I'm guessin' after smellin' what ya pump in and out of that truck all day, the cab prolly smells like roses... Maybe not first thing in the mornin' though!
Having worked a septic pumper, and crawling into septic tanks to fix things, you get "Used to it." The guy I worked for had a skunk painted on his, and it said "A flush is better than a full house!"
I have owned two houses with septic systems and boy do I find this posting funny. All the trucks and drivers were spotless.
That probably helped a lot. I was looking at some pics on line and most show clean trucks and one thing I noticed is most have chromed or aluminum wheels so looks like I need to paint the wheels on my two trucks.
Hasn't been much going on with the layout this year but did want to add a few things that are on the workbench to the thread. Recently, I picked up some bagged cement loads for boxcars. It was a very simple and quick project starting with this Was easy enough to pop the bottoms out of the cars and then apply the loads With that done, replace the shells and they were all ready for a trip across the layout.
Replaced more wheel sets with metal wheels. Just a few at a time. Started on some truck frame loads from M/T. Neat kit with 3d printed, wood laser cut, and etched metal parts. These are pretty cool looking. Got the wood framing attached At this point, I was all set to break out a flat and start attaching them, then realized i still need to paint the etched metal parts black so it looks sloop here but better in person. Hopefully will be posting pics of the finished product soon. That other black strip goes with the next items. Was at one of our warehouses the other day and they were running some braded cable to hang signs on. The guys had a big box of these aluminum cable crimps and were nice enough to give me a small hand full. Thinking these would make good loads, I test fit them in a BN gondola. That ugly black strip in the earlier picture will be a false floor for this car. I decided I think I will reduce the load to 6 instead of 8. I'll glue those parts to that false floor so the load will be easily removeable if I want to take it out later. Not sure what I ill use for bracing yet. Maybe some small brass wire painted black. That's about it for right now. More to come later.
Last I posted I mentioned downsizing the gondola load and here it is with the 6 item load And here is what I am thinking for the braces. I painted some additional brass wire but still have to cut and install the rest Should finish out pretty good. I installed a wood deck on a bulkhead flat a few weeks back and while it needs to be dulled down a tad, it does look pretty good as is. I thought about adding those tanks as a load for this car but I don't want to mess up the deck so I'm guessing I won't do this. The other work i progress is the truck frame loads for a flat car. It's getting closer. Still have to do the tie down chains on the other side and then attach them to the flat itself. So far so good though. It's not much but that's all I got for now
Thanks sir. I think it really captures the feel of this style load that I used to see rolling south through Chattanooga on the way to one of the auto assembly plants in Atlanta
I recently bought a used, depressed center flatcar with one of those paired tanks as the load, from my LHS. I'm not sure what those tanks are for, and whether they are really heavy (e.g. thick steel or concrete) or just insulated.
Well, I think the truck frame load is finally complete. Here it is sitting on the ready track. I'm kind of enjoying working on freight car loads right now. finished 3 more boxcar loads over the weekend. Did more work on this car. Didn't have enough brass wire to finish the bracing but it is coming along Then I had recently picked up an "old" Atlas boxcar. Of course it needed an upgrade to M/T's and it got it. Need to see if I have any better roof walk in the parts bin for this car.
The truck frame loads remind me of the freight cars often lined up to serve the GM plant in Arlington TX, with loads just like that.
Another project from the weekend was repairing a pair of these Alan Curtis Models finger racks. Since this isn't a model of any specific car, the paint scheme and numbering were just random from some decals I had on had back when I got the kits. They are neat cars and now that I have repaired issues from my original build, I'm trying to decide what kind of load might look good on them. With all these little projects coming together, I spent some time cleaning up the workbench. One cool find was an old ConCor metal scale ruler. It was in the bottom of a box of seldom used tools. I knew I had this but had not thought about it in a long time. It's obviously seen better days. I gathered up a fair sized bottle of wheelsets that have been replaced and trucks that either have no coupler or horn hook couplers. Wondering what to do with these?
Those finger racks hauled rebar, if I recall. I bought a kit, and never finished it, from when Alan first started. I think I still have it.
You should be able to sell them. Just them in our Swap Meet? I have seen many lots on that certain auction site.
I’ve seen pictures of modeled loads in different places using old wheelsets-either as complete wheelsets in gons or on racks on flat cars. I’ve also seen a photo somewhere or article (MR?) where they just glued a bunch of the wheels together as a scrap gondola load. Thinking about doing this myself actually. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
