Weekend Photo Fun - March 9th to March 11th, 2018

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
1

Good morning from cold and snowy Northeast Ohio!

This is where the forum members can show completed models, work in progress and old pictures of their work to the other forum members.

Been working on a number of projects and I have managed to finish some!

This is one of a series of cars I am building to populate the grain cars for our club layout where we just built a large grain elevator that will need a number of cars in order to fulfill operations. Car is an MDC FMC 4700CF Covered Hopper kit, assembled and then painted with a mixture of Floquil Conrail Blue and Big Sky Blue, then lettered with Islington Station Products decals.

On another spur in the Grain Elevator area, I wangled a space for the Plastic Pellet Facility and adjoining factory, these are the tanks for handling the plastic pellets, I still have to finish all the piping and handrails before assembling on its base. I choose the multi-colored silos based on an article in and old MR.

Thanks for looking!

Rick Jesionowski

2

Rick,

.

Thank you for starting the greatest thread of the week… Weekend Photo Fun!

.

.

That car looks great. I don’t like to do a “series” of cars. That is why I chose to keep the home livery of the STRATTON AND GILLETTE simple. When I do a “series” of home road cars it dos not get boring.

.

I get creative on the guest cars.

.

I did finish another Tichy steel side USRA rebuild boxcar. I just love Tichy’s kits. The big “LOYALTY” slogan came from a decal for a tobacco advertisement. I like the way it looks on the car.

.

.

Keep the photos coming along. HAPPY WEEKEND!

.

-Kevin

.

3

Empties on the Lehigh Valley.

4

Rick and Kevin, those cars are cool.

Casey, excellent work as always

heres mine this week

My freelanced picked up another boxcar.

Ive got hoppers that need patched for it, and am waiting for the custom printed decals to arrive.

5

Plan on Spending some time in the train room this weekend

Here i am lookin for a short

6

Rick, … Thanks for starting the thread. Your plstic pellet silos are colorful. Nice covered hopper .

Kevin, … Evidently, you will never run out of short lines. Nice !

Casey, … I like your LV locomotive.

Jimmy, … Nice weathering of the box car

Terry (TX) … Looks like you are working hard.

…

Below, … Yesterday I operated a track cleaning special. In the photo it is about to enter a tunnel into my hidden tracks going to my staging tracks. It has 2 F3A’s, a Walthers track cleaning boxcar, a CMX car, a Centerline car, and a caboose.

7

Garry,

.

I appreciate the picture you posted with the double crossover in front of the tunnel portal.

.

My track plan calls for a similar placement of a double crossover, and I like the way it looks.

.

-Kevin

.

8

Interesting entries so far this week, always fun to explore the WPF thread.

I’ve been on and off due to other things but when “on” with trains have been progressing my IHC 4-6-2 conversion to DCC/sound with intended visual improvements. This one is about the challenge on the improvements side, plus hopes for a superlative (for HO) speaker squeezed into the tender.

Basis input on another thread, I’m in the midst of adding some Cal Scale loco fittings. A teriffic suggestion was to remove the cast on handrail, so I’m attempting that. I’m afraid this will look like a “first effort” but that’s an inevitable learning curve thing with me (ala rebuilding a carburetor). Maybe less noticeable when painted. (Or when viewed from the engineer’s side, which is better).

This today got me into “sanding sticks” (after cutting & filing). I ordered some yesterday but today decided to make some, using some stripwood & foam tape & fine (800) sandpaper. Works great, sorry I ordered any.

Anyhow, the fittings are on (the whistle to be removed during painting) except for the headlight and bracket to go near the top of the smokebox door. That is intended to be a 0603 LED with a MV Products headlight lens. Please cross your fingers for me on that part.

My better half is amused by how much time and effort is going into this project (a $50 loco, plus additions, which I do not compute) and I explain it’s all about the challenge, learning and fun. It would be much more economical (if my time was worth anything) to buy an incorrect BLI USRA Pacific unlettered and add UP decals.

So, here are initial before & during pics. There will be a delay on updates as next week is spring break; i.e., grandkids, the zoo and such.

[url=https://flic.kr/p/

9

ANOTHER weekend already!

Thanks for the snowy kick-off, Rick. Those pellet silos remind me of ones I saw in Solon on the old Erie-Lackawanna Cleveland branch. I think they were still getting cars in the Conrail days. I don’t know about recently, though. Neat stuff!

Ditto on the Tichy kits, Kevin. All his stuff is finely detailed and assembles beautifully. Great job!

Nice low-angle shot there, Casey. Those skies look threatening.

Great Stuff, too, Jimmy.

Terry, you need to photoshop some big sparks in the photo. The caption being “found it”!

That looks like the same cleaning train I run occasionally, Garry. I finally found some good, durable elastic bands for the Centerline car. They are made of thermoplastic urethane and hold up much better than ordinary rubber bands. It never fails that I’ll have to back up where I can’t reach the car and, of course, the Handi-Wipe unwinds off the roller [banghead]

https://tinyurl.com/yag3tm52

Adding details like yours is something I find very rewarding, Paul. I remember doing that to an old die-cast Tyco Pacific I had many, many Moons ago [:-^]

Any guesses what I worked on this week?

The two side-wall doors that Walthers provide do not open and I wanted a view to the interior.

RH_door_frame0 by Edmund, on Flickr

The door is supposed to sandwich between the inner and outer wall.

I made up a steel channel frame and placed some Tichy NBW details on them.

[url=https://flic.kr/p/24Yr2hh]RH_door_frame1

10

Thanks Ed I wish I had the space for a round house like yours

I did find the short so I spent some time adding marker lights to a couple of cabooses

I’ve ordered 2 keep alives to install with them

meantime I’ll just let them sit stationary on the layout

11

Not the best photo, but the first two buildings for my Pratt Street layout are finished. Smally’s is named after the boarding house on Gunsmoke, and Shuffleton’s Barber Shop is the name of a Norman Rockwell painting.

12

Excellent work from everybody! [tup]

My quest to transform the many locos I have to DCC, adding details, and lights, continues.

My latest project:

I started out with the frame, trucks, and a very basic body shell. This always ran great on DC, so a tested the motor, one more time to make sure, stalled at .70 amps, so I’m good to go.

I added the grabs, ladders, hoses, railings, window glass, lights, plow, cut levers, radiator grilles, exhaust, and on and on, including a crew!

The cab is not prototypical to the cab on the real CN 2521, but the only option was from Kaslo, and about an extra $40, including shipping.

Post on ! More pictures!

Mike.

13

A wide range of great projects going on!

Ed: That roundhouse is going to be spectacular.

No modeling for me this week,but experimented with “night” shots of #498. Still messing with different exposures,etc.(any tips or tricks you have would be appreciated) - but these are about the best so far:

Have a good weekend,everyone!

Mike

14

Gmpullman:

Thanks for the tip on the rubber bands. I ordered a package of black ones. I figured they might be easier to see.

15

I hope they work out OK for you, SouthPenn. It seems like more reviewers complained about the black ones breaking. Maybe it was a bad batch? The clear ones work fine for me and I toss it out when I change the roller cover.

Did you get the same size? The 2 mm x 30 mm fits perfectly.

Cheers! Ed

16

Outstanding stuff, everyone! I’ve been working on the Land Cruiser (long overdue front axle service + various PM and fixes), so along with more than the usual “I’m getting too old for this” moans and groans, no time for anything other than our monthly divisional meeting and ops session afterwards today. Still got about 6 hours in and finished a drafy of our divisional Welcome brochure. Not usually much of a Youtube fan, but along with certain RR hosts it’s a darn good thing when fixin’ trucks.

While taking a break this week, I’ve been sorting pics. Some may have been around the block before, but I take lots of fairly interesting pics while railfanning the layout that just sit in the bin. So I went through and started an album called “Classic” blah-blah-sumthin to stash the ones that have “legs” enough to be seen either for the first or maybe even a second. Here’s a handful…

At the Rockwood Mill before ballast became fashionable. That’s #1, a Jonan GE switcher, my first ever Ebay purchase - from Australia.

Down in Hesperus, a K-27 is earning its keep shuffling coal MT’s and loads from the May Day Mine.

Sightseeing above the snowsheds at Animas Forks.

17

Mike,

I always enjoy your narrow gage and dual gage shots.

Almost makes me want to model it [:o)]

18

GraniteRailroader,

Narrowgauge is pretty darn simple wth Blackstone around now, but lots of great kits still.

I’ll let you in on a little secret about dual gauge, though. It can be done, but operating dual gauge tends to irritate your nerves. The idler cars just aren’t heavy enough to work as well as you’d like. But the track looks great and trains of a single gauge run fine on it. It’s mixing the two sorts in trains that gets iffy, even though the prototype did it…

19

Mike L., your airplane shots are great! And Rick’s pellet silos, very cool! Here’s the silos I did for my plastic injection molding plant:

The tanks are PVC pipe, the piping from sprues, the railings scratch from wire, the ladders and cage from Walthers, the walkway between the tanks, from Plano.

Keep it up guys, more pics!

Mike.

20

Some great work here. The photos are inspiring.

NYC Niagara #6008 negotiates the curve at the east end of the BRVRR layout with a mail and express train in tow.

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