Cheater, Cheater! Wow, two weeks have passed already since the "Cabooses" modeling contest! Between getting the house ready for winter, and being sick for the past week, time has just flown by. The next modeling contest is two weeks from today, and I've been sitting on my, umm, let's say thumbs. I need to get moving... The topic for the next contest is "Boxcars With Loads". I really want to try to enter something in every contest this year, but there's no way I can scratchbuild a boxcar in two weeks. So, I'm "cheating". I'm going to kitbash a ready-to-run car. The first, and most obvious change that needs to be made is to eliminate the black plastic floor inside the car. Open up the doors on any of your RTR boxcars, and you'll see exactly what I mean. After a little prying, the floor popped right out of my boxcar. I slapped on some tan paint, a wash of India ink & rubbing alcohol, and finished by brushing on some black and brown chalk powder. The resulting floor almost looks like wood - not exactly, but it's passable. When viewed through the open boxcar door, it's very convincing.
Boxcar Full O' Buckets In the real Hill City, Minnesota, a key industry was the Woodenware Factory, maker of wooden pails, pickle barrels, cracker barrels, cups for peanut butter, and other wooden containers. This factory will be represented on my layout, and will be the primary industry. Accordingly, the load for my loaded boxcar will be wooden pails, headed outbound to interchange with the Great Northern Railroad, bound for points west. To create the illusion of a car loaded with stack upon stack of buckets, I decided to try using pieces cut from a wooden dowel. I used scale lumber to build makeshift crates around the stacks, much like they would have done in real life to prevent shifting of the load. This lumber also helps disguise the fact that these aren't buckets. Light pencil lines drawn horizontally across the stacks help complete the illusion. The load is constructed so that I can stage the car as a fully loaded car, or as a car being loaded or unloaded. As a final touch to the interior, I'm going to place some partial stacks, including a couple of carved buckets, along with a figure, in that vacant space.
Holy Buckets! How does one make HO scale wooden pails? One uses his Dremel, after realizing that the dowel rods that he's using fit perfectly into the chuck on the Dremel. A little high-speed rotation, some gentle application of a needle file, and presto-chango, the dowel rod transforms into a stack of wooden buckets. To make it perfectly clear what is loaded in the boxcar, I carved out a few stacks of varying heights, including one single bucket. Here's the finished car, after being treated with Dull-Kote, drybrushing, and various colors of chalk.
Blue Ribbon Buckets Fun night at the Twin Cities Division meeting last night. The gears are turning over the possibility of building an N-Trak module. I picked up some great info on handlaying turnouts. The highlight of the evening was capturing first place in the modeling contest with my Boxcar Full O' Buckets. Truly a big surprise for such a simple project!
So, what happened with the contest? I see a first place ribbon. (Congratulations!) What other entries were you up against? Any comments fom the judges?
This was just popular vote, wasn't for merit points or anything. I'll submit it for merit judging in Sioux Falls at the May convention.
