Decided to peck away at the weed sprayer some today. Managed to get the areas needing black painted same and touched up some. Finally got rid of that pesky roof seam and added ladders and top railings. Next is adding lights and some other items. Booms are off right now while I'm messing with the car and will get remounted when the power chassis is under it. Used Plastruct ABS N scale ladders and railings. They are a little heavier than making them out of wire but since this car will be handled often I wanted something a little sturdier. The darker orange is the correct color. Just the difference in using a fill flash on the latter shot.
:uhoh: Got several locomotives out to setup for a train show. Refreshed the programming and found out a new issue I had not seen before. Locomotives run and work fine until Advanced Consisting. Once they are consisted, they refuse to run at all. 2 of 5 locomotives had this issue. So it is time to yet again, rip out some Digitrax decoders and replace them with TCS. So on my workbench are 50 locomotives that all showed this problem in for a decoder replacement. And yes, I know all the ins and outs of decoder programming and consisting. I have been doing it for years.
Since my workbench is "on the workbench," I decided to build a display shelf while I am doing the benchwork for my layout. It's 6'-0" wide x 4'-0" tall, with 13 shelves that are 1 1/2" deep, and the bottom shelf at 2 1/2" deep. The construction is mostly 1x2 (select pine) over 1/4" plywood, with the 1x3 shelf at the bottom. Everything is screwed into place from behind. Shelf spacing is 2 1/2" throughout except for the bottom shelf at 4" spacing. The shelves are long enough to hold a small Amtrack Empire Builder train set (2 P42s, 1 baggage car, 8 superliners) with maybe an inch or 2 to spare. The bottom shelf will be for vehicles and other scenery items. If I build it, maybe they will come (F40 Metras). Until then I'm overbuilding for the future! (The camera made the shelves look curved but they are pretty straight and level.)
Thanks, John. On another project, a friend of mine wanted the skirts on his Kato Business car cut out and new trucks with full side frames installed. I used the Kato 80101 trucks that came on the Super Chief ACF cars. I had to shave off some of the underbody detail for the rear truck so it would rotate with clearance. the 800121 trucks off the El Cap high level cars fit without any modifications because they had disk brakes and the side frames don't extend as far to hold the clasp brake rigging as on these trucks.
Budweiser Distributor Finally getting to the 60-70 buildings needed to go on the layout. This is the concrete apron and the location for the Budweiser Distributor. Here is one view of the real building. The large opening on the right is where the track used to be for unloading the boxcars. I believe the building is occupied now but I am not sure what company is there. My structure will be scaled down a lot. That is the Alamodome and Sunset Station in the distance.
As I said, I know all about the CV57 being 102 and all of the other peculiarities. They just will not work consisted. End of story. All of these decoder are now in the E-Waste bin.
Interesting Illinois Central caboose with a question. The IC called this a 'Terminal Caboose', so it spent little, if any time in 'mainline' operation. Soooo, why the need for a 'mail door'. Plan show that these were made as 'Terminal cabooses with no cupola and not a 'bashed' cupola caboose. Sooo, why the mail door????
Another caboose I just finished. I really likje these and there are a few of them still around, privately owned. WP 651 was retired in 1972. I built this from a Lima bay window caboose and hand scribed the sides, lowered the bays, cut new windows and added the bracing with .015 Evergreen strips..............................
I don't see a tool box , perhaps thats a parts and tool bin ... knuckles, air hoses, brake shoes, wrenches, koolax ,packing hooks, oil cans and the ever present caboose chains? Randy
Budweiser Distributor Here is the basic shell. I am using .020 inch styrene which is pretty thin. Hope I get by with it. This is the side of the building away from the aisle. I used a thin gauze or something to make this screen opening. My first time and it worked pretty well. I doubt if anyone will ever notice, though. This opening along the indoor rail track is on the prototype. You may be able to see a boxcar inside the building. BTW, this is the original paper stand-in structure. I hate to admit how many years it has been there.
On my modules, I am going to place figurines of 15mm in the foreground and 10 mm figurines in the background to give one perspective effect. Thus at the moment, camel driver's transformation of the camel corp British in Sudan (see the movie Karthoum) in troops of the US CAMEL CORPS (if this unit had overtaken the trial stage
My slightly freelanced version of Canadian National Ry. boxcab switcher 7750 is finally done. See prototype photo here. This model was inspired by last year's Trainboard Boxcab Challenge. The mechanism is from the Kato NW2. With the brass body and a couple of A-Line lead weights, it will pull about 13 freight cars up my 1.9 percent grades.
