MODELING It's Monday, January 18th 2016: Weekend modeling Accomplishments

Monday has come to us like it always does, no warning. Good thing there is coffee! Time for the Weekend Accomplishments thread!

Well, like I said on Friday, the day was devoted to wedding planning, but it was not without trains. On our way to the small town of Fairbury Illinois, a TPW town, we were stopped by the Bloomer line. The same line I painted an O scale two rail for my good friend Brian. After meeting with two vendors we found a great little Chinese restaurant in Downtown Bloomington and visited an old school slot car shop right next door. The slot car shop was very cool and brought back some great memories. Turns out the shop has been there since the 1960's and they even carry N scale!

Saturday I went to my not so local hobby shop after applying decals to the last Paducah's number boards and applying flat clear to the shells. I picked up an additional TCS CN/GP decoder and set out back home. It's a 45 minute drive via old back roads and route 136 so I had plenty of time to day dream about the modules.

Sunday I spent all day working on the two decoders. The Life Like mechanisms have to be completely disassembled and its a cross of hard wire and PC board plug in. My new soldering station certainly made things easier but I was not without frustrations. After many hours of assembly, re-assembly, testing, CV's, reboots and a copious amount of colorful metaphors, I managed to get one unit working. The other is still giving me fits. So the final assembly of both units will have to be done during the week. As a result, I got very little accomplished on the modules but some work was done.

So how about you? Did you fare better than I? Let us know. We'll come back on Friday the 22nd and do it all over again. Until then, have a great weekend, stay warm and...

High Greens!

 

I spent much of the time building up an interior for N scale heavy weight passenger cars. I will use it as a master to make an RTV mold to produce resin copies to go into ATSF Chair-Smoker and Divided Chair cars made from M&R etched sides and Rivarossi cars used for cores. Not much different between the two. I also reworked the masters for underbody detail like the steam ejector AC cabinets. The first ones I made were too large. Then I modified a Rivarossi core and laminated some etched sides for one of the Chair-Smokers. Interesting window pattern on one side. Behind it in this photo is a 3000 class Chair car I have been working on.

 

Grumble, grumble. Well, the el cheapo mount for my magna-light broke. So am in the process of making a new one so I can get back to work again.

 

Nice. How did you simulate the chips?

 

Model of the week.

 

I drive by a classic silo just like that every day and it looks spot on. I could stop and take a pic for you to aid in weathering if you want me to.

 

I have been weathering a Southern Pacific boxcar and helping my girls sell Girl Scout cookies...over 150 each since Saturday

 

Kevin, your making great progress on your layout! Thanks for keeping us posted with the updates and great images.

 

Day off? You probably did not go fishing, either.