Weekend Photo Fun 7/14/16

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
1

Yeah, I know It’s 6:00PM EST US time Thursday night, but I haven’t had a chance to do these for awhile lol. Anyway, I did a little project entirely scratchbuilt this week- a PRR styled Coal trestle for my freelanced road. My story is, It is the last operating coal trestle in the USA in my road’s universe. I still am planning to do a wheeling and Lake Erie layout but, the switching freelanced will give me something to build and switch with- in an industrial park setting.

Next from me are a couple Wheeling and Lake Erie cars-I’m up to 15 hoppers now!

Next is to show off my custom printed decals to let me finish off my model of the Wheeling and Lake Erie extended side hopper 1923

“Coke Loading Only” The Plate C, and ACI tags were printed at home.

Finally, a shot of some self printed decals.

You’ve seen my works in progress, lets see what you got.

2

You HAVE been busy, Jimmy! Nice work, and scratchbuilding too! Excellent work on the decals! I’m no where near brave enough to attempt that. [bow]

Thanks for starting us off on another round of WPF!

I have a very good friend, co-w**ker and fellow modeler that recently gifted me with an outstanding Trix hot metal bottle car! Wow!

Trix has really made a fine model here. From what I can tell, they have not been available for a while.

I couldn’t wait to get her out of the box and get down to some hot and dirty work at the blast furnace.

Excellent details all 'round! and "pre-weathered, too. I like the “pointer” detail to indicate that the bottle is turned exactly upright.

I’ll certainly show my appreciation to this friend at every opportunity! [:D]

Now on to more of the Good Stuff!

Regards to all,

Ed

3

Jimmy, Nice work on the coal trestle.

Ed, that’s one awesome car - and a great and generous gift.

Got some pics this week after some lean weeks visually. Been staying busy, more notably hosting 16 operators over the days of OPSIG ops sessions in the “on the way” class, about two hours from the NMRA convention site in Indy. What a great bunch! They respected the layout, were a bunch of fun to be around, and helped me further sort out my operating schemes. The organizing committee even sent this nice, framed certificate over to memorialize the ocassion.

Well worth the effort, I’d encourage anyone who gets the chance to do this to give it a try. I haven’t talked with the other local host yet, my friend Rick S, but he had quite a crowd, too. Participants came from all over the US and as far away as Australia and Germany. And several noted they chose to visit because of following my postings and pics here on the various MR Forums.And there were a lot of nice things said about the layout, all very much appreciated. It was fun!

Here’s a couple of prototype pics taken today of the old P&EI Urbana yard a couple of blocks away of NS units laying over. First is 7120, a GP60 that has seen better days, enjoying its rest in the warm afternoon sun.

It was trailed by the 5108 and its weirdly patched numberboard.

Hard to see from this angle, 5108 is an ex-Southern GP38-2 with a high short hood. Don’t know why the odd font, other than that between 2012 and 2014 it looked like in other pics 5108 that the 8 got hit by a paintball or something; the upper half was as if it was whited-out, but didn’t look broke. By the 2014 pics, it was patched as here.

So, how about some model

4

Gidday All, another cold wet Friday evening, nothing like a good fire to keep warm.

Thanks for getting WPF under way Jimmy,keep this up and you’ll have to become an honourary Kiwi. [swg] Scratchbuilding and home grown decals, nice one!![tup]

That’s certainly a good friend you’ve got Ed, an impressive car too.

5

Good morning from suunny and hot Northeast Ohio!

Jimmy thanks for starting, nice work including making your own decals!

Ed, is that a US or European Prototype?

Mike, the NS GP60’s are some of my favorite engines, I wonder if the DT&I had survived, would they have purchased GP60’s or something else.

Bear, glad you rejoined the old club, working with the fellow club members sharpens your modeling skills.

Managed to finish some cars this week!

Front Range kit that replicates the Southern Railroads converted 50’ Boxcars so they could handle the new 45’ trailers coming out. The trailer is an old Durango Press kit I had completed years ago. Car was painted with Scalecoat II Boxcar Red and lettered with Mask Island Decals. (New set that we beggged Hubert to do so we had something else other than the NS decals I have for this car)

Robbins Rails 50’ PS1 Boxcar Kit, painted with Scalecoat II MofW Gray and lettered with Mask Island Decals. The CIRR later participated in the IPD car boom with some FMC 5347 which I will be doing in the future.

Now for an in progress shot!

Atlas RS1 that I am going to paint for the M&StL. The M&StL had a large steam era bell mounted on the front of their units, so I had to move the walkway over the radiator shutters and since Atlas had indented the existing shutters where the walkway was I filed down the shutters to the base and will scratch some shutters to the right of the new walkway position.

Thanks for looking!

Rick Jesionowski

6

Hi, Rick…

The best answer I can give you is—yes, no or maybe?

I’ve studied lots of steel mill equipment over the years and like so often happens, the car capacities grow as needs and technology increases.

I found this Pollock ad showing a few of their offerings:

You can see that top car is getting pretty close to the one Trix offered. Note, too, all of the Pollock licencees all over the World, hence the cars will almost always share a general appearance.

Below is a link to a photo of a car that looks very much like the Trix model at a U.S. mill (I don’t have the Wayner book it is from)

http://sbiii.com/rrpix/waynr59a.jpg

I plan to add additional weathering and I’m sure I could remove the personnel “sheds” at the car ends but I really don’t see an immediate need to. It looks “pretty close” just as it is. There seems to have been a great variety of “bottle” cars in service so it would be plausible to say one like this operated in the U.S. (at least Trix removed the buffers!)

Thanks for asking, Rick… Nice work, everybody!

Ed

7

It´s a German prototype car, as used in the former Krupp Steel plant at Duisburg Rheinhausen.

An N scale model is available from Minitrix.

8

I just finished rebuilding/rescuing this old Rivarossi Y6B Mallet. I got it on Ebay as a basket case and got it running finally and then repaired, built new details (front pilot platforms, steps and railings), added many missing parts and then repainted, decaled and weathered her. There are a lot of brass details and piping that were added by the previous owner which is what attracted me to it. I don’t know if I want to sell it now or keep it? I have 4 P2k and Bachmann articulated locos but this one just has the look! I even replace the tender wheels with ReBoxx ones; someone modified the drivers to reduce the flanges for code 83 track? It is a good runner now too!

-Bob

9

More work on the B-8a.

Plus running gear work on some other engines, they will technically be the same class but look rather different from each other. The valve gear still needs to be added to the piston valve engine.

10

Nice work everybody …

Ed … The Trix big hot metal bottle car is very impressive. … You might appreciate these photos. … My Walthers blast furnace with Walthers bottle cars and slag cars.

Also … Some 8 axle bottle cars at National Steel near Detroit.

11

Thanks for those photos, Garry and your information on the prototype, Ulrich!

Hot, Heavy & Dirty… that’s the way I like it!

(go to 3:50)

And here you see the nearly identical car at 0:27

Thanks, Fellas’

Ed

12

I don’t want to sound arrogant Rick but I think the Club is going to be on the plus side of this transaction; personally you guys here and on the other forum I participate in have certainly made sure my skills are sharpened.
Cheers, the Bear.[:)]

13

Lots of interesting stuff this week. Here’s a B&W of Geeps crossing Hammer Creek.

14

Jimmy, Thanks for the WPF start. Nice trestle, scratch building sure is fun and satisfying too.

As usual enjoying all the offerings and this week’s heavy metal freature.

Thanks to all and regards, Peter

15

Thank you all for the great pictures and videos! This thread is always fun to explore.

Mike L: 'Glad to hear your convention operating sessions went well,and hats off to you for taking that on!

Still landscaping what I’ve got so far(but the “river” is still just green paint).

498 emerges from tunnel #1(and only):

Winding it’s way through the canyon:

Pulling up to the water tank:

Have a good Weekend!

Mike

16

Great stuff this week everybody ! I went back to working on my OCS cars… in particular the track geometry car Georgia… adding working marker lights and such…

Also did a quick test of the marker light… short vid here.https://youtu.be/JABuzjCaaRo

17

A great start on WPF guys.

A little something from the BRVRR:

New York Central Niagara #6008 at the head of a short passenger train rounds the curve at the west end of the Black River Valley layout early Saturday morning.

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

18

Over last few years I had accumulated a few car kits for rainy days. Six of them were Accurail kits on which I wanted to paint the brake wheel and staff. As I didn’t want to paint them one at a time, I opened all boxes to make a batch painting. The boxes being open and the brake wheels and staffs being painted, I considered building them in a batch. Two hours later I had six new cars to put in service.

Accurail kits are simple to put together. But, with metal wheels and Kadee couplers, the are reliable cars that are as nice as some RTR cars, to my eyes anyway.

19

What I Did on My Vacation:

Crews running trains on the Operations Road Show layout at the 2016 NMRA National Convention

Several crews and docents running trains on the ORS layout.

Worked with several friends and a number of volunteers from across the country to bring the Operations Road Show layout to the 2016 NMRA National Convention and hold twelve operating sessions teaching our interpretation of timetable and train order operations.

Some stats off the top of my head:

  • Five hours to drive from our home base to Indy.
  • Twelve hours to unload the layout, set it up and get to the point where we could run a train around it.
  • 36 hours of operating sessions during the Convention, broken down as three, three-hour sessions per day, Monday through Thursday. We offered and were able to fill 144 operating slots.
  • Seven hours to tear down the layout and pack the trailers for the trip home.

An exhausting week, but there was a lot of fun from all of that work.

20

Nice pics guys and gals.

I have never posted here, but, here are a few project pics…

First, a old EL Gondola that I have started weathering…

EL Gon

Now, it has just a base coat, so not yet finished. It will be faded further, and then have some more grime, as it will represent a gon nearing the end of its service life. Trucks will be changed out, for ones with roller bearings, then they will also be weathered.

Next, a open hopper, also EL paint, that I finished assembly on recently, but have not done any weathering to the body…

EL Hopper

I have done a base coat on the trucks, but still need to highlight the bearing caps, and then do a black wash to tone it down, and wheelsets need done yet. This car will also be very heavily faded, and receive quite a bit of “coal dust” to weather it further, as it is also near the end of its service life (without being rebuilt).

I also have a couple other car kits in progress, but no more pics as they are all still parts and pieces…

Yes, I know, I am seriously opening myself up to some critiquing, but that’s okay.

One final pic, is of a prototype, Buffalo & Pittsburgh unit 2002, recently taken in NWPA…

B&P 2002

Yes, it is getting quite weathered! [(-D]