Weekend Photo FUN 20 - 22 March 2015

Gidday All, busy week again, though got a bit of painting on the ferry done, and have got sidetracked on to another project, so helmsman Frank is still lacking a suntan.

Looking forward to the Really Good Stuff,
Have a Great One ffolkes,
Cheers, the Bear.[:)]

Bear, thanks for opening and you can send me that ferry since it will look good with all the Wabash Cars I have.

I have also been working on some other kits while building that hot coil car.

ExactRail PS 5344 Boxcar Kit, painted with Scalecoat II Boxcar Red and Floquil Platinum Mist (Roof). Car was then lettered with Oddballs Decals.

Intermountain Railway ACF 2980CF Covered Hopper Kit, substituted A-Line Sill Steps for the plastic kit sill steps. Painted with Scalecoat II MofW Gray Paint and lettered with Herald King Decals.

Intermountain Railway 50’ PS1 Boxcar Kit with Two Plug Doors, substituted A-Line Sill Steps for the cast plastic steps, painted with Scalecoat II Black and lettered with Herald King Decals.

Thanks for looking, and I can’t wait for the other contributions I know will be coming.

Rick J

Bear,

The public can rest easy when riding that ferry that the captain won’t jump ship at the first sign of trouble…he’s glued to the bridge[;)]

Love those cars, Rick.[:D]

More work on the Cascade Branch…Some new stockpens and a fuel dealer at Purgatory.

At Crater Lake, spring is in the air now that the grass has started to green up.

I decided to locate the fuel dealer’s tanks here outside the wye, where I’d origianlly planned a spot for it. It just looks better, less crowded.

Some railfans camped out at Crater Lake Junction to key an eye oin the action for a few days…

And Bear gets an incentive glider ride to encourage him to keep up the good wk at wk…[;)]

Now if he could just get a little more time off for modeling…

Over the past few weeks, I have been experimenting with various weathering techniques and materials. Here is an old Tyco/Mantua 40’ boxcar that my mom found at a flea market (I think she got 3 different cars for $5). I used rubbing alcohol to fade the paint, then used some black wash, acrylic paints and chalks to give it a “seasoned veteran” look. I also took a crack at re-numbering the car. I painted the doors a different color, wanted them to look they had been replaced recently. I changed out the wheels to metal and weathered the trucks and wheels with spray paint and chalks. It sits in a siding across from a cardstock building. The building is behind a chainlink fence that I scratch built, with springs from pens for barbed wire. The telephone pole is scratch built from wooden dowels, square toothpicks and glass beads.

Impressive work already!

I’m off skiing for the weekend, but I managed to get a pre-installation shot of one of my NJ International crossing gates in HO scale. I added a better activation wire by drilling a hole in the counterweight, and glued a styrene base to the metal model to make it easier to attach to the layout.

Good stuff from everyone again this week. A short iron ore train, with real iron ore.

ive been working (ballasting) more on the mine interchange tracks, the three up near the wall. and texturing between the int. tracks and the main lines.

since these pics ive ballasted the switches on the mine tracks to the mainline tracks.

also there are updated and more pics on my ghg lines f.b. page

later

g

Bear… I like the detail on the ferry’s pilot house.

Rick … More great looking freight cars from you.

Mike L. … Lots of interesting details on your layout. Campers. A glider.

PC99 … Your weathering of a box car looks great.

Mr.B … Good work on the crossing gate.

DJ … Ore trin looks good.

GGOOGLER … Good layou progres.

Below is a westbound train entering the bridge.

Thanks for starting things off again this week Bear. The ferry is coming along I see. A work of art in progress.

Rick, more great cars. You must have a huge layout.

Mike, like the glider and tow plane. Isn’t the tow line in the wrong place on the tug plane?

Grampy, great scene as usual.

Garry, Love the bridge and the scene.

Here are a couple from a recent op session, read running the trains, from the BRVRR:

My grandson, Nathan, running a couple of short freight trains on the BRVRR layout.

NYC #2030, an RS-32 at the head of the Grafton milk-run.

Keep the photos and ideas coming guys. Thanks to you WPF is always the best thread of the week.

Looks like you need to talk to LION about his new product.

… or talk to Lion about what happened to your tasty cows!

Another great start to the weekend I see! I do love this thread. Always inspires me…

I have been starting some more scenery and finishing laying the return loop at Milo Mills (Finally Decided what to call the area about 10 miniutes ago!).

This whole area is to the left of the hillside and bridge scene I had been completeing. In between is Keuka Creek.

73

Great work everyone!

Question: How do you make a 22 ton switcher?

Answer: Cut a 44 ton switcher in half!

I got this (used to be) 44 tonner for next to nothing on eBay because one motor was fried. This is the older version with twin motors in the trucks. I really only intended to harvest the working motor but I hung on to the shell anyhow. I also happened to have a few Tenshodo spud drives, also purchased for cheap on eBay, so I decided to put the shell, or at least half of the shell, and a spud together.

The original switcher shell style:

The 22 tonner in progress:

The side frame assembly is from an Intermountain F series (I think) so it is probably a little heavy duty for the job but, heck, it was a perfect fit!

I may expand the rear windows to allow the crew a better view, or not.

I’m guessing, but I’ll bet that the 44 tonner was a result of somebody sticking a pair of smaller switchers together, so I might be going backwards here. That’s nothing new!

Dave

Dave, buy a Cannon cab, and you can make another critter from the other hood half. [^o)]

George

Too late.

Its already been chopped up to harvest the engine access doors for an as yet unknown scratch build.

Dave

Bear, thanks for starting us off. I enjoy seeing all the great work on this thread and I look forward to it every week.

As for me, I just finished these scratch built dwarf signals. I’ll use them to indicate polarity on my reversing loops:

Garry,

Thanks. I have to confess that the train show was in-town last weekend. It had been on hiatus since 2010, but the fellows doing it apparently managed to get access to the mall again. Not quite the crowds as in the past, but the vendors seemed happy. I did my best. A glider. Tents. Another Dodge Powerwagon and a 41 Chevy pickup. And another 100 trees, although it’s kinda hard to tell since I quit counting when I passed 7,000 about a year ago.[(-D]

Wierdly enough, probably not. I did an image search and didn’t come up with much, considering the DHC Beaver is such a jack-of-all-trades. I finally found a non-image reference to towing gliders like that. Apparently something to do with balance on the tug, getting a decent view (most Beavers had overhead windows as an option), and the fact that gliders prefer to be above the tug when in tow. So I went with that, but it’s easy enough to change.

I then came across a pic of a Beaver that the Navy Test Pilot School uses to tow with. They have a basket like contraption that wraps around the tail cone, which makes a lot more sense to me, too. The two line is two pieces of phosphor bronze wire soldered together. It needs to be painted, so will try moving the tow line to the tailcone than. That may thrwo the nice balance off, so weill see how it goes.

Hah! It may be fresh in North Dakota, but it won’t be when it gets here. I do have to walk by the cat box on the way to the layout, so I do get a whiff of that every one in awhile. Quite enough effects of the real stuff for me.

But they do look pretty pristine for stockpens. I d

[#offtopic]

I see there are references that the US Navy Test Pilots School has/had (?) two U6A (DHC2 Beavers) that towed gliders, but I couldn’t find the picture you referred to Mike.
All the tow hooks I’ve seen are at the bottom rear of the fuselage, and while a rearward view would be handy for the tow pilot it is up to the glider pilot to keep station otherwise, at the extreme, he runs the risk on getting buttoned off by the tow pilot. This is similar to what I would expect to see…
http://www.airsafetynet.com/tost_1.jpg
In my experience I have enough trouble getting gliding club committees to look after their Piper Cub or Pawnee tow planes, let alone spend money on maintaining them. If they had to pay just for the avgas that a 450 hp P&W 985 drinks, there would be wailing, a gnashing of teeth, and sackcloth and ashes!!!

A yarn if I may. Some years ago when, as now, 150 – 180 hp tow planes were the norm, a 250 hp Pawnee tow plane dropped in, being unable to go further north due to weather. It was flown by a young “C

Bear!

Great yarn!

I had the great pleasure of being taken up in a glider when I was an Air Cadet in my youth. What made the flight interesting is that the glider pilot had just suffered a minor crash on his previous flight. Instead of tow planes a winch was being used to launch the gliders. What had happened was that the winch engine had stalled momentarily just as the glider had started to roll forward. The cable parachute got caught in the glider wheel with the result that when the winch resumed pulling the glider was pulled up from the bottom instead of from the lower nose. The glider acted like a kite as it was pulled up by the wheel. The pilot attempted to release the tow cable but because the chute was wound around the wheel the glider was still being pulled into the air. The glider then rotated nose down which looked really bad from the ground, but it actually allowed the chute to be pulled out of the wheel and the pilot actually managed a three point landing (nose skid, wheel and one wing tip) without doing any damage to the glider. A normal person would have called it a day, but the pilot happened to be a WWII fighter veteran (Free Polish Air Force no less) who had been shot down twice. No finicky winch engine was going to ground him so he immediately ordered the next glider into postion and told the next cadet to get in. That cadet was me! I got the ride of my life! The pilot put the glider through every manouver he could squeeze from it. I was both thrilled and scared out of my pants.

Sorry moderators - way off topic. My bad! [#offtopic]

Dave (Warrant Officer Second Class Retired - Royal Canadian Air Cadets)

Bear, Thanks for the start, wheel house is lookin’ good, “every little bit counts.”

Mike L., Always enjoy seeing the various and interesting aircraft in the skies over your layout. Is the Beaver 1/87th? How did you get the spinning prop effect?

Mock-up gravel road a la Joe Fugate sans the zip texture powders, experimenting is fun too.

Thank to all, regards, Peter