haven't even started on the equipment box behind the cab, or the cab itself.  The SD59M-2 cab has lower headlights but the two window cab.  The Atlas cabs are opposite.  Three windows/low HL, two window/hi-HL.  Probably graft them together, wonder how many I'll go through before it's right.