Your models are beautiful. Are the bi-levels we see on the video that same ones in service in the '60s and '70s? I know that many of the C&NW bi-levels I remember from my youth are gone, but I hadn't given much thought to the fate of the MILW's cars. With the video being shot at Gray's Lake, I remember hearing the Gray's Lake Turn on my radio scanner in the 1970s. I think it was a Soo train, but I'm no longer sure. With it being so flat there, I could pick up radio transmissions from 40 miles away. With the crossing of the CN (Soo) and the CP (MILW) there, I'll bet Gray's Lake remains a cool spot to railfan.
I'd love to see you put together either pictures/text or a video on re-painting a loco and also your weathering techniques. Love what you are doing and looking for similar results. The level of the weathering on the hopper is something I'd like to work towards. Sumner
Thank you. I think they are the same ones, some repainted Pullmans and some Budds. It’s someone else’s video so I’m not sure. I joined the Army in 2002 and my family all moved away about 2012, so I haven’t been to Grayslake since about then. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Thanks! I’m only posting photos of my “better/best” examples. There are plenty that aren’t as good. But when the train is rolling it’s harder to see those, haha. I’ll see if I can put together some kind of thing on my methods in the near future. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Monday, 25 July 2022 So the GBW and FRVR heritage units are complete, but in my excitement to show them off I took them to my office. Without taking any photos. They’re on display on my diorama for the next week or so. Still no decals for the AC unit, so it’s not done yet. However, I did finish 16x 100 ton Greenville hoppers. Some are lettered for Vulcan Materials, some for WC, and some for Helm Pacific. Unfortunately, I screwed up a couple of Vulcan Materials decals-so I decided to just letter them for WC as well. Most are Atlas, but 3 of the WC are Walthers I found on eBay. They’ll haul aggregate loads to Vulcan Materials, which has an unloading facility in Lake Villa, IL (if my map recon is correct) one day when I have a larger layout. I’m debating getting a few more of these because it was fun (although pretty time consuming) doing these. I think I’ll get loads (Hay Bros probably) for half of them so I can do operations (again-someday when I have that big layout) Exteriors: -HPJX hoppers-I just used gray and tan Mr Hobby weathering pastel powders. -Other black hoppers-removed lettering for Southern then faded with white paint and my airbrush. I some were already lettered for Vulcan, others I lettered for Vulcan and WC. Then did the same thing I did on HPJX. - gray WC hoppers I applied different shades of Tamiya browns (red brown, brown, hull red) with a sponge in different patterns. Then Mr Hobby weathering pastel powders-I used more browns, sand tan, and black on these and less than the grays. Anything that didn’t already have reflective stripes got them. All undercarriage and trucks, airbrushed a orange/red/brown mix of Mr Hobby paints. Then flat coat. Then a Random mix of Mr Hobby weathering pastel powders. Sealed with flat coat. All wheelsets-they’re plastic. I dabbed some Tamiya “Hull Red” on them, mounted them back in the trucks before I added the weathering pastel powders/sealed to the trucks as above. All interiors-silver leaf rattle can, followed by washes of Mr Hobby Weathering Color Stain Brown, followed by Mr Hobby Weathering Color Rust, followed by a mostly gray mix of Mr Hobby weathering pastel powders. Sealed with a flat coat between each step. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Wednesday, 3 August 2022. Still no decals for the Algoma Central heritage unit and I’m still displaying the GBW and FRVR units at work so no photos of those yet. Over the last couple of weeks I chipped away at a few things and I finished a bunch of them this weekend. First up-I weathered a few locomotives-2x CEFX SD40-2s by Intermountain, 1x WC GP40 by Atlas and 1x WC F45 by Athearn. The latter pulls like a beast. All this power has to pull something right? So I started some flat cars with bi level coaches on top-on their way to final assembly and delivery to Metra. When I’m finished I’ll have a total of five of these. I’m still waiting on some decals and two flat cars to finish the five car set. I bought this off a TB member recently and it was sitting on the workbench for a bit awaiting weathering. I used a Mr Hobby white weathering wash instead of an airbrush to fade it, Mr Hobby stain brown along the bottom and trucks, and topped it all off with a mix of some weathering powders-mostly brown and tan, with a little rust thrown in. I put together a couple of loads out of Evergreen styrene for some factory weathered flat cars. I installed microtrains decking in my 6x bulkhead flats. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
3 August-continued. I’ve also been up to some shenanigans on the Metra front. In addition to starting the coaches on a flat car I posted above I also: renumbered an F40 into METX 147, an OLS unit and replaced the decoder with a TCS K5D7 to get the red marker lights to work in reverse -finished repainting my 3rd Metra bicycle car. I’ve got leftover decals and I so I just “had” to go out and order 2 more Pullmans by Kato to use them up. I’ll need to run out to the Kato mothership in Tokyo later to pick up lights and decoders. It takes an hour to get to the store, but it’s okay because it means train rides and they are cheaper than ordering them from retailers in the US. -started repainting an F40 into METX 100, when it received the wrap with the old Sky Blue RTA color scheme. I’ll post that build when I’m finished later this week. As of now it’s been painted and the all the decals are on the shell. I weathered the trucks but I haven’t weathered the shell or reinstalled the glazing and light pipes yet. I’ve really enjoyed customizing these Kato F40s so I picked up 2 more, with TCS decoders already installed, on eBay for $76 each. Heck, just buying two decoders with shipping would have set me back that much. They arrived today, and are in good enough shape for my purposes. I’m going to renumber one of them when the decals from Circus City get here. The other will get kitbashed into METX 211, the CB&Q heritage unit. I’ve got a shell from Shapeways and decals from Fusion Scale on the way. Then the only Metra heritage locomotives I’m missing will be #90, the CNW unit, (I have preordered this already-just waiting on Athearn) and #104, the City of Chicago unit-the prototype was just unveiled this spring, so nobody has made a model of it. However, it’s an F40, so I’m cautiously optimistic that Kato will produce it as part of a special issue set since they already have the model in the blue/orange and~2018 paint scheme. They did the same with Metra’s MILW, RI, and State of Illinois heritage units-I assume because they already had the MP36 in the ~2018 Metra and VRE paint schemes. If Kato releases it in the future as a special issue set it will probably come with 3 coaches in unique new road numbers, which is what each of the other Metra special issue sets came out with. And I’m a sucker for no duplicated road numbers on my coaches. If I wait a couple of years and Kato let’s me down, I know Fusion Scale has a decal set for #104 so I could go that route. But some of those decals will be very hard to see and place on the model, so I’d prefer a RTR model. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
I found myself I wondering what the interior layout of the bicycle cars looks like. When you enter a classic-era bi-level, you have to climb steps and there are handrails positioned in the center area as well. I then found this photo on the Internet that confirmed my old memories. I can't picture carrying a bicycle up and around all of that, but I'm sure youthful and fit riders have it all down. Carving out floor space for storage would be the easy part. It's a great idea and your cars look great.
I’ve been so focused on the exterior paint jobs that I didn’t even think about the inner configuration. So I looked it up as well. Looks like the entire lower level is racks for 16 bikes. I’ve been putting passengers in there, like I do with all my others…not even thinking about it. It’s hard to see with my phones camera and the glare, but I’ve got people where bikes should be. Oops! But I’m pretty excited. I’ve got to redo the bottom floors of 3 of these cars (thanks for catching this before I started on the final 2!) but it will be neat to look in the windows and see little bikes. Thanks for raising the question and bringing this idea up. That will make this a much more unique car with when the lights are on! https://chi.streetsblog.org/2021/05...cated-bike-cars-on-on-rock-island-bnsf-lines/ Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
@MetraMan01 I see those containers in the background. Are they the cardboard print-your-own type to act as filler? (As, if they are truly plastic containers, that would be a fortune right there! )
Those are all plastic, mostly Deluxe Innovation or Kato with some JTC mixed in. The bottom two rows are one deep and setting against the back baseboard I have back there. The top two rows are two deep. I’ve been scooping used ones up for a while off of eBay. If you keep an eye out, you can find them on eBay or new from a hobby shop at a “reasonable” price-what I consider less than $10 each, including shipping. A hobby shop I. AZ was unloading the Katos for a while at a good price so I scooped those up. From time to time I’ve been able to snag JTCs at that price threshold, but not often. A hobby shop in N. IL was selling boxes of ten JTC sets (53s, 40s, 48s, 20s) close to that price for a while. You got to pick the length, they put in whatever paint scheme they needed to get off the shelf. But I paid full price for the JTCs in the Schneider, Amazon, and Walmart paint schemes, as well as the tank containers. Because I have poor impulse control apparently. I think I’ve got more than enough to represent the Schiller Park Yard near O’Hare and run some long unit trains when I get to make a big layout when I get back to the us. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Oooooo! I need to find a place like that! I just need a bunch of 40's so I can vary what my Kato MAXI-I carries at different train shows. Don't need a container wall like you. A famous place in Maryland has select JTC on sale for about $17 for two. I'm guessing these are the slow movers.
Monday, 8 August 2022 A few photos and updates from the last few weeks. First-long overdue photos of the WC heritage units for FRVR and GBW. Unfortunately, the Algoma is still in pieces, waiting on decals to arrive. A couple of visitors to my layout from our neighbor south of the border. A Ferromex and a Ferrosur GEVO. Details were already installed, I just weathered them. Particularly proud of the little light green spot near the exhaust stack-I added that myself to match what I think is where the paint wore through to the original Ferrosur scheme. I added a little weathering to a factory weathered MTL tank car. And I weathered and renumbered a trinity reefer for WC. It will be part of a dairy products train. If there can be a juice train that runs up the east coast I’m invoking rule 1 and going to run milk, ice cream, cheese down to Chicago and the rest of the Midwest from the America’s Dairyland. It’s mostly going to be BLMA CEFX reefers I’ve been picking up from eBay and those 6 recently releasedAtlas CEFX ones and a few others I will reletter for WC. I finished METX 100 as well. It’s doing laps on my layout this week with #147, pushing a few coaches each morning while I drink my coffee before work. But I’m tired this evening so I’ll post that another time this week.
Thanks! It was a FVM BNSF unit-I tried to “what if” Wisconsin Central still existed and wanted a Fox River Valley Railroad heritage unit. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Tuesday, 9 August 2022- So I’ve had a bunch of Metra projects in the hopper for a few months and really started up on them at the beginning of July. This is a Kato F40PH, originally in the blue/orange scheme. I think it was numbered for #142 “Ravinia”. Many Metra locomotives are named for the suburbs and counties around Chicago. In 2017, Metra put a vinyl wrap around #100 for the 40th anniversary. The wrap is a callback to the light blue Regional Transportation Authority (RTA-later evolved to Metra) paint scheme which took over commuter service in Chicago in 1977. This is the repaint job-I didn’t document the disassembly or weathering of pilot, trucks, and fuel tank. First I removed the original lettering with 70% isopropyl alcohol, removed all the light pipes and glazing, and masked off the roof, the front, and the back as those would remain the original color. Those areas didn’t have the wrap applied on the prototype. Airbrushed a few coats using Mr Hobby’s Mr Color Thinner and a light blue I thought was a close match. Afterwards, it got a gloss coat to protect the blue. I added Tamiya black panel liner as a wash to all the grills and grates. In hindsight i wish I had down that all over. Then I sealed again with a gloss coat. Next I applied the decals-a few of them every night-with coats of Micro Sol over the course of a work week to try and get it to lay flat across the details. Mostly successful, but not perfect. When the decals were complete, I protected them with a flat coat to dull and seal it and give my weathering powder something to stick too. Black along the roof, tan and brown along the lower edges of the locomotive shell. I sealed those one last time and then reinstalled and reassembled everything. In the future I’ll try to capture a loco or car that I weather heavily like the hoppers I posted back in July. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
the Minor Threat graffiti is hilarious and totally great, love it! You really have the weathering thing down, too - looks so good.
Thanks! That decal came in a Microscale set; there is another for “Korn” that I’ll throw on a black tank car when I get to my ethanol tank cars as the decal is white. I think there was at least one more band’s name as graffiti but can’t remember who right now. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Sunday, 14 August 2022, So I got quite a bit done. I finished 3 of the flat cars carrying Metra coaches: I didn’t start the last two flat cars. They need to be weathered-I already built the loads a couple of weeks ago. I finished weathering 18x 53’ containers. I used the airbrush to fade them a couple of months ago since I had white paint in the airbrush already for another project. This weekend I added some rust and weathering powder. I won’t bore everyone with a bunch of photos of containers- Except for the ones that are in the 3x well cars I did this weekend. I found prototype photos for two of them, so I tried to match that color grime. Lastly-I got after my trash car flats. I’d like to run a trash train eventually. I’ve got 11x of these flats (12th on the way), 6x coalveyors, and 5x wood chip cars lined up to haul trash in various forms. And maybe I’ll press some of my WC or Railgon gondolas into trash service too. So far I’ve only weathered these flats. Coalveyors are disassembled and waiting for some 3D printed side extensions to arrive. Once that’s done, I’ll probably build C&D loads or something for the wood chip cars and coalveyors. But I digress- Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
