Weekend Update 12/23/12

[nkalanaga]

Mark:  What are you hauling in the ore cars?  On my Montana BN, it's lead/zinc ore, and the NP used to ship zinc concentrate through Pasco in "iron ore" cars.

[mark dance]

Mark:  What are you hauling in the ore cars?  On my Montana BN, it's lead/zinc ore, and the NP used to ship zinc concentrate through Pasco in "iron ore" cars.

Yep...Lead/Zinc to Tadanac smelter.

Md

[nkalanaga]

Sounds like I'm not the only one to repurpose ore cars!  The BN hauled concentrate from Alaska to the Cominco smelter in Trail in woodchip cars.  As they could only carry a foot or so in the bottom of the car, I always wondered why they didn't use ore cars.  The chip cars had to be rotary or end dumped as well, while ore cars would be a lot easier to unload.

[flight2000]

In case anyone would be interested in modeling some of Conrail's business cars sides are available from Laser Horizons that can be applied to the MT Plan 3959 sleeper - lounge observation car.  See the LH page at the N-scale Varnish website...
http://n-scalevarnish.info/LH.htm

Thanks for the link.  I hadn't seen that website before, but will be checking it out in the near future.

Here's the dome car named after the city of brotherly love... aka Conrail's former HQ's.



Brian

[chuck geiger]

Chris, are you interested in a return on your investment on the 2x4 N?

As Cousin Eddie would say - THAT'S A HIGH QUALITY ITEM.

[C855B]

Visible progress on the layout building. Major exterior phase about done:



Before and after in the GC&W thread.

[nkalanaga]

Chip cars in ore service:  Ljudice may have answered the question on the Deluxe Innovations December thread:

"Interesting -  I think I read the backhaul from Trail was woodchips, btw..."

[mmyers]

Ed,
Hope my trackwork didn't cause that.

Merry Christmas,
Martin



At one point some Reading hoppers rolled over, so I figured I might as well stage the obligatory photo:



[/quote]

[Ed Kapuscinski]

Lol Martin, I seriously doubt it.

It definitely does make for a great setting though!

[wm3798]

Good to see the old GP30 getting some run time, Ed.







Whipped up the Hogwarts Express with the GF this weekend.  The cat moved in shortly thereafter.
Merry Christmas everyone!
Lee

[rickb773]

Now that the D.V.M. sidewalks are in, the local residence can safely scurry around Woodbury.

[kelticsylk]

Santa dropped off a "previously owned" I1s for the Allegheny Eastern

Frank Musick

[lashedup]

Nice stuff everyone...

Chris and Ian, the only downside I've found to the grout is that it tends to be brittle, particularly in thin areas and I've had some issues with it crumbling a bit here and there, particularly on portable modules that get banged around and/or flex a little bit. I think this also has something to do with the surface underneath being too smooth as well and giving little bite for the grout. I'm going to have to touch it up, so I've been giving some thought on how to approach it.

Upside is that when they stuff does crumble, the thinner stuff makes very, very nice looking flag stones (at least in the dirty white/light grey color I used).

-jamie

[Ian MacMillan]

Nice stuff everyone...

Chris and Ian, the only downside I've found to the grout is that it tends to be brittle, particularly in thin areas and I've had some issues with it crumbling a bit here and there, particularly on portable modules that get banged around and/or flex a little bit. I think this also has something to do with the surface underneath being too smooth as well and giving little bite for the grout. I'm going to have to touch it up, so I've been giving some thought on how to approach it.

Upside is that when they stuff does crumble, the thinner stuff makes very, very nice looking flag stones (at least in the dirty white/light grey color I used).

-jamie

Interesting observation. I have yet to have an issue with it cracking or crumbling on the two portable layouts that I have built. I did try a while back just wetting the grout to use its own bonding agent to get it to harden and found that to be very brittle. With the wetting it with alcohol and then the matte medium I find it to be hard as a rock and very stable. I can even punch a hole in it with an awl to plant trees and not get it to crack or break apart near it.  On the Simonds IT I am using it mostly at about 1/8" thick, but there are some areas that are much thinner than that.

[johnhale]

A little late to the party, but I too ran trains at the B&O and took these photos of my New Haven local freight running through our oNeTrak layout.





Thanks.