Weekend Update 9/23/2012

[mmagliaro]

M.C. Fujiwara :  I love your layout, and the video was great.  (liked the music too!)

This past week, I had another K4 to finish up and ship out, and spent some time working on that brass m1.
But I did manage to get a bunch of trees and ground cover in place. 







Everything is just a little too "clean".  It's like a catalog.  Ha ha.

[Puddington]

Sweet NP steam max.......very nicely done....Looking forward to seeing just what layith under that trestle.....

[JSL]

Testing of some freshly laid track on the blob. 24 car BNSF coal train.

[CBQ Fan]

I finished my Atlas Roundhouse last night.  It will needs weathering.  As that is the central fixture in my engine yard I can start working and planning outward.  Next up is the Walthers wooden coaling tower.  I need to have the structures built and be able to see them on the layout before I can finalize their position.  I went with some cinder colored ballast as a starting point and I am going to experiment with some of the other suggestions from my other topic.

[Scottl]

I finally have something to show, although I am still camera challenged since my SLR died.  I managed to get the SD50F into the paint shop and just need to put on the grab irons and weather it.  It's mate in the photo is a CN C9-44CW using the front windshield and hood contours from a Kaslo kit grafted onto a Kato cab.  I could not use the Kaslo cab as the engineer windows did not match the prototype and the resin had warped a bit, making a perfect fit difficult.  The 9-44 should be through the paint shop today.



I have also acquired a Kato SD70Ace to convert to a CN SD70M-2 with the Train Worx brass kit.  No more locomotives after that- I need to do some work on the layout.

[Packer]

Max, That bridge looks like on of the ones in one of my BN books, and it was originally an NP bridge. The name eludes me at the moment. Nice work though

I played with 824 for a bit last night after my last post. Now it actually has something to show off where the skirt was removed lol. Here's the whole thing stuck together temporarily:


http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=2331166
For some reason it looks kinda off to me, something about the gap seems strange. Looking at the proto photo, I think like the entire tank itself may be too low. It's in the stock location, so maybe the stewart tank sits too low.

What do you guys think about the gap between the tank/battery boxes and carbody?

Here's the modifications. The tank will be held on with double sided tape.

[rochsub]

[kelticsylk]

Spent the weekend sharing with my grandson...

[mark dance]

A good chunk of my hobby time this week was spent trying to get the major "bridge project" underway.  This involved testing various solid modeling packages and "negotiating" with a local university for access to their large format Rapid Prototyping machines.  The latter was quite frustrating because the previous RPM machine I had already negotiated to use failed last year and they have no plans to replace it.  So now I must try and establish new relationships in different departments.  As Gary Hinshaw may be able to attest , inter-departmental relationships in universities can be competitive...oh well.  If worse comes to worse I may be forced to use Shapeways and the cost is likely to be substantively higher for the 5 bridges I would like to build in the next 9 months.

Any extra hobby time this week was spent testing and trying to learn various weathering techniques.  I have never weathered rolling stock before so this was both a challenge and also a very pleasant surprise.  I know I shouldn’t be surprised but I was astonished at the difference very simple weathering made to the appearance of not only the equipment but also the layout.  I weathered 20 box cars in total trying to replicate the look from prototype photos of those same cars I found on the web. As you can see it was easy for me to overdo it but by the end I got back to something a bit more subtle.  Only 350 cars and 30 locos to go!















Have a great week everyone.

md

[Puddington]

Good efforts on the CPR rolling stock Mark....you're ahead of the curve for sure !

[coosvalley]

Lots of good work this week.......keep it coming...

This week I finished up these dump cars. I cut them down to be closer to the prototype, but the sides are very different from the real cars....so I had to fudge the decal locations.....

the proto cars.....
http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/pictures/69640/RB-1%20Side%20dump%20cars%20Danville%20Jct.,ME%204'18'71.jpg

and mine...





Thanks for looking and have a good week...

[BCR751]

Mark,

A word of caution when using Shapeways.  They are having quality control problems with some of their stuff.  I would suggest getting one of the five bridges done and examine the finished product before ordering all five.  Probably stating the obvious here but just a heads up.

Doug

[jereising]

Z Trains in the canyon!

This shows the other end of the power line from Caliente.



And another angle:

[Dave Schneider]

Coosvalley,

Great looking cars, layout, and photography. All aspects are very well executed.

Best wishes, Dave

[Puddington]

Was running some trains and lashed this Montreal Locomotive Works pair up and snaped a pic....not a great pic but a classic "oddball CP Rail" pairing.....