Sunday Photo Fun -- June 22, 2014

[mlehman]

Held an ops session with my NMRA colleagues here last Sat. There are always "leftovers" here, because there are more trains than we can run in three hours. There's plenty of switching action the day after when I get to enjoy the fruits of lots of cars being moved, so here's pics from both the NG and SG sides of the coin.

Here's the track arrangement at one end up in Animas Forks. The Haymarket tram is on the right


The 456 exits the covered turntable after working the industries for the trip back down to Eureka and Silverton.


Meanwhile in Durango, Extra 3010 West is switching out and picking up cars as a K-27 prepares for the day's work..


Later, 3010 rolls by RGS Junction (or as it's sometime known, the "break in loop."


On to the the coal-mining town of Hesperus, more switching, then this wide shot of the train being coupled to head out.


At Dove Creek, the F-M switcher awaits the drops and pickups. Both here and in Durango, the switchers have been modified with dual gauge couplers to handle both SG and NG cars.


So didn't get much built, but had a lot of fun. What's been happening around your shop or layout last week?

[riogrande]

Nice standard gauge action there!

[djh4d]

Southbound at Shall Mound



Enjoy,
-Dave

[TBird1958]

Mike, I always enjoy seeing your layout!

This week I have one car to share, a 50' Gunderson Hi Cube boxcar, one of 50 purchased by the Rio Grande in 1969, assigned to general service, the cars are an exterior post type. The model is from E&C shop, it started out as a factory decorated D&RGW car that I bought in a moment of weakness, but honestly I really never did like it - thus it's fate teetered between swap meet fodder and going out with the week's garbage for several years. I finally took up the challange and stripped the car of it's cheesy, translucent paint and threw away all the parts that came with the kit except the roof. A new frame was made using a Details West one as a starting point, along with new coupler pockets, brake gear, grabs, walkways, etc. The model also required some interior bracing as it was trying to curl in on itself (That's E&C quality! lol!) I primered the inside of the car gray first to cut it's translucent look, the exterior was first painted silver, then finished with TCP's Reefer Orange. There is no specific decal set for this car so pieces from Microscale, Champ and Herald King were cut up and used to finish it.

It still needs to be weathered a bit to relieve it's "flat" lifeless sides, but I'll save that for the near future - This was quite enough Lipstick on a Pig for one week.

[mlehman]

Jim and TBird.
Thanks for your comments. I've been trying to get folks more interested in running SG, but for some darn reason they prefer steam Adding some helper action does seem to be drawing interest to the SG, though.

TBird,
Great tip on spraying the interior of that car with primer. I have one of those and several Walthers cars IIRC that have the translucent look to them. I may not go with a full shopping like on yours, but a quick trip through the paint line could help their looks consderably.

Dave,
Great shot! Welcome to SPF and looking forward to seeing more.

[markfj]

Nice work everyone!

Here is Pennsy 8-1-2 sleeper “Centfaun”, another Branchline Blueprint kit that I finished early last week. This build went much smoother than the first kit now that I know what to expect and how to handle the fitment issues with certain parts. For example, I used Model Master Clear Parts Cement & Window Maker to secure the windows on the first kit, but found that Tamiya Extra Thin Cement will work just as well and has a much shorter drying time. Also, assembly of the undercarriage detail went quicker because Centfaun has Ice Air Conditioning which has few components than the Pullman mechanical air conditioning system.









In this shot, you can see how close the cars couple with Sergent type “E” scale couplers. These cars should handle some “slightly” tight curves and switching areas on a layout without too much trouble. There is also a noticeable difference in coupler height, which I think is due to Branchline providing different wheel sets in their kits. Lake Merrit on the right has the newer machined wheels while Centfaun on the left has the older cast wheels.



There is one more sleeper to build in my inventory. After that, I’ll be on the hunt for some coaches.

Thanks, Mark

[dti406]

Did not get anything done this week, recovering from spreading 20 cy of mulch this last weekend. So here are some pictures I took a couple of weeks ago at the club layout in Stongsville, OH. We will be open on Thursday night July 17th for the NMRA Convention. I took pictures of my new Athearn GP9's hauling a PRR coal drag.







Thanks for looking!

Rick J

[riogrande]

Jun 22, 2014 7:59:07 GMT -8 TBird1958 said:

Mike, I always enjoy seeing your layout!

This week I have one car to share, a 50' Gunderson Hi Cube boxcar, one of 50 purchased by the Rio Grande in 1969, assigned to general service, the cars are an exterior post type. The model is from E&C shop, it started out as a factory decorated D&RGW car that I bought in a moment of weakness, but honestly I really never did like it -

Mark,

I have two of those E&C 50' Gunderson Hi Cube box cars still un-built. While I agree that the sides have a bit of a translucent appearance, when I look at the color in the real car in Jim Eager's book on page 44, they really do have a yellowish look, which looks similar to the color used on the kit. Maybe it's the lighting but I've always wondered if I gave the model a wash of dirty black it might look like the car in the photo. If you have Jim Eager's color guide, just compare it to the "wood packer" 50' box car in the photo below. Very orange vs. the very yellowish looking Gunderson above.

Your box car looks very nice.

[TBird1958]

Thanks Jim, you're right about the cars in Jim's book, tho it is important to note the FMC Woodpacker is freshly delivered and the Gunderson is several years old. My model right now would represent a "new" car and if you compare it to the caboose and the Geep you'll see it's a lighter shade of orange. It's my intent to weather the car and chalk it off so it has the yellowish appearance of the car in the Jim's book. The Woodpacker being produced by FMC is a completely different color (I'm putting one together), but I think the orange varied a lot - Rio Grande probably didn't care that much as long as they were some shade of orange!
I'll post some pics of this car, the Woodpacker when it's done and the walthers waffle box together soon

[bdhicks]

I guess I'm running late uploading pictures from BAPM, but I brought 7 models this year:


I've still got to put the windows, lights, decoder, and a few other minor bits on GN 1914, but it's pretty much done:



I've also uploaded some other BAPM pictures, and I'll get the rest up pretty soon:
www.flickr.com/photos/ckape/sets/72157644905050879

[carrman]

Saw that SD39 at the meet, was that built using the Hi-Tech sides?



Dave

[kentuckysouthernrwy]

I spent Sunday in and around Owosso, MI for their train and plane fest. PM 1225, NKP 765 and others were present. Also a B model P-51 flying around





Weather was terrific. Had a nice day.

[bdhicks]

Jun 23, 2014 7:34:40 GMT -8 carrman said:

Saw that SD39 at the meet, was that built using the Hi-Tech sides?

Yep, pretty much everything above the walkway was re-done with Hi-Tech sides and Cannon parts.

[riogrande]

Jun 22, 2014 16:54:24 GMT -8 TBird1958 said:

Thanks Jim, you're right about the cars in Jim's book, tho it is important to note the FMC Woodpacker is freshly delivered and the Gunderson is several years old. My model right now would represent a "new" car and if you compare it to the caboose and the Geep you'll see it's a lighter shade of orange. It's my intent to weather the car and chalk it off so it has the yellowish appearance of the car in the Jim's book. The Woodpacker being produced by FMC is a completely different color (I'm putting one together), but I think the orange varied a lot - Rio Grande probably didn't care that much as long as they were some shade of orange!
I'll post some pics of this car, the Woodpacker when it's done and the walthers waffle box together soon

Yes, it looks like the Woodpacker is fresh in the photo, but I wasn't sure if the color on the Gunderson Hi-cube was the standard D&RGW orange of the day or if FMC used a different hue of orange and it weathered much yellower than some of the other D&RGW equipment. What I'm probably going to do is try to weather the E&C cars a bit to disquise the translucence a bit. The orange probably did vary on the freight cars depending on builder.

I look forward to your work as always!

Cheers, Jim (total noob at weathering)

[TBird1958]

Jim, I don't think there was a "standard" orange once the D&RGW went to the simplified all orange scheme, like most railroads the purchased cars from many builders that didn't all use the same paint, thus the wide variations. The Gunderson cars were no doubt more yellow and E&C's color isn't that far off, their model just never looked right to me (I have several of the SP ones, they look much better!) I weathered my factory decorated Rio Grande one in the hope that would help it - it didn't! The combination of the translucent gray white plastic and the orange paint was just not working, it looked like a slice of artificial cheese, even after I tried painting the inside of the car! After rebuilding it, the new paint seemed to give it a lot more "life" ( I think the depth of the color is why) and it lost the translucent appearance. Without weathering it still looks a bit flat to me, I'm going to use some chalks to gather some darker color near the ribs and a bit of yellow to represent some fading - it'll be a challenge!

 That's a badass P-51B too!