Weekend Update 4/13/14

[Dave V]

Weathered an LGB D&RGW high-side gondola...  Most of these cars were used for hauling anthracite coal from the mines near Crested Butte to a rotary dumper at Salida for the switch to standard gauge.  Yep, that's right!  The area around Crested Butte, Colorado has the nation's largest anthracite seam outside of Pennsylvania.  However, there were also a number of bituminous coal mines along the RGS, mostly near Durango.  They were also used in company coal service for the RGS.





The inside of these cars seem most commonly to have been left unpainted, so I added a little Rust-Oleum Camouflage Tan and some coal bits.



I painted the grabs, truss rods, wheel faces, and queen posts with burnt umber to match the car body color.  The weathering is mainly chalks and Dullcoat.



A significant snow event started today, but before things got bad I had some fun outside.  G scale is meant for outdoors, but it's not immune to ice on the rails!

[PAL_Houston]

One of the coolest train photos I have ever seen was on page 2 of the 2013 Norfolk Southern annual report.  I will probably get in lots of trouble for reproducing it here:



...and one of these days I am going to learn how to reproduce that scene on my layout, come hell or high water.  Here is my first attempt



OK.  I get it.  The original is NS, doesn't have any fence posts....and the hills are further in the back ground.   


Otherwise, comments & criticisms (preferably helpful ones!) are welcome!

[Jeff AKA St0rm]

One of the coolest train photos I have ever seen was on page 2 of the 2013 Norfolk Southern annual report.  I will probably get in lots of trouble for reproducing it here:



...and one of these days I am going to learn how to reproduce that scene on my layout, come hell or high water.  Here is my first attempt



OK.  I get it.  The original is NS, doesn't have any fence posts....and the hills are further in the back ground.   


Otherwise, comments & criticisms (preferably helpful ones!) are welcome!

Your horse looks a little slow  but still a great try.

[Hamaker]

What shortage?  Just rescued 65 of these guy's from the store shelf.   

I witnessed 70 sticks of it being sold three days ago.  No....none left

[fifer]

Some of you may have seen the "BNSF shoving car" that Gavin Robin and I inspected in Socorro NM last week. I got to thinking , I have a mine and hey , I have the correct caboose, and I have some SIMILAR graffiti decals.
I decided to make a "shoving car" for my layout to service my mine which has loading shoots too low to allow the passage of a locomotive.
With some styrene work tonight I am well on the way to it.





Mike

[Puddington]

A very long but rewarding weekend at Super Trains 2014 in Calgary. Over 12K saw some outstanding layouts, including some world class N scale efforts and lots of vendors and manufacturers. The event was made better by getting to meet some outstanding modelers and renew aquantances with others.

On Friday night I was honoured to run a grain train on Grant Eastman's SAR layout. A forty plus car (weathered perfectly) consist headed up with two units and a end of train DPU. A while into the trip we stopped for a four SD40-2 mid train helper lash up to join up. It took over two hours to make the 15 scale mile journey with grades up to 1.8 %. The layout is really beyond description. I will post pictures next week. Grant is a serious wealth of modelling and operations information and a really interesting and nice guy.

The show was great; I made several purchases incuding a Prairie Shadows exclusive GN flat car, two Briggs  CPR Mini box kits and a Geoff Gooderham  full CPR baggage to be painted in the faux stainless and maroon stripe used when running with the Canadian.

Got to talk at dinner with some really great guys from Intermountain - samples of their upcoming SD40-2 in N scale are a few months away but changes are being made based on early samples in HO scale and modeller feedback. Spoke with lots of other mfg's and store owners and came away very positive about the future of our hobby and scale.

We had tons of people by the booth; lots of positive feedback on the sample GMD-1 we had out and lots of good ideas and suggestions for future products. It's so great to speak with so many modellers.

We're visiting some vendors tomorrow, doing some railfanning and then going to an Op's session at Jon Calon's uber cool HO scale E&N layout before heading back to Edmonton and a fliht home Tuesday morning.

Great trip all around !

[peteski]

Some of you may have seen the "BNSF shoving car" that Gavin Robin and I inspected in Socorro NM last week. I got to thinking , I have a mine and hey , I have the correct caboose, and I have some SIMILAR graffiti decals.
I decided to make a "shoving car" for my layout to service my mine which has loading shoots too low to allow the passage of a locomotive.
With some styrene work tonight I am well on the way to it.

Mike

That looks like a cool project!

Few years ago (in N-Scale Magazine, I think) there was an article about decorating a very weathered caboose using a full decal wrap. The decal was made from photos of the sides of the real caboose.  The model looked pretty good (and it was an exact replica of the 1:1) car.   This caboose would have been a perfect candidate for that technique.

[up1950s]

I don't have a CSX C30-7... or great camera skills... but I'd like to think I have some modeling skills.  How'd I do?

Wow , fantastic . Is this you have had or was this something you did after I posted that shot . Either way that is so right on .

[Cajonpassfan]

I don't have a CSX C30-7... or great camera skills... but I'd like to think I have some modeling skills.  How'd I do?

Whoa, wow! I love well done proto-based scenes! Very nice! What did you use for the bridges?
Otto K.

[dougnelson]

Doug,

That looks great. Did you solder the kit or use glue? It looks like it least the small details were soldered.

Marc

Hi Marc:

I used CA glue for most of the kit.  I did solder the small parts:  stirrups and the brake wheel.  There is no way that these would survive bumping if they were just glued.

Doug.

[OldEastRR]

Your horse looks a little slow  but still a great try.

Yes ... your horse is posed in the trotting gait. You need to re-work and rearrange the legs to produce the galloping gait, a very different movement and positioning. Or find a galloping horse figure.

[fifer]

That looks like a cool project!

Few years ago (in N-Scale Magazine, I think) there was an article about decorating a very weathered caboose using a full decal wrap. The decal was made from photos of the sides of the real caboose.  The model looked pretty good (and it was an exact replica of the 1:1) car.   This caboose would have been a perfect candidate for that technique.

Thanks Pete , I saw one wrapping a bridge and is a great technique but I have zero decal making skills.
Thanks , Mike

[RSWController]

Thanks for all the nice comments.  Some great work from others too. 

To answer a few questions, yes, I've had this scene constructed for a while.  I did just shoot the photo I posted yesterday morning to match the lead photo.  I scratchbuilt all five bridges using styrene and various bridge parts. 

[HuskerN]

A lot of nice work illustrated this week.  Inspires me to actually do some "train" modeling soon, rather than focus all of my attention on trucks. 

Here is my Kenworth K100 & Pete 389 ready to print:





HuskerN
www.nscaleaddiction.blogspot.com
www.shapeways.com/shops/NScaleAddict

[arbomambo]

finished the most challenging aspect of these builds for the 'Arbonado" Ntrak module....
adding the signal heads to the cantilever signal bridges...
I had 8 PE frets of the BLMA signal heads, and I needed 8 signals (these aren't intended to be working signal heads)...I wanted to use these up as I have multiples of the beautiful Showcase Miniatures signal heads now...
These are a pain to fold and build...but I muddled through-a coat of black paint will help everything along after I add a few electrical cables...
Thanks for looking,
~Bruce