"Deluxe" Deluxe

[ram53]

Hey guys, for my first Railwire post I'll show you that old dogs like me can learn new tricks, and it's the very high level of modelling skill on RW that inspired me to try.  I took a fairly lowly Deluxe Innovations Twintub Bethgon coalporter and transformed it into a pretty decent model.  It's just that we modern era Canadian modellers have been left out of the big coal carrier releases by Athearn, FVM and BLMA lately.  We have Kato's 19 CNA Bethgon road nos., and if you missed out on LBF/Huberts a few years ago, you're out of luck.  I picked up a 12-pack of Deluxe Bethgons at a show recently and wondered what I could do (since I'm never satisfied, maybe that's why I'm here...).

The DI model has "1994" stamped on the bottom so it's pretty old tooling and the model is a bit lacking in fine detail, plus the nondescript trucks, fixed Unimate couplers, and plastic 33" wheels with an axle length that doesn't fit any of BLMA's or FVM's metal wheels.  But that red CN pad printing is there to stay-highly resistant to weathering! One issue I did not try to address is the too-short wheelbase of the DI model, the outer wheels should protrude beyond the car end, the way the Kato model does.

Here's the basic car, stock:
 

The too-small wheels are one reason it has a decently low ride.  I wanted to use up some of the 100T BLMA trucks I had, I've found they are difficult to adapt to a lot of N scale rolling stock because so many cars were designed to ride higher and fitting couplers to the correct height is a big problem if you lower the car with the BLMA trucks.

OK, I never imagined I could do this, but I took measurements from drawings of the prototype car published in the Oct 99 MR, designed and drew out close-to-scale end stirrups with CorelDraw and had PPD in Scotland produce about 100 pairs (they're asymmetric so there are mirror image pairs). Hey, I have absolutely zero experience with anything to do with CAD so this was a big step for me. You guys just made me do it!  They were done in 0.2mm nickel silver which is soft enough to sand down any fret removal stubs but much stronger than brass for the very small size.  I probably should have done them in stainless steel as there was very little to sand off.  Here's a couple of pairs already painted:



The mounting pins/tabs are on the top of each piece. There's a half-etch in the middle meant to represent the welds of the middle steps which have a bend up on one side, down on the other. It's pretty delicate, but after you shave off the thick plastic stirrups, there's not a lot of material to attach them to, I drill a #82 hole for each tab and CA them in.

I experimented with a variety of couplers, but the MT 2004 short-shank underslung was the only one that would be at the correct height after replacing the trucks with the BLMA 100T/36" wheels combo. These sit on a .01" styrene pad glued to the bottom of the car end (at least there is a place to body-mount so a good basic design).   These couplers look OK as the rotary couplers are kind of bulky-looking. I used the 00-90 screw that comes with the couplers, cut down to length as they are basically self-tapping into the soft plastic.  Here's a car with new etched stirrups and the BLMA trucks/wheels plus the MT 2004 couplers:


There's already a "hunkered down" realistic look with the truck bolsters much less visible, the wheels correct size and the delicacy of the stirrups.
Next, the weathering... these cars rapidly fade and get grimy. I used lots of fade mix to give the red an almost pink tone, then applied very thin dirty black washes followed by light oversprays of grimy black and dark earth tones.  I then scraped the ribs and sides following proto photos to uncover the silver base paint, meant to represent bare aluminum, presumably trauma from the unloading process. I added the reflector stripes, sealed everything with a quick dullcote, assembled the painted trucks and wheels, added BLMA hoses, and that's basically it!

Here's a pretty-much finished car:


It looks like one coupler is not at the same height but this seems to be an artifact of the photo as the actual car looks quite even.  Here's the other side:


What seems to happen is the red CN logo gets worn or peeled off, leaving bare aluminum in the CN shape. This was hard to simulate, and eventually I just dry-brushed Testor's Silver enamel onto the logo.  I'll get better with more effort.

Well, so there we have it, a nice, low-riding CN Deluxe Bethgon (probably not the correct prototype for the road no., but that's DI's doing) with some finery of detail, body-mount couplers, a nice smooth ride and gentle coupling.  The first one always takes the longest, and I'll be able to whip off the whole lot of 12 in rapid order now that I've got the details worked out, hoping the weathering gets better as I go along.

Thanks to the great modellers here at Railwire for getting me to try CAD drawing and custom parts-making! It's very satisfying!

Richard.

[Smike]

Richard! Nice to see you finally come over to the dark side! Great mod!

[peteski]

Custom-etched stirrups - nice!  It does greatly improve the realism of those cars.

[ednadolski]

Fantastic work Richard, thanks for sharing!  Those stirrups are exquisite!

Ed

[GaryHinshaw]

Welcome Richard - you'll have many instant fans here!  The stirrups turned out great - I can't wait to see what you crank out next, now that you're empowered.  This car looks so much better with them (and with the 100T trucks).

RE the weathering, this sample might be easier (and more typical?) of these cars. This could be done with a few coats of a dilute sooty spray, followed by some Bragdon powders to kill any remaining sheen.  Probably pretty simple.

Now, if you could just figure a way to get that wheelbase extended. 

-Gary

[Sokramiketes]

Well played, Sir.

[GaryHinshaw]

By the way Richard, what is your technique and color choice for painting the wheel faces?  They look great.

-gfh

[mcjaco]

Well played, Sir.

QFT.

[cv_acr]

Looks pretty good to me. The fine stirrups and new trucks are a nice upgrade.

I like the fact that the weathering is not over-done, even though these coal gons tend to get pretty dark with coal dust.

Here's a good example of the logo weathering he was trying for, pretty good effect I think:
http://canadianfreightcargallery.ca/cgi-bin/image.pl?i=cna192031&o=cn

[Ed Kapuscinski]

Very nice!!

[ram53]

Thanks guys, I appreciate the input. I had a friend over today who is a CN engineer and an HO'er, but he had his camera out and was snapping away at all my detailed N scale power-I think he realizes that we have a tremendous advantage over the HO community when it comes to modelling anything other than a switching layout, but...most people don't change scales, it's kind of "bred in the bone".   I admitted to an occasional desire to change over to the large scale, but he strongly advised against it.  He realized that his plans to put a helix in the basement of his new home were not going to work out because of space limitations.  He wants to model the London, Ontario CN operations with 4 CN subdivisions not including the GEXR plus the CP mainline--good luck trying to make anything of that in HO scale in an average basement! I pointed out that modern-era N scale power and rolling stock is similar in length to many transition-era HO pieces and requires HO-sized curve radii and such, so all those gorgeous HO products aren't going to look or operate very well unless you have a warehouse-sized space to build in, and in 3 dimensions, you have to build 6-7 times the volume of scenery and who really wants to do that?

My whole life right now is in a prolonged holding pattern because of two civil litigations we are pursuing, one about our house and one about my disability which leaves me unable to work full-time.  Until these are settled, I can't really do anything other than work on pieces of power and rolling stock.  I don't want any more "stuff" done to the house (like building a semi-permanent model RR), which we intend to sell once the legal stuff is done.

I have had an epiphany of sorts recently and it come as a welcome relief:  I'm done with N scale onboard sound!  The last couple of years, I have detailed and added sound to at least a dozen N scale engines, the amount of work involved has been enormous and the results kind of disappointing at best, annoying at worst.  I'm going to try something along the line of what Lance Mindheim is doing on his blog on MRH, that is, using wireless headphones and stationary decoders.  I'm hoping that eventually, a wireless Bluetooth solution with a virtual throttle/virtual sound decoder running off some kind of Ipad or equivalent device will provide not just engine sound, but full motor control and all the associated RR sounds of wheel noise, rail noise, Doppler effects, slack action, ie all the sounds produced by the whole train, not just the engines.    I feel like a big weight has been lifted off my shoulders and I can concentrate on detail and proto fidelity, which is my current interest. 

I think we have a ways to go in N scale to eliminate all traces of the toy-like ancestry of the scale, and the only way to do it is to keep pushing the envelope, which is what folks here at RW seem to be really good at.  And that is something I can relate to! 

Well, I just finished something I thought was pretty cool, but nobody seemed to notice or care on another forum, so I may just repost this unique detail for those who may appreciate it or have comments--and critical comments made constructively are always welcome.

[GaryHinshaw]

Sorry to hear about your litigations Richard - that must really suck.  Hobby-wise, I'm in just the opposite situation, where all the (precious) spare time I have is devoted to layout-building now.  I've hardly done any detail work for 2+ years and I'm starting to miss it.  That will change soon though!  Glad to hear that your finding peace with N and sound.  I have to say, I've never heard an on-board diesel sound that I liked, even in HO.  And the physics just isn't there for N, so alternatives like Lance's make a lot of sense.

Good photo Chris.

By the way Richard, what is your technique and color choice for painting the wheel faces?  They look great.

-gfh

Ping.

-gfh

[Scottl]

Really nice work Richard.   The weathering really makes it and is quite convincing. 

[milw156]

By the way Richard, what is your technique and color choice for painting the wheel faces?  They look great.

-gfh

+1, they really help accentuate the etched stirups nicely! VERY well done!
Rick

[Ian MacMillan]

Very nice work.