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Project Builds, Detailing, Painting, Weathering

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Thank you Jon, lovely set of details there. I'm building a smaller 3 tower cement silo and your images are a good guide to the gubbins on the top of these silos. I have plenty of images of below but getting above the tower I need a helicopter. :O Really appreciate it.

 

Cheers, Tony

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The right foreground in that last shot will have a building in it. (The Genset is standing half over a road crossing the line). Based on Walthers Glover hardware, the idea is for it to be a "Bobby Wasabi" martial arts dojo (For those of you without small children and the Disney channel, the Bobby Wasabi chain is featured in the TV series "Kickin' It", which my karate mad son loves.)

 

However, despite searching Walthers catalogue and t'internet, I cannot find 1/87 scale martial artists of any sort. Does anyone have any suggestions? I've managed to download a photo of the dojo in the series, but my picture editing skills and equipment are sadly lacking, so we may have to hand paint the store name. :O

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I hope not!

 

I'm afraid the shunty plank looks like it received a missile hit.

 

I got fed up with the intermittent electrical problems and stripped out the points and front road to redo. (Wish I'd decided to do so before I plastered it in!)

 

I've decided that the Exactoscale joint bars (fishplates for the right side folks) don't offer sufficently robust electrical or mechanical connections on their own - they look great, but even a slight amount of movement or interference (paint, plaster, etc) causes them to lose electrical contact. I've replaced them all with bog standard Peco rail joiners. Whilst I was in destructive mood, having lifted the points I soldered jumpers from the stock rails to the centre rails to "jump" the moving blades.

 

So far, this looks to have made all the difference. A case where a little compromise on prototype fidelity makes a world of difference to operational enjoyment. I will use cosmetic joint bars instead.

 

However, the destruction has highlighted two new problems.

 

First, having lifted track its obvious the first layer of plaster yesterday was not fully dry before I added the second this morning. Hopefully it will dry out - I'm loath to introduce artificial heat for fear of warping the main board or the balsa infill in the lumber yard.

 

Secondly, the track feed was (lazily,) Atlas rail joiners with pre-soldered wires (it was meant to be easy). Unfortunately these are a very lose fit on Peco code 83 rail, which is of skinnier profile than Atlas track. I guess tomorrow I'll be soldering new feed wires.

 

Then I need to repair the plaster infill and finish carving out the flange clearance before I get back to the Dojo and the lumber yard.

 

I need to decide whether to add a small office (something like the BLMA yard office, or a Walthers equivalent) to the right hand end of the lumber yard, at right angles to the track, or another small lumber storage shed, assuming the office to be offsite. Opinions welcome. I would scratchbuild an office if I could find reasonable drawings - I have half a memory that a BN yard office was in Model Railroader a few years back - can anyone else remember?

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Having got thoroughly sidetracked into 1910s PRR, a vid of my latest project, a 1960s GEM Olympia PRR F3c running on my yard (of track, might be a metre I spose!)

http://flic.kr/p/aSvwuz

A few challenges here, however it does run better than it looks, the video itself seems to be jerky. The front pilot/cowcatcher is bent downwards, I'm not sure whether it needs rebending back or the casting unsoldering and moving.

From what I can see the proportions and detailing look pretty accurate. My main reservations involve the chassis, particularly the motor location and drive, I feel that this could be far better hidden in the boiler and firebox. The piston and slide rods are also a bit basic, can you get scale etched replacements of this kind of thing like you can in the UK?

I'm also not sure how to paint it, the cab enterior especially. It looks like it has some sort of varnish on it which will probably need stripping.

All in all I'm pretty pleased with it, but look forward to getting past that first step of modding a shiny brass loco!

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Recently been working on this.

 

post-8090-0-51827100-1323987802_thumb.png

 

You can see where I started on my blog.

 

http://no-two-alike....737-series.html

That looks very smart.

Back in the days when I volunteered at the local trolley museum, one of the more exciting cars to operate was North Shore 709. You needed to be careful how you accelerated because the current draw could be too much for the substation, and we very seldom used the rotary converter by the 80s. It was also a challenge because it was not a straight-air car, which meant braking techniques were very different. Finally, ISTR it was fitted with retrievers rather than catchers so you needed to be a bit more careful when changing ends, you didn't want to let go of the rope.

My best memory of the car was a night trip on the last day of the season, I think I'd played Santa or done something to draw the honour of the final trip of the year. I don't suppose I was really going that fast, but in the dark it seemed pretty quick.

Sadly the car's motors were damaged in one of the periodic floods the museum suffered. Removing the truck would have required jacking a very heavy car quite a long way up in the air, and while we did some daft things, we weren't quite that stupid.

Night operations were a challenge and not for the careless: portable headlights were used that drew 600v and grounded through the bracket they hung on. You needed to remember: switch off, unplug and only then lift the light off the bracket to change ends. Get that sequence wrong and you would be shocked at the outcome.

Thanks for the memories your model brought, surely one of the reasons we do it?

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  • 2 weeks later...

A most recent model - an Exactrail Magor covered hopper. The prototype cars were aluminium; the color I used was actually called 'steel'...go figure. Decals are mostly Microscale save for the two caution labels that a friend had made. The "D" looks to be sitting a bit wonky but the lettering style is something unique as even the prototype cars always looked unevenly lettered to my eye...

SAL%2035078small.jpg

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And here is a link today's progress report:

 

http://no-two-alike..../Burnham%20Yard

 

Should be finished laying track by Monday evening.

That's not fair - You HAVE to tell us more about those crossings!!! Are they adapted RTR track, scratchbuilt, or what?

Ever since I posted here on page 1 that to me what stood out as typically a "USA" trackplan was 90deg crossings, I've been trying to work out how to incorporate one in a layout, albeit on quite a narrow board.

The "Menasha" guys have done it (by using a diamond crossing), and I've seen layouts with it done as a 'dummy' on Northpoint's "Northpoint", and of course it gets done on kickback spurs no end of times, but a functional 90deg (or thereabouts) crossing where one Railroad crosses another... can it be done on managable baseboards..??

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Yes, I think you can.

There is a type of turnout that can be seen in Brooklyn (street running) and other urban areas where in order to go, say, off to the right between two buildings the turnout first switches the train to the left whereon the track balloons out to the left and then curves back in to cross the line it just left off to the right (er, I know it sounds confusing and I think Jack my have some examples in one of his plans and maybe a photo of a protoype....). I'm not sure whether it could be done with a 90 degree crossing but pretty close.

 

We may have discussed this before....when talking of an "F" shaped layout, rather than an "L" with the shorter spur of the "F" going down between buildings as in an alleyway.

 

Best, Pete.

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Go to Carls site and put <serendipity> (no brackets) into the search box and there are links to a plan by him and a "Plywood Pacific" version by me! - there has been a recent link on here to a line (in Chicago?) that does exactly that - I think it was the one about the shiny BNSF loco - if you follow the links through the Youtube you can follow a loco across a crossing and down an alley via a go left to go right move - don't have time to go hunt a link.

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