Tuesday, 4 April 2023- Accomplished quite a bit over this last weekend, finishing some old projects and completed a few new ones. Below are three Deluxe Innovations woodchip hoppers, patched for Midwest Railcar and ready for C&D service-they’ll join four others I completed a while back. At some point after my move I’ll make loads for them. Next are three Athearn Railgon gondolas-weathered with oils and powder. Interiors are in. The next post and I used the same technique I described in the posts above for them. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Tues, 4APR23, continued- GONX interiors from previous post: I lightly weathered an Athearn Greenbrier tank car-the prototype seemed almost brand new according to the photo on rrpicturearchives from 2019. This Athearn UTLX tank got a heavier treatment and numerous tags. Below is a side by side between a MTL factory weathered ex-MKT hopper, patched for Helm Leasing on the left, and one that I weathered myself on the right this weekend. The one on the right isn’t a perfect match to the prototype photo of one side of HLMX 4138 but I feel like I’m in the ballpark. Final picture-I had a bunch of GHQ and 3D printed vehicles that needed paint and so I gave all of these some base coats of their main body color to use up paint I have on hand before the move because I can’t take the paint with me. These are small enough I can take some of them and some fine tip markers with me in my luggage in a few months and do a little bit of modeling even while the rest of my stuff is boxed up in transit. The buses will get packed up now though-I’m planning on making custom decals for them for the schools I attended as a kid. Except for the white one-that’s going to be lettered for the Illinois Department of Corrections. If I can find some fine mesh some day, I’ll try and cut that to size and put it over the bus windows too. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
I bet the look, meaning weathering and graffiti of the prototype, has already changed from the pic you used so if anyone spergs out on you about it not being correct just tell them "not according to my data"
Absolutely! But make it "John Deere Green" (song by Joe Diffie) "And the whole town said That he should've used red But it looked good to Charlene In John Deere green" Songwriter: Dennis Linde © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC
Friday, 26 May 2026- I can’t believe almost two months have passed since I last posted anything here. Since the layout came down I’ve done some weathering and a little bit of sketching for the next track plan. It’s still roughed out on paper, which I’ll refine a couple more times and then build digitally and finally get around to posting here. It’s going to take up about 75% of our downstairs rec room. It will go around most of the walls and cut back in for a pretty large center peninsula. It will be operated as a point to point, but I’m looking at building in either a lift gate so I can do a continuous run or (maybe and?) give it a couple of turns so…so I guess it would be come a dog bone. Hard to explain just in words. I’m going to try and ask a lot of this layout (at least in the design phase)I want continuous running of long trains but I want the ability to conduct operations. While a lot of design work remains to be done (the actual track itself), I think I’ve got made some decisions on a good mix of operating scenes (industries, yards, stations) to model and scenery-only zones between them. The theme will remain the same: a Metra’s commuter service along the NCS line and a protofreelanced WC in the modern era. At one end there will be a ~14-15’ staging yard, representing WC’s yard at Fond du Lac. After a few feet of scenery it will pass a freelanced ethanol plant and more scenery until the southbound freight enters Illinois at Antioch. It will pass Metra’s Antioch Coach Yard, and the Antioch and Lake Villa Stations. An aggregate dealer is between those towns, but only the spur to it will be modeled, which is about all you can see from the main anyway. The prototype also has a propane dealer across from Lake Villa’s station but will now be rail served (like it used to be). And I may freelance an industry in or close to Antioch just to give a local more to do. Southbound commuter trains will depart Antioch Yard and stop in both towns as well. I’ll have some larger scenery areas (~11’) between the towns. Continuing south we pass Round Lake Beach and it’s Metra Station. There are no rail served industries there. Once I get a little further in layout design I may cut out this town entire info and expand the scenery-only zones between everything. South of RLB will be more scenery, and and a transition to “jump” the layout to a freelanced Schiller Park yard-a small intermodal terminal/southern end of main layout staging yard/place to start operations for the industrial park from. South of Schiller Park I’d like to freelance an industrial park so I can have some solo operations sessions. Schiller Park will serve these industries.Fond du Lac will service the ethanol plant. Not sure about the industries in Antioch or Lake Villa yet. Only remaining thing is to figure out if I have space to do another jump and have Metra’s Western Ave. coach yard of just do hidden staging that represents Union Station. The alternate idea floating in my head to add Western Ave is to nix Fond du Lac, put in the lift gate, and have the Schiller Park yard pull double duty. It would represent Schiller as the origin for NBs and Fond Du Lac as the origin for southbounds. It might even give me some room to model the Mars Chocolate Factory. While I’m primarily going to have WC and METX on the rails because that’s what I saw growing up, the scenery only zones should be “generic midwest” enough that I can run some CP (CPKC) intermodal (just liked the way the CP GEVOs looked and I painted a CP8781-Hapag Lloyd unit) and some NS (grandfather started with NKP and retired from NS) and be content. I’ll just have to ignore the names on the Metra stations, haha. Again, it’s a lot to ask for a single layout, but I’m in n scale and will get most of a 20’x25’ space-I’m looking at a ~3-4’ wide, 17’ long peninsula . I’m sure once I get this started on a computer I’ll have to make some sacrifices in design as things get measured a little better and as I build it phases (so I can play with some part while the rest is under construction) I may discover more issues. Like that this is going to be a lot to build, haha! Anyway-next rough track plan will hopefully be digitized and posted in a few weeks! Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
