Sunday Photo Fun 11-15-15

[tankcarsrule]

Well, the month is half over, soon it'll be 2016.

[atsfan]

That is some amazing tank car !

[dti406]

I managed to get a couple of cars done this week!



IMWX 1937 AAR Boxcar Kit, substituted Yarmouth Model Works Sill Steps for the cast plastic sill steps of the kit. Painted with Scalecoat II Boxcar Red and lettered with Champ Decals.



Atlas 4650CF Covered Hopper as a standin for the EL 4460CF Covered Hopper, the length was the same, but the car was shorter than the standard 4650. Painted the car with Scalecoat II MofW Gray and lettered with Herald King Decals.

And a shot taken at the Strongsville Model Railroad club in Strongsville, OH.



Pennsy N1s hauling a mixture of H21, H22 and Gla Hopper Cars.

Thanks for looking!

Rick Jesionowski

[TBird1958]

Everywhere the Rio Grande Zephyr went you were going to see baggage/combine 1230/1231 right behind the power. Painted in a number of different schemes over the years of the train's existance, this variation shows no black separation stripe between the window band and the fluted sides. The model is plated brass from Palace Car Company painted with TCP colors for the carbody and Scalecoat for trucks and frame. It's just about done, needs some window shades and a little touch up on the grab irons. The model is owned by Jim Fitch one of our forum moderators.

[mlehman]

I'll bet Jim can't hardly wait to get his mitts back on that combine. Beautiful work!

Too many other things going on to have much new to show this week, but have plenty in the vault. Here's a couple of more pics of the Durango Yard as the Houston-Portland Zephyr throttles up after its stop...



The reverse angle overview

[riogrande]

Mike, very true. The combine is looking great. It has been unpainted for far too many years and while I have done bit of painting, brass is above my level and Im not setup with a proper booth for non-acrylics.

Mark, very nice as always! I'm going to have to learn the ways of the weathering Jedi soon too! My first Moloco car arrived yesterday, the Rio Grande gold/silver but will have to start with some cheap cars for a while first. Better late to the Moloco
party than never!

[mlehman]

JIM,
I have the RGMHS sides and the NKP Car Co. core kit to roll my own. Been looking forward to it, but need to get the misc parts, plus trucks, together so I can start my build.

[riogrande]

Mike, IIRC, the RGMHS sides are flat including any skirting - which is to be expected. I think I saw a video of a model HO train running at a mueseum layout which had a combine made from the sides, but it looked like the skirts were left flat and the builder had not curved them in when constructing the car. That one was a full skirted version so you can imagine it looked odd. The skirts need to be curved to look right. It is part of the preparation needed when building the sides and the core kit. It may require using a dowel or something to carefully bend the skirts around to curve them. Even if you have the post 1972 de-skirted sides, the ends would need curved. I think there may have been several versions of the car sides made. D&RGW had 3 different configurations to the P-S Prospector combines. 1) As built - with skirts and dormitory windows (added soon after delivery) 2) Same window arrangement but deskirted around winter of 1973, and one of them #1231 had the dorm windows blanked out around 1975. As it happens, neither of the 2 combines I have represents the most common P-S combine used on the RGZ, the deskirted version with the dorm windows.

[TBird1958]

I've built that kit, it's a bit of a challenge, especially rolling the car side at the bottom. Painting Jim's brass one will likely push me to search for one, it's far better.

[mlehman]

Thanks for the tips on the skirts, guys. Mine is the full-skirted version, so will need those rolled into the car sides. I might have missed that, too, as the only call-out about it seems to be a diagram where the curved in skirts are noted, with a 1/2" dowel used to form them.

[rockisland652]

Trainfest was great on Saturday. I didn't spend quite as much as I have in past years.

I have quite the fleet already and there were no Budd Bilevel cars to be had. Again.

Oh, but what was there though...

At the Athearn booth, I quite literally cuddled the Genesis RI FP7 they had on display. No kissing. Just cuddling. LOL

The Bowser U25B was nowhere near as shabby as I had heard. Your mileage may vary, but they are a vast improvement over their predecessors. Two, please.

Who'da thunk we'd see a U33B from Atlas? In RI paint...with sound. 2016, baby!

An airslide from Tangent? Right there for sale (no RI alas).

With their previous commitment to the UP heritage fleet, I half expected the E9s from Walthers. Still not right, but impressive enough.

The BLI Milwaukee Road S3 4-8-4 #261 will be a hard one to resist. I took my last train ride with my dad behind that engine in 1998. Ach!

Anyway, while discussing their new airslides, the boys at Tangent wanted pics of their PS3 hoppers that I weathered and I realized I hadn't shared them here.

They are weathered with drybrushed filth and rust blended with pan pastels.

Please enjoy.

[jbilbrey]

On Veteran's Day last week, I met up with my father, surprising my son whom he kept overnight, to help staff a model railroad display at a local Children's Museum. Here are some photos from the day.

The first is the locomotives of a short train that I ran most of the day.  The lead locomotive is a stock Genesis GP49.  The second locomotive [sadly out-of-focus] is a much detailed P2K GP38-2:



Bringing up the rear of the train was an Atlas caboose that I finished not long ago. I bought the caboose 8-9 years ago as an undecorated kit and recently painted and numbered it to match the prototype, which is now on display in Monterey, TN:



And, here's my son "railfanning" behind the layout:



James Bilbrey
LaVergne, TN

[riogrande]

James, enjoyed your NS photo's on the modular layout.

Tom, I like your weathering job on the RI Tangent PS3 hoppers - fairly subtle and very effective! Nice looking coal cars.