Well, something I did not want to see on my workbench. Got an Atlas SD7 I had been seeking, from their 2003 releases, off that auction site. Supposed to look and run great. Ha ha ha. The walkway is warped. It has different couplers on each end, one being M/T, and broken. And as for running, it glitches along and makes a nice screeching noise. So, it appears that I have some work ahead.
Good morning to Y'all, Fairbanks-Morse H12-44's Starting point: SP on the right - AT&SF on the left And - ready for decals: Thanks, Wolf
Those are coming along nicely Wolf. Looking forward to seeing how they turn out. Some cool looking vehicle projects going on the the background there as well.
Nice! Are those the Wheels of Time shells? I've got my fingers crossed for another run, they look gorgeous.
Thank you, And, they sure are. I am very impressed with them. Holy cow -- I got my left and right back wards -- SP on the left and AT&SF on the right (That'll teach me to type before having my coffee) Best regards, Wolf
I finally finished painting all of the small detail parts on my Woodland Scenics Sonny's Super Service. It was a fun build now to create a single t-trak module for for its home.
Your 'attention to detail' skills are excellent. Particularly the leaning oxygen tank.......excellent!
Coming home for the holidays means I get to do two things: eat until I no longer fit into even my stretchiest pants, and run and oil my locomotive roster. Even after a couple years of neglect all of them run except for one poor Tunnel Motor with a cracked U-joint. But in my spare time between food comas I'm making sure everyone gets a few drops of new oil and a good wheel-cleaning.
Tonight was a workbench night for me. It started off with testing a friend's Kato SD40-2 that he just picked up off eBay and... it was not a happy locomotive. At first it just picked up the front truck and it looked like it was trying to torque itself in half. I had to actually reverse the throttle a bit to get the twist to release itself. I found a piece of plastic in the gears of the front truck cleaned that up and tried again... it made a squealing like a stuck pig and upon further investigation found 2 of the small gears missing a tooth each (source of the plastic stuck in the main gear) and the motor smells really bad. Oiling the bearings didn't help either. I removed the 2 gears so the train could operate until we get new gears, but it was not smooth like a Kato should be and the more it ran the more we could smell the motor. We are going to chalk this one up to "sold because it didn't work" I can fix it, we just need parts. Sorry no pics of this engine but its a FURX custom paint that is absolutely flawless and looks factory. Next up is my Kato RDC family. I have 4 of these and they were all either bad running or not running at all. Some wheel cleaning and 2 were running perfectly. WIN. The other 2 were from a set and were DOA when I got them. I took them apart and the same issue was on both RDCs and that was the motor clip was no longer doing it's job. I re-routed the motor tabs to go below the interior piece which gives them a much better connection to the pickup bar. I don't intend to put decoders in these they will remain DC so this works well. Next up was this beauty. It's an imported model that I took from some tweaker girl that didn't know what she had. They were falling apart and I used that to get a better price on it. I have never been able to find out much about the model itself, but it's old, and the box shows. There is no interior and this is actually a pretty primitive model for Kato. The outside looks great but barren interior. This one again had a motor clip that wasn't pushing down on the motor tabs enough and it wouldn't run well. I made a couple of "shims" out of some paper and shoved them between the clip and tab, cleaned the wheels and now it runs perfectly as a Kato should. Here's the box for the old Kato train, if anyone knows something about this model please let me know.
Tonight’s workbench project was making a carry case for my throttles. And not just a carry case, but one with “shadows” to alert me if one isn’t put away. This was a fun and easy project. Carry case that works with my roller boxes. Inside the case. And the “shadows” when the throttles are removed.
Just completed a 4" scene extension. Since the track is fairly close to the front of the module this will add some depth when taking photo's. Now if I could just improve my depth of focus with my phone.
Did some decaling. Loosing my touch at putting them on straight. At least they looked straight when I put them on And the red steeple cab got some paint chips when assembling it. Thinking about getting some good spray primer and starting over on it.
Nice use of contrasting colored foam to make empty holes visually obvious! And clear lids so you can see even when the cases are closed.
