N scale "What's on your workbench?"

Love the structures Mark, looking forward to seeing them in color.

Uh, did you forget to bring home some yellow?

 

Hey Mark where did you get the templates for your buildings and what are you making them out of?

I second that your missing yellow?

 

Pictures tomorrow but I got a wild hair to paint up a Royal Gorge F7 and start assembling the car set. The hard part will be finding the Bachmann full domes from a McKinley explorer set as they are using these cars still in the Alaska paint. An assortment of smoothside coaches, a baggage car for the generator car and a heavy or two with the roof cut off for the observation cars.

http://www.royalgorgeroute.com/

Both my inlaws and a friend from the train club rode this train within the past month and brought plenty of pictures for reference. It's not going to be anywhere close to perfect but but a fun diversion from other projects I am stuck on.

 

That might just be stupid mistake #2... I dont have an airbrush, and this stuff is hard to work with using a brush.. :tb-wacky: Not looking good so far. But hey, this is my first ever model paint job.

Yep, RGB is the additive primary colors, but RYB is the subtractive primary colors.

I'm making the templates myself and cutting them out of styrene. See this thread for info how I make my templates.

 

An airbrush won't help you with Testors enamels. They are designed to be brush painted. What you need to do first is spray bomb the buildings with a base coat of color. Paint doesn't bite well on smooth, fresh styrene. If you put a coat of primer of sorts on the plastic first, brush painting will go much easier.

 

This enamel stuff is biting hard, so much that I cant even get a good brush stroke. :tb-wacky:

I'm going to start a new thread here real quick to fish for help on painting techniques...

edit
...here is the new thread for "How do you paint styrene?"

 

Mark,
Thin the paint out. The testors enamels are too thick in the jar. Even at that, they will flow better over paint than raw styrene. To keep any kind of siding detail you will need to thin the paint a lot anyhow. Straight out of the bottle, it will clog the seams in siding.

Tony

 

Thanks Tony,
That sounds like a critical step I've missed. Do I need a special solvent to thin enamel?

 

Finally got around to body mounting couplers on my Athearn hoppers.

 

Joe what couplers did you use?

 

Are those screws for bolster pins? I guess that is the Athearn procedure as I may have some, too. This is looking more like H0 scale all the time. (I think that is a good thing for truck/coupler compatibility and eventually perhaps body mounts for all.)

 

1015 with a .020" shim/mounting plate. I also used some tapered head 00-90 screws for axle clearance. Hopefully my method will be strong enough.

 

Yup, Athearn figured out that you can use screws to mount trucks in N scale:tb-biggrin:

 

Sometimes I use an oversize drill to slightly create a countersink depression in the coupler pocket. Some of the 1015s already have that but only on one side. depending which side of the coupler pocket you use. (The newer 1015s use shims and don't have a "thick" or "thin" side.) Good approach on the flat head screws. I have a lot of machine screws to go, though.

My photo for this week is re-weighing the TOFC cars and also checking the car deck heights. This is an old Atlas flat with an Ultimate N Scale deck. I have begun to scratchbuild these TOFC decks as necessary; there are just a few styrene pieces to be added to convert it to a TOFC.


I have to eventually get back to those COE tractors, too.

 

Maybe it should be what is NOT on your workbench for me...



The F7 is a just for fun paint job of the Royal Gorge excursion train. If I can come across a McKinley explorer car set cheap, I may finish a representation of the whole train. Right now the loco is being done because my son requested it. His grandparents rode the train on a trip last month.

http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.php?id=267896&nseq=4

 

So I am not the only one who makes a mess on his workbench??? :tb-wink:

I have several workbenches: the bedroom (where my layout is), our living room (dining table), and the dining table at the homes of friends where we have weekly gatherings.

I am doing these two things now. First, a New England house:



Second, a Maryland house:



Second

 

Russ this looks great.:thumbs_up::thumbs_up: Could you show an over all shot of the module???

 

My benchwork is on my workbench.

Clever, huh?