There's some of the older style Tex Mex brown boxcars on ebay (in N scale). I think they wont be available until sept 1st as the seller is away. My friend is hoping to aquire these for his layout.: http://www.ebay.com/itm/30092118981...XX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1436.l2649#ht_1252wt_889 road#'s 8952 8959
Here's a pic of my current collection, two of the Texas Mexican boxcars will be renumbered as they are duplicates. Also pictured is the caboose I'm currently working on. I still have to mask and paint the other side and apply decals to it. I wish my layout would be making quicker progress, but I have to squeeze time between work and family to hunt things down on the internet.
Here are some pics taken of the yard today: Off in the distance is the train station at the end of the two rows of train cars, and the worlds largest concrete water tower off in the distance behind it. I was driiving around looking at the layout today, it appears the first siding has turnouts on both the east and west sides, but I didnt see a switch stand on the east side. Here's wat the yard looks like today: track highlighted in red is no longer present, Orange: The area of Cotton Oil co that was destroyed by a fire a few years back leaving only the silos behind it. The green shows the spur that used to connect to the SP rails. The SP track was aquired by TM when SP pulled their rails from the area. It is currently used to store 2 bay hoppers
Mexican freight equipment on the Tex Mex Great green and orange cars, marc1kim! Both the Texas Mexican Railway and the Missouri Pacific interchanged traffic to and from Mexico at Laredo. Although TexMex was short compared to the MoPac, it got a big share of the cross-border traffic because of its specialization in handling paperwork and customs between the two nations. The TexMex Board of Directors was set up to have a representative of the Mexican government transportation ministry as a regular ex-officio director. The railroad also, small as it was, pioneered the use of weigh-in-motion scales that weighed cars as they rolled without stopping over a section of track with a solid-state sensor that determined weight by the deflection of steel within a rail, while closed-circuit television identified the car. Is it any wonder then that Mexican railroad equipment occasionally showed up in TexMex trains? Here are some caught in the Tex Mex Joint Yard at Corpus Christi in the late 1970s. Ferrocarriles Unidos del Sureste, United Southeast Railways, created by 1975 merger of Yucatán and Southeast systems. An NdeM boxcar- Nacionales de Mexico- Mexican National Rwy. Both these cars look like 50 foot PS-1 boxcars. Models of the type were made by MicroTrains. I am sending Alice layout marc1kim a Mexican railroad car decal which is part of a 4-railroad Microscale set. Besides Mexican railway cars, new and rebuilt diesel locomotives for Mexico sometimes moved dead over the TexMex from loco builders in the US. This diesel, at TexMex Joint Yard in Corpus Christi in the late 70s, has some kind of plywood placard attached its handrails. For my own 1950s layout, I used individual decal letters and dimensional data in Spanish to letter an old Concor 40 foot steel boxcar, which represents an AAR design. I am wondering what to transport in it to the Houston-Galveston setting of my layout. Maybe chicle (chewing gum base). (Having a problem with the last picture. I uploaded it to railimages, discovered it was an overly large 1200 pixels wide with a lot of wasted open space around the car image. I deleted it, put the picture into Photoshop, cropped it, resized it to a reasonable 640 pixels at 72PPI, saved it. But somehow it kept saving as the old larger image which I deleted both from railimages and from my hard drive. It finally showed saved as the smaller more compact photo- but when I linked to it here, I got the supersize one again. !!!?!?!?!?!?)
I've had that happen too. It takes abit for it to actually get off of the servers. So now when I need to delete an image and crop or such...I save the file in photshop with say a 2 at the end. So NdeMconc.JPG would be saved as NdeMconc2.JPG and uploaded. The system cant link it back to the old deleted file that way ;-) Also guessing your pc was looking in the TIF folder for a file with the same name...before getting the new one off railimages.
Aha. And now it is displaying the "right" picture. Thanks for the suggestion, mtntrainman. And thanks for supporting trainboard and railimages.
Cool stuff man.I was born in Corpus Christi and my great grandmother lived in Alice across the street from some tracks. I think there was a siding or maybe a small yard there. It has been 40 years since I was there and I don't remember much, but even then I was into trains. Just recently found out my father got to ride on a steam engine with an engineer that he befriended when he has a kid. Funny how in all those years how I never heard the story until I started messing with trains. I will definitely get him to have a look. I am sure it will bring back a lot of memories. Keep us posted with updates. cheers
Kenneth, I was to thank you very much for the CD of photos. I enjoyed viewing every single one of them. I will defintely refer back to these images as my layout progresses. Here's a photo of loco #857 (the same one that's modeled in my layout), taken in Alice Tx on Aug, 1972. The train station and grain silos are peeking through on the left side of the photo:
Marc, that's a nice collection of Tex Mex per diem boxcars you have there. Ken, do you have any info about the old Thrall bathtub type coal gons the Tex Mex used in scrap metal service? I remember going with my grandfather to the yard off of Texas 44 to watch them switch the train in from Laredo and seeing both regular gons and the bathtub gons full of scrap metal, ex BN 4 bay hoppers with the rotary coupler stripe carrying coke and oxide red (I think, it may have been rust) covered hoppers moving during sorghum season. I also remember around 1989 or 1990 seeing a cut of blue NdeM C30-7S Super 7 locos in the yard ion Corpus on their way to Mexico. I have photos of them somewhere but I'll have to find them.
Sorry, don't believe I have any of these. A PS on TexMex/ StLB&M depots. I went through Bay City on Sept 6, heard a train horn and turned to head for the tracks. I ended up in front of the old StLB&M depot, built to the same plan as the depots at Corpus Christi, Alice and San Diego on the TexMex, and at Kingsville on the StLB&M/ MoPac (now UP). A crew was working on the depot. The contractor told me the depot building was deeded to the city of Bay City in 1984 and "renovated" with modern windows, etc. for use as a community meeting place. Now, 29 years later, it is being restored to its original appearance. Grand Reopening expected later in September. The train I heard was on the BNSF, too far away to see clearly.
I've been building a roster of TexMex rolling stock for a few months. Just starting a caboose and painting a 50 ft brown boxcar as we speak. This thread is much appreciated. Here's one car I renumbered and weathered a while ago.
That looks great. I admire your weathering and modeling skills. Looking forward to seeing your other Tex MexMex stuff
Thanks guys and yes it's a FVM car. Love them FVM cars. Here's a pic of the 50 ft car I just finished. I used abit of artistic license in some of the details. Started as an undec. MTL 50ft single door boxcar that I airbrushed in mineral red and cobbled the lettering together with Microscale 60-1417,60-4280 and 60-975 decal sheets. Weathered with a fade and chalks and sealed with dullcote. Next up will be a couple tank cars and a caboose in the orange and green scheme.
I finally got some time to work on my new hobby a bit. I painted the other side of my caboose, Just need to apply decals and some kind of clear coat to protect it all. This little doodad from my local Harbor Freight Tools was a big help. The best $3 i ever spent:
barlowfaudio, Your weathering is excellent. The picture of TM3100 is so real looking that it took me a couple of looks to see that it is a model. I have begun buying TM rolling stock as I have a Mexican train to run at shows. It is a real conglomeration of NdeM, FCM and other Mexican roads for rolling stock. I have accumulated a 25 car train. I have some PEMEX tankcars that I painted and that Athearn, I think, produced. How about this for power : two FVM GEVO's (Ferromex & Ferrosur) plus a KATO SD40 in NDM blue /orange plus a KATO sd45 in FNM and another Sd40 in the dark green/red NdeM scheme. One is a dummy unit. I want to mix TM cars into this train as well. One question for you or marc1kim - what colors and brand of paint do you use for the TM green cars ? ? ? Would the green be appropriate for a loco ? marc1kim - sorry about hijacking your thread. Carl
That caboose is going to be killer! Good idea on the magnification, I use an optivisor for this closeup work. Craig
Thanks Carl, I put alot of thought into the weathering and have picked up techniques from others far better than me. As far as rolling stock, I'm going along the same lines as you NdeM, KCS, Sabine River and Northern . I've been using Floquil Polyscale CNW green and SP Daylight Orange for the respective TM colors. Will have to find another brand though since Testers dropped this line. Craig
I just found a pic that was posted earlier online of the Southern Pacific train depot here in town that was about two blocks north of the Texas Mexican station. The two rails crossed each other probably about 30 yards west from the Tex mex depot. The SP was demoslished sometime in the 80's (if memory serves correct). If I were to model the SP line into the Tex Mex layout as in Kenneth's layout plan, I would have to include the SP depot.
