Weekend Update 11/5/23

[ednadolski]

Perhaps the longer rolling stock is looking a bit 'scrunched' on a 25" radius curve?

[chuck geiger]

Las Piedras Junction

[thumpernickle]

Las Piedra Junction

Your scenery is an excellent rendition of the area. Well done.
I am ready to do a dirt road and seem to remember you doing one recently. But for the life of me I can’t find your pictures and comments on how you did it. If my memory is correct, would you help me find it?

[chuck geiger]

Thump this might help. Thank you for the kind words.

Build a Scenic Square:

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From Chris333:

https://www.therailwire.net/forum/index.php?topic=15601.msg132142#msg132142

Also Rob Spangler:

https://forum.mrhmag.com/post/wp8thsubs-blog-index-12218239

[packers#1]

Lots of great work from everyone. I think I’ve finally settled on a track plan and theme for my layout; I’ve kicked a lot around and it just hasn’t felt right, but I finally got a chance a few weekends ago with my wife and our pups to check out some of the new Swamp Rabbit Trail in Greenville. I’ll post the whole convoluted explanation of how, in my version of history, this area became what I’m depicting. However, let’s take a tour of me finally nailing down the layout.

First up is B&F roofing supply, which will now, instead of being right along the right of way, be a 90-degree spur from the main and across a road and include lumber as well. There will be two spots at a warehouse for shingles and other roof materials, and then there will be a lot with two centerbeam spots. The line behind is staging for the interchange and sessions start with the interchange train coming back to work the little industrial park. There is also a steel distributor represented by this line that will add some extra cars to move around.


This is the main heart of the industrial park. The back spur is a food distributor similar to the one Lance Mindheim models. This area is very close to I385 and makes sense for localized/regional distribution. The two middle tracks are the runaround, and the front is a freelanced team track that will have a single boxcar unloading shed like one in MR a while back. The G&N also uses it to store off spot plastic hoppers.



Finally, we have the end of the runaround and the plastic film plant. They receive in plastics of various grades, and each hopper must be put in the specific spot. Plastic films can have up to 7 different types of plastic in layers so it takes quite a lot of plastic types to make the variety of products; a lot of it comes in large boxes called gaylords, but some of the more frequently used plastics are bought in bulk in hoppers.



Overall it’s a lot of fun to run and gets a good mix of switching “on-the-line” at B&F, yard work to move cars around for the other industries, and industrial switching for the food distributor and plastic plant. Overall it should be a lot of fun and I can see the scenes a lot better already with this versus my other false starts.

[craigolio1]

Something for our Canadian members this weekend. I printed a 3300 cu ft pressure flow covered hopper as used by CN and BCOL. The model is eight separate parts: The main body, brake wheel, 2 outlets and 4 roof hatches. It will look great with some EMS wheels under it. The car is printed in ABS like resin which will hopefully prevent the railings from getting snapped off.

(Attachment Link)

Ooooo this is interesting to me. Any chance we could see what it looks like in primer?

Craig

[bbussey]

@haasmarc Marc discovered the Caterpiller D7 tractor crawler by WindhamGraves on Thingiverse and built a Cat payload on flatcar last month, which showed me the means to build a model long on my list.  I had been pressing Artitec to release their HO Cat D7 payload in N for years, and the WindhamGraves model gave me a very viable alternative.  The bonus was that there also is a WindhamGraves scraper model with a bulldozer blade and both the scraper and crawler are available as assembled or "disassembled" STL files.  I needed a bulldozer payload, so I downloaded the assembled crawler and the disassembled scraper to create the bulldozer payload.  Originally I was going to use a 40' flat, but I discovered they were transported on 53' flats in general.  Originally I wanted to use a riveted flatcar, but there aren't any high-quality 53' riveted flatcars in N.  I procured an Athearn GSC flatcar deco'd for ATSF and discovered that the wrong number series was used for the model, so I ended up stripping/repainting and decaling into a proper number series.  The repaint made it easier to upgrade the model anyway, as I cleaned up the casting, added end sills and body-mounted MTL 1015s.  BLMA ASF A-3 trucks and an ESM laser-cut deck were swapped in, and a GMM etched brakewheel upgraded the plastic one.  The tarp was made from paper softened with VMS Paper Shaper and molded around the Cat seat of a extra crawler.  Dunnage is both styrene and 3D-printed, based on Cat loads in the Morning Sun open car loads vol 3 & 4.  Crates also are ESM.

[chuck geiger]

Some more work on the ridge.

[haasmarc]

Nice dozer load Bryan!