Only managed to get two cars done this week! Walther's 86' 8 Door Hi-Cube Boxcar, Lettered for the Kansas Oklahoma and Gulf a Missouri Pacific subsidiary. Car painted with Scalecoat II Aluminum and Boxcar Red, then lettered with Oddballs Decals. Atlas 3510CF ACF Covered Hopper, painted with Floquil PC Green and lettered with Highball Graphic Decals. Thanks for looking! Rick J
I started on the fourth structure (or not-quite-structure as the case may be) for my N scale Hollywood backlot false front western town. This will be the first one that is an actual building rather than just a false front, my freelance design for a movie set building representing a frontier town LIVERY STABLE. The front of the building is an old time board-and-batten false front, but behind the front is an actual building. However, it is not a "period" frontier building. It has a "practical" interior (movie set term for usable), stable facility housed in a utilitarian corrugated metal pole barn shed, hidden behind the false front. For the pole barn, I draw a layout of the framing on graph paper, painted bamboo skewers as creosoted poles and glued the ends of them down on the drawing, OUTSIDE the areas of finished framing. When that set, I glued cross members on top of that and then cut the whole assembly loose from the paper. I studied photos of western town sets from the 1950s MGM back lot, 1970s Universal City Studios, visits to Old Tucson and Alamo Village, Bracketville Texas, and based my livery stable front mostly on the Universal example. After drawing a rough scale drawing, I laid out the front and cut it out on 1/16th inch board-and-batten wood sheet. Wish I could have gotten something thinner. I add scale 2x6 framing on the back side, visible from the "backstage" view of the movieset structure. Here are the assembled walls and framing of the pole barn interior, and the back of the false front, showing the side never seen by the camera. The only part of the interior that will be visible will be the central aisle, seen through the front door. So I built only the portion of stall and gates visible on the central aisle. Same principle that the Hollywood set designers frequently use-- only build what is visible.
Here's one of the shots I took earlier this month when trying out my new digital camera. Now that I actually own a real, live OPERATING digital camera (and I am not constantly borrowing one or trying to hold my older one that had damage together so it will work) I hope to post more. This is from PANT. We've been doing some work there on some things. We still need to re-do/re-route that road there.
At the North end of the Sousa City engine facility, the fuel tanks are getting topped off by a set of tankers. Boy do these guys have interesting suppliers....... Meanwhile on the other side of town, a tired and worn out crummy holds out on the rear of a manifest. I can only guess that some cargo has come loose and shifted in the car in front of the caboose. At the team track in Sousa City, a boxcar of stuff bound for the local hardware store and print shop is about to be unloaded. Joe there is having a stretch before opening the door and shuffling the items into the waiting truck. Up in the mountains, the logging camp sits silent, waiting for the day to begin.
