Sunday Photo Fun May 15

[cemr5396]

Somebody better do this before the day is out so here goes....

I was asked a little while back to show the grain elevator I was working on, here it is, such as it is at the moment.



I am building it for a scene we are working on down at my club, where we took a piece of old scenery out and are going to replace it with this elevator scene. 

The elevator itself is kitbashed from multiple Walthers kits, plus a whole bunch of scratchbuilt detail. The one wall has not been installed yet because I will be building an interior for it that contains all of the stuff inside the 'alley'. 

I am building it as a Manitoba Pool elevator that was modernized in the 80s-90s, but it does not represent a specific facility. Instead I used features from several different elevators as inspiration.

At the moment I am perhaps about half done the actual construction, then will be the painting which will be a whole headache of it's own.

[fr8kar]

Here are some new prints from this week. I still have some minor revisions to make to some of the files just to dial them in a little better.




Cotton Belt B36-7B cab detail




Southern Pacific B23-7 cab front




Late production U30C cab front

[Donnell Wells]

Ryan, the Elegoo Mars 3 continues to sit in the box it was delivered in for reasons unbeknownst to me! I actually do know why, I just don't have to space to use it quite yet the way I need to. Plus, I've been messing around with another machine, the Comgrow ROBO CNC with 5W laser attachment. Here is a quick and dirty N-scale (yeah I know, wrong scale!) model of my under-construction back yard workshop cut from 2-ply (.036" thick) mat board. I may try and add the scribed siding and trim to complete the model.

[danpik]

Probably be the last two you will have to put up with for the summer. Not sure if I will have many more done this summer... but, wait till the fall!

[dti406]

Good afternoon from sunny and warm Northeast Ohio!

Well, I still got a couple of cars done even with the Senior's Bowling Tournament this week along with some other stuff.

First, is another (9 so far) Bowser Covered Hopper kit that I have painted with Scalecoat II Boxcar Red and lettered with Herald King Decals. The D&TS serviced a sand pit in Rockwood, MI that supplied high mineral content sand for making glass and other specialty items. Most cars were sent to Toledo for use in the glass manufacturing plants that Toledo is famous for (Glass Capital of the World).



Next, an Athearn NACC 50' RBL Kit, painted with Scalecoat II Roof Brown and Silver paints, then lettered with High Ball Graphics decals. NACC built around 2000 RBL's in the early sixties using various parts from various manufacturers like Pullman Standard, Stanray, etc. Most cars were built for private owners and a few railroads. This is one of 50 cars leased by Hershey for transporting chocolate products in a semi-temperature controlled environment.



Last Saturday I took my N&W SD39's (Ex-Illinois Terminal) over to the club to run with a bunch of general freight cars, most of them N&W.



Thanks for looking!

Rick Jesionowski

[simulatortrain]

My week in modeling was spent on the teens. I got this Gem mogul ready for its decoder install and weathering:



I also printed most of this CVRR 0-6-0 (all the gray parts.) The prototype was built by Rogers in 1880 and is similar to a PRR B3. I was able to take advantage of a nice B3 diagram to get most of the dimensions worked out. It mounts on the frame of a Bachmann Porter side tank.

[packer]

I started with this decorated atlas car. I shaved off the rivets, cut down the things on the corners, made new stirrups and touched it all up with BN green. Then weathered it sorta based the one photo I found of this car. However since I took the photo I had an ACI plate and U-1 dot…



The roof was more of an experiment. After an acrylic wash of a lighter green, I noticed it pooled up in some places. So I took some grays and browns and came up with this. Probably overdone a bit, but I think I’ll send it.

[cp6027]

May 15, 2022 19:11:56 GMT -8 cemr5396 said:

Somebody better do this before the day is out so here goes....

I was asked a little while back to show the grain elevator I was working on, here it is, such as it is at the moment.

...

I am building it as a Manitoba Pool elevator that was modernized in the 80s-90s, but it does not represent a specific facility. Instead I used features from several different elevators as inspiration....

Thanks for sharing!  It certainly looks the part of an MPE facility thus far!
I wish there was a good way to represent elevators that have been modernized with pressed metal/tin/aluminum siding.  I have yet to find a commercial plastic sheet/siding material with the correct pattern to match the resulting rectangular grid pattern.  The Walther's Valley Growers elevator is a great source of materials despite its vertical corrugated siding that was only used on a handful of Canadian elevators.
I've though about trying to design and 3-D print walls with the appropriate siding pattern, but have been unsure how well (flat) they would turn out and also what their structural stability would be like after assembly. A decently sized elevator would also require a large printer volume unless the walls were assembled from numerous smaller sections.
3-D printing could also be a good solution for the 3-D molded MPE logos found on the actual elevators if you wanted to go beyond the various decal options out there.

[ChessieFan1978]

Penn Central SD45/40 on a Trailvan Train

Penn Central SD45 #6111 and SD40 #6103 by Matthew Fisher, on Flickr
Penn Central SD's by Matthew Fisher, on Flickr
PC by Matthew Fisher, on Flickr

[cemr5396]

May 16, 2022 11:19:20 GMT -8 cp6027 said:

Thanks for sharing!  It certainly looks the part of an MPE facility thus far!
I wish there was a good way to represent elevators that have been modernized with pressed metal/tin/aluminum siding.  I have yet to find a commercial plastic sheet/siding material with the correct pattern to match the resulting rectangular grid pattern.  The Walther's Valley Growers elevator is a great source of materials despite its vertical corrugated siding that was only used on a handful of Canadian elevators.
I've though about trying to design and 3-D print walls with the appropriate siding pattern, but have been unsure how well (flat) they would turn out and also what their structural stability would be like after assembly. A decently sized elevator would also require a large printer volume unless the walls were assembled from numerous smaller sections.
3-D printing could also be a good solution for the 3-D molded MPE logos found on the actual elevators if you wanted to go beyond the various decal options out there.

Thanks!

One thing I've always loved about MPE elevators is you can always identify one just by seeing it, even if it has changed in appearance somewhat. I was looking through pictures after I posted last night and realized I'd built a near copy of the elevator at Miami, completely by accident! 



I agree it would be nice if there was a way to replicate the tin siding that was so unique to MPE elevators, luckily for me post 2000 many elevators got their siding redone partially or in whole with siding very reminiscent of the vertical style on the Walthers Valley Growers, so I can use that basically as is.

3D MPE heralds would be great too, I was thinking of just putting a decal onto a piece of 30 thou styrene and mounting it that way. I might need to have it custom done because the herald on the Microscale elevator set is way too big, and the same one in N scale is probably too small.

[tom]

Cool stuff so far! Here is a grab shot on my railroad of a trio of Penn Central F-units pulling a train through an industrial area. The generic factory was mainly scratchbuilt except for the covered hopper unloading shed made using a shortened Pikestuff kit.

[cp6027]

May 16, 2022 12:44:34 GMT -8 cemr5396 said:

May 16, 2022 11:19:20 GMT -8 cp6027 said:

Thanks for sharing!  It certainly looks the part of an MPE facility thus far!
I wish there was a good way to represent elevators that have been modernized with pressed metal/tin/aluminum siding.  I have yet to find a commercial plastic sheet/siding material with the correct pattern to match the resulting rectangular grid pattern.  The Walther's Valley Growers elevator is a great source of materials despite its vertical corrugated siding that was only used on a handful of Canadian elevators.
I've though about trying to design and 3-D print walls with the appropriate siding pattern, but have been unsure how well (flat) they would turn out and also what their structural stability would be like after assembly. A decently sized elevator would also require a large printer volume unless the walls were assembled from numerous smaller sections.
3-D printing could also be a good solution for the 3-D molded MPE logos found on the actual elevators if you wanted to go beyond the various decal options out there.

Thanks!

One thing I've always loved about MPE elevators is you can always identify one just by seeing it, even if it has changed in appearance somewhat. I was looking through pictures after I posted last night and realized I'd built a near copy of the elevator at Miami, completely by accident! 



I agree it would be nice if there was a way to replicate the tin siding that was so unique to MPE elevators, luckily for me post 2000 many elevators got their siding redone partially or in whole with siding very reminiscent of the vertical style on the Walthers Valley Growers, so I can use that basically as is.

3D MPE heralds would be great too, I was thinking of just putting a decal onto a piece of 30 thou styrene and mounting it that way. I might need to have it custom done because the herald on the Microscale elevator set is way too big, and the same one in N scale is probably too small.

I agree about the size of the Microscale MPE logos!
I have never tried them personally, but there is a company called CMR Products that offers decals for a whole bunch of the Canadian grain elevator companies.  They offer a sheet of four MPE logos but I'm not sure of their size relative to what looks "right" for an HO elevator.

[sd40dash2]

Not sure about "CMR products" (due diligence is highly advised) but I thought the N scale herald looked right when I built my model:

I would add that there were a few different sizes of the old MPE woodies. Some of them were really small which made the Herald look large, whereas the recent survivors tended to be the larger, newest woodies that made the logo look smaller. For simplicity I decided the N logo and HO letters looked right to me. I applied them to acetate but another idea is simply to print them off in colour. Flat decals are not really the best material because the logo was a fully embossed sign.

[cp6027]

sd40dash2: That MPE model looks awesome! Including the flared skirt that is a key spotting feature of Canadian prairie elevators along with some of the other modernization details really completes the look. I've tried to collect both N and HO versions of the Microscale Canadian elevator sheets to provide variety on logo sizing; I'll have to dig them out and compare to some of my elevator kits.

[cemr5396]

May 16, 2022 18:11:20 GMT -8 sd40dash2 said:

Not sure about "CMR products" (due diligence is highly advised) but I thought the N scale herald looked right when I built my model:

That looks closer than I thought it would, perhaps a little on the small side. It might look good on mine even if it is technically not the right size just because I think mine is a bit smaller.

I'd be curious to see what you'd get if you put a scale ruler to it, I saw one of the real heralds on display in a museum a while back and I want to say the diameter was somewhere in the 10-15 foot range. I remember reading the what the actual size of these heralds was somewhere a long time ago and now I can't remember for the life of me.

[sd40dash2]

Thanks cp6027, I've travelled extensively across MB and researched the topic just as extensively when I was building this and a few other elevator models. I kind of wish that even just one of the mfrs would produce these with the correct, common features to show these buildings at end of life (that we know from our own lifetimes) rather than the older type. But regardless of that, it's still fun to try and replicate these cool old buildings and preserve this aspect of Manitoba's history.

[sd40dash2]

MPE logo 12' fiberglass. Town name letters 23.5" tall.