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Project Builds, Detailing, Painting, Weathering

From the Workbench (for everyone to contribute):


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Ah yes, another hardy soul completes a Gary Wright caboose kit :) and does a hell of a nice job on it too. I built one of the ACL M5 kits which I understand was his first caboose kit. It was quite a vocabulary builder...but having said that his kits have improved quite a bit since then. I wouldn't hesitate to buy one if it fit my prototype - I've got a couple of his B&O M53 wagontop cars to build, a Penn Central transfer caboose too.

 

This is my build of his PRR X29D boxcar

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And his low side gondola, a peculiarly southeastern prototype

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Gotta learn to weather one of these days...

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Thank you all for the kind words.

 

Craig- that low side gon is very tasty! I was tempted with the SAL, but original NS is also one of my favorite flavors!

 

The weathering took about an hour. The trucks were weathered with Testors enamels and then dry brushed with Tamiya acrylics. I prefer enamel on the plated wheels, it covers much better than acrylics. The cab was airbrushed with more Tamiya, NATO black for the roof and one of the tans for the 'mud'. The trucks received a misting of the mud too to help blend them with the body. I do like the Tamiya colors, they smell nice, and dry very flat, the later being an excellent quality for dirt...

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I have renamed this topic "From the Workbench:" and "pinned" it. Please include any specific modelling projects you wish to share, this is more for individual items you have built/or are building rather than whole layouts.........

 

Best, Pete.

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Thank you all for the kind words.

 

Craig- that low side gon is very tasty! I was tempted with the SAL, but original NS is also one of my favorite flavors!

 

The weathering took about an hour. The trucks were weathered with Testors enamels and then dry brushed with Tamiya acrylics. I prefer enamel on the plated wheels, it covers much better than acrylics. The cab was airbrushed with more Tamiya, NATO black for the roof and one of the tans for the 'mud'. The trucks received a misting of the mud too to help blend them with the body. I do like the Tamiya colors, they smell nice, and dry very flat, the later being an excellent quality for dirt...

 

Funny comment about the odour of the Tamiya paints...they are fairly pleasant. Their liquid cement isn't bad smelling either. Plastruct cement for ABS positively reeks (been told it's got chloroform in it for gluing ABS).

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Funny comment about the odour of the Tamiya paints...they are fairly pleasant. Their liquid cement isn't bad smelling either. Plastruct cement for ABS positively reeks (been told it's got chloroform in it for gluing ABS).

 

My significant other abhors the smell of some of the five minute epoxies, I can only imagine Scalecoat in her stove.

 

I've always heard that Japanese residencies tend to run on the small side; I can imagine having your paint and glue 'spouse friendly' would be a selling point!

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OK you guys. Time to start posting some of YOUR work.

 

I finished up this car yesterday, modeled on the half dozen cars of this type owned by the New York, New Haven & Hartford RR. The basic recipe:

 

Two Kadee 50' PS-1 cars (cushion underframe from one, body from another); half height Kadee ladders added to corners (replaced grabs); Kadee crossover platforms and crossover grabs added; lower door track shaved off and replaced with track built from styrene strip; 9' plug doors from Down East Models. The door gussets were scratchbuilt from 0.005" styrene and Archer rivet decals. Painted with Scalecoat II New Haven orange paint and Scalecoat II black; decals from Highball Graphics set #F-140. I've been unable to determine if the running board (roofwalk) was orange or black so I left it orange. Boy it needs some weathering :)

 

Era - cars built new in January 1965; I worked from a photo taken in 1977. By then it had been stenciled with a lube plate (the black and white square or squares on the right, also known as a COTS plate) and reweighed, but I modeled the car pretty much as built except for the ACI label on the car.

 

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That New Haven car is tasty!

 

This weekend's workbench item is a cheapy. An $15 Athearn 65' mill gondola in Southern colors. It was quickly distressed and weathered using enamels and cotton buds. A load was then added using some LGB plastic pipe and Evergreen strips.

 

The restraining timber is Evergreen HO scale 2x6" and 6x6" strip, that was sloppily colored using two shades of beige, then cut to length. The timber layout matches what would be required by the 1960 Association of American Railroads, Rules Governing the Loading of Commodities on Open Top Cars. Section 3, Steel Products Including Pipe, calls out this configuration for wrought iron and steel pipe, over 60 inches in diameter. They don't show diagrams for steel pipe between 32 and 60 inches, as luck would have it, the pipe on hand was 48", so I was conservative and used the design for 60" pipe. I left the chocks off, you would hardly be able to see them anyway, and as it is, they are 90 bits of timber restraining the load. The pipe bands should be 2" wide, the micro stripe I used is 0.030" wide, or a scale 2.6" wide.

 

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Well, there's nothing that says here they have to be finished projects... I've been doing a bit of work on my latest locos.. They aren't finished yet (quite obviously!!) but I've had a marathon "paint'n'decals" session today so was feeling a bit pleased with myself...

 

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The long body is an SD39 (actually a Kato SD40 bodged to look a bit like an SD39), the switchers are Athearn SW1500's.

 

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Spot the differences... #37 has an air-conditioner on the cab and an amber warning beacon, and the horn is located slightly differently to #38. They also will have slightly different spark arrestors on the exhausts.

 

I would've taken the pics on my workbench, but....

 

Er, ummm.... yeah - my workbench.... :scratchhead:

 

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It's under there somewhere...... :O

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... a very nice job on the PGR locos - are you doing cars to match, as in the videos?

I hope to; I have an Ex-Amtrak Exress Boxcar waiting (which is what some of their cars are) but I need to source decals, which is why I was asking in Dr Gerbil-Fritter's G Scale thread about them. These decals are Highball Graphics, and a bit expensive to import just for the diamonds...

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Spot the differences... #37 has an air-conditioner on the cab and an amber warning beacon, and the horn is located slightly differently to #38. They also will have slightly different spark arrestors on the exhausts.

 

I would've taken the pics on my workbench, but....

 

The SW-1500s really look the part! I can certainly understand the frustration with deciding what the tops of those spark arrestors look like, we are waiting for you to finish before we post the roof shots! :winkclear:

 

Hey a neat workbench trick when it comes time to take your photos-

 

Have a couple of pieces of form core board handy, I have a pair of 20x30" pieces in charcoal grey. Then clear four spots, and place four soup cans or something similar on the four cleared spots. Place one foam core horizontally on the four cans; all the crap on the workbench can stay underneath! Put the second foam core in the back vertically, it doesn't matter if it is at an angle because it is sitting on stuff, since you don't see the edges. Take your photos, with all the crap hidden underneath. I also have extra chain on the fluorescent ballast overhead, I can lower it when I take photos, takes about 30 seconds re position...

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The SW-1500s really look the part! I can certainly understand the frustration with deciding what the tops of those spark arrestors look like, we are waiting for you to finish before we post the roof shots! :winkclear:

Thanks, mate!!! :)

 

I really set out trying not to get too anal about these locos - they were meant to be a bit of a diversion from O Scale super-detail, and the intended layout for them is meant to be more about having fun actually running trains :locomotive: rather than a grinding pursuit of realism... then I go and start worrying about things like spark arrestors..... :O :stinker: :nono:

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Since F-Unit opened the door to unfinished projects, I thought I'd share where most of this week's work went.

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This is a Funaro & Camerlengo resin kit for a pair of Maine Central's low-side gondolas. I came across it in a model shop in Falmouth, ME. It's been out of production for some time. The underframe is fairly good although quite fragile, while the castings for the bodywork are not as sharp as plastic parts would be or, for that matter, current resin. Nonetheless it's not a bad kit and F&C deserve credit for casting the underframe the way they did as it allows for a piece of lead sheet to be hidden under the flooring to give the car some weight when running empty. The kit included Tichy Trains brake components and decals.

MEC bought 150 of these cars (MEC 17000-17149) from Bethlehem Steel in 1939. They handled coal to locations that couldn't receive hoppers, limerock, sand, gravel and so on. In the 60s a lot of them were converted into pulpwood racks by having the sides cut down and sloping bulkheads added. They also found their way into the MOW pool where their low sides came in handy.

The batch was still intact in the 1954 ORER, by 1977 just 17 remained, although their converted cohorts were an everyday sight on the MEC.

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Hi all,

Great projects guys, as I've finally got some spare time ( and cash ), I thought I'd show you what I've got planned for the winter months. I've got a whole batch of Athearn BB models that need modernising. First up is what will be the base for my detailing and modifying demo for TVNAM next year. I'll be hopefully detailing this build in a seperate thread but thought this would make a good introduction to the project.

 

The main project is to produce a Norfolk Southern GP38-3 from a GP50 just like NS have done with their ex SOU HighHood GP50s.

 

The 1:1 modifications are as follows:

- Fully replace the nose and cab ( a full size cannon kit ??? )

- Downrate the engine ( A 645F becomes and 645E )

- Add an aircon unit to the cab roof

- Removed the middle radiator fan

- They replaced the turbo with blowers

- Aux unit installed

- They also changed the units to Short hood forward ( althought this doesn't always seems to be the case )

 

The following link shows an image of 5815 rebuilt at Altoona in 2005 so they have been around for a while although the -3 rebuild project is still ongoing today. http://www.rrpicture....aspx?id=158557

 

The following image is the Athearn GP50 I'm using as my starting process. Its the old Santa Fe version stripped down. The model is in pretty good condition and the motor strangely runs quite well(??). I've added some of the to do items to the image ( readable if opened fully )

 

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There's plenty to do and it should keep me busy for a while. I'm hoping that there will be parts of this challenge that I can scratchbuild rather than just adding cannon/details west/associates etc parts. I've read Tony Sissons SD50 thread numerous times now and that has given me plenty of ideas as to what can be done and what really needs to be bought.

 

Dave

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Here are a few of my motive power projects (they are N-scale, so the camera can be a bit cruel):

 

1. An A-B set of ER Baldwin Sharks, repainted NYC (they were cheap), with MT couplers, trainphone antenna, and new horn cluster. PRR DGLE (dark green locomotive enamel aka brunswick green) with 5 stripes. The Sharks were the only PRR freight locos that got the 5-stripe scheme.

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2. One of PRR's two SD7s, a repainted Atlas model.

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3. A stock LifeLike C-Liner with trainphone antenna added.

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4. A stock Atlas GP9 with trainphone antenna added.

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5. A ConCor PA-1, bought as an undecorated model and painted in the second scheme - 5-stripe tuscan with small number boards (originally they were in 5-stripe DGLE similar to the Sharks above). There is a matching B-unit. I have another set that is going to be in the original scheme.

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6. And for something a bit newer, an Atlas SD60M as a Norfolk Southern loco (patch with new numbers done with decals on the original Conrail scheme.

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Note that all of these locos have had DCC and MT couplers added as well.

 

Adrian

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Spent this afternoon having a bash at a Norfolk Southern grain hopper by Athearn. I've tried to use prototypical photos as a basis to my effort. I feel upon this photo http://www.railcarphotos.com/PhotoDetails.php?PhotoID=6452 & felt it gave a good base to work from.

 

I decided to fade the whole body so i mixed up a very very fine wash of white & airbrushed it over the body to give it a faded look.

 

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After i had done this i used a mix of indian ink & rubbing alcohol to make a very fine wash to run over the body & give the various parts of the body a layer of grime & tone down things.

 

When i weathered a loco exhaust i used sponges & dabbed the paint on to give a textured effect & i thought i would do this again on the bays to create a textured effect. As they say trial & error this time it was an error & luckily i managed to get the paint off.

 

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Hopefully when i come to do the bays i can get a better result than the first time round & think i might airbrush some grime on along with the trucks. I'm going to add the odd rust patch here & there along with some rust stains but until i get some more rubber gloves from work that will have to wait.

 

I've put the model next to a fresh out of the box so hopefully it shows the difference between them both.

 

Simon

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Got chance to do a bit of modelling (as opposed to planning modular stuff!) this last week, not a big project, certainly no contest winner, but a quick-n-dirty freightcar upgrade.

 

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This was an old E&C shops greenville gon kit I picked up at the NMRA convention for (IIRC) less than a fiver, the real cars of the same number MP643xxx seem very similar to the kit, at least at the sides, so I decided to leave the factory paint alone except for removing a wheel dot. The real cars seem to have been delivered circa 1980-ish and still seem to be kicking around in their original mopac paint which is nice.

 

I decided the side grabs on their flat panels looked rather two dimensional, so I replaced those (the replacements are a little wonky, but i'm not sure that's unrealistic on an old gon!) - it got Kadee 36" wheelsets instead of the plastic ones it came with, I found an old plaster (ten commandments?) gon load which fitted it with a bit of tweaking (these have smooth insides and after seeing the nice Exactrail ones with the corrugations visible inside I thought the insides needed hiding!) - the factory paint was weathered largely by brushing and wiping with Railmatch acrylic frame dirt....

 

Alpha has been recovered from the loft where it went to avoid some decorating work, so a quick pose in on the Calumet Salvage spur for posterity...the pile of scrap bales there has just arrived from Walthers and I need to decide whether to leave it in 'aluminum' or paint the bales as if they were all different crushed cars...hmmm!

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Having (finally!) got chance for a bit of modelling.....it's 'only' kit-building but will hopefully end up weathered and perhaps, slightly 'battered!

It's also 0 scale - just to be different!

Tank body and trucks assembled and all those tiny holes drilled! Now, to fit the details and put it all together.

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Cheers,

John E.

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