San Luis Valley Layout

Model Railroader Layouts and layout building
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I’ve been focusing the past few weeks on more rolling stock-- to my mind, since I’m moving in two months there’s not much point in working more on the layout sections until after the move, now that they’re wired up correctly, all the power switches are installed, and the trackwork seems sound. The P-44 has a few derailment issues with the curves and turnouts, but the Consolidation and the 70-ton are doing fine everywhere, so I think that’s a bug to be sorted out with the engine.

My folks sent the last box of train cars from their home and I spent an afternoon picking through the cars that populated my layout as a kid-- an assortment of old Mantua cars with metal frames and plastic bodies, Bachmann train-set quality plastic cars, a Tyco car or two, and a couple of Athearn BBs. I salvaged what I could, took all the trucks off, snipped off the truck coupler boxes, and put in Intermountain wheels. Then I took the bodies for re-purposing, primed them and put on a coat of black. Here are some photos:

Decals are a mix of Microscale, Champ and an ancient Walthers set that kept disintegrating as I was applying the dimensional data… [N] Not using those again.

Modeler’s license applies to the decaling-- I’m sure they’re not prototypical but I like to use what I’ve got. Same applies to these big 4-bay coal hoppers:

I also took an old Athearn SP caboose, put Kadee trucks and couplers on it, styrened a few

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Your little slice of the Rio Grande is certainly coming together!

Here’s an idea for the future. As you say, D&RGW generally used gons, rather than hoppers, for coal service. Your “D&RGW quad hopper” may not be quite prototypical, but it looks good & plausible, and nothing I say here should be taken as any kind of criticism. However, at some point in the future you may want to re-modify the car to be more prototypical. If you do, here’s an idea.

Of all the roads that used A.R.A offset-side quads, the only one that connected with the D&RGW was the Missouri Pacific, at Pueblo. The car could be painted as a MoPac 55500-56499 series open quad hopper (1500 cars), and would look quite at home. MKT and MILW also had these cars (50 and 52 respectively), and Milwaukee’s subsidiary Chicago Terre Haute & Southeastern also had 448 cars. Other owners were all east of Chicago, and the cars tended to stay near home rails: B&O, C&O, Erie, B&M and DL&W. The DL&W cars were ex B&M, first purchased in 1951.

In 1937-42, 212 of the MoPac cars were modified with roofs, renumbered 1700-1724 and 1770-1981, and given a new AAR classification of LO (covered hopper). I looked in the 1948 ORER to see whether these covered cars were assigned to any special service, but found no new info there.

These cars are well covered in Railway Prototype Cyclopedia No. 5, (RP CYC Publishing CO., P.O. Box 451, Chesterfield, MO 63006-0451). The text gives more details regarding the MoPac modifications, including some changes over the years. Photos of the relevant MoPac cars are on pages 88-89.

Love your work! Keep those pictures coming.

Tom

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Thanks, Tom! Great info about the Missouri Pacific cars-- I have another quad hopper body and three 2-bays waiting for conversion as well, so maybe I’ll invest in MoPac decals for those to add variety.

P

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What are the two bay cars?

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As in AAR codes? I believe one is HM and the other two are HMA-- I’m not positive, being new to distinguishing the types. Photos might clarify:

P

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They look like Mantua cars, but I’m not sure. I don’t know what RR’s used those. Maybe somebody else does. HM’s had hopper doors parallel to the ties; HMA’s had hopper doors parallel to the rails, dumping between the rails. HMA’s were often used as ballast cars.

Tom

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More freight car progress. Tom, I took your advice on including some MoPac cars. Decals are still wet on the red quad-- I used a slightly newer paint scheme for it, not sure if that was around in 1950. But paired with the DRGW quads, which didn’t exist anyway, it makes a nice contrast:

Also worked on some reefers-- I took a Mantua Swift wood reefer and repainted for ART:

Using Clover House dry transfers for the first time with this one-- waiting until the next free afternoon to seal between transfers.

An attempt at weathering on an Accurail reefer, using ink and paint washes:

Lastly, I made the decision to replace the bays on those Mantua hoppers to make them analogous to the other 2-bay. I just did one for now, scratching new bays out of styrene:

Testing coupler and bay height:

Lead shot weight is drying in place right now-- I’ll add a few rivet strips and then it’ll be ready for paint.

P

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I’ve been out of town & away from the computer fior several days so I just saw the new stuff. It’s true that you’re making some compromises (don’t we all?) but the roster is coming together as a cohesive group of cars that fit a geographical and economic theme. I’ve always believed that a model railroad that reflects a recognizable geographic area, even if it’s a fictional setting, becomes more believable as a result. Keep at it!

Tom

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I’ve been quite busy lately with non-MRR-related stuff and prepping for the move, so projects have been a little bit on the back burner. My pair of Mantua reefers are now painted and decaled for ART, though:

Weathering was done with ink/alcohol and a few sprays or PollyScale earth. Right now it’s a little on the heavy side, but I’m hoping another shot of matte coat will tone them down.

This weekend I made progress on a new small project: San Luis Central stopped passenger traffic in the 1920s, but I decided that on my layout they’d keep their sole drovers caboose on to the end of steam, bringing passengers now and again from Center, coordinated to transfer onto Alamosa-bound passenger trains. My latest acquisition is a Mantua caboose for this purpose-- I didn’t take a before picture, but here’s an identical one from online:

I pulled the trucks off it and replaced with a couple of Mantua archbar trucks off of an old tender:

It was a tremendous pain trying to pry the wheels out of these-- I actually snapped one of them and had to very carefully epoxy it back together, but they roll freely now with IM wheels. The window pattern on the body isn’t precise-- it’s a bit short in general-- but I find it close enough for my purposes. Two-tone sprayed with the airbrush, a light green for the body and flat black on the roofs:

Added Kadee boxes and couplers, ladders (I only had a couple of straight ladders, all too short, so I created the top grabs out of thin paper clip