Derail Posts

An email last week from George Dutka included several photos he had taken in London, Ontario.  A couple of them, which I inadvertently managed to delete, happened to include Derail sign posts.  There are two derails actually on the layout, so I thought this would make a quick little detail type project for the layout. It was. I made four of them.

I cut 10" squares of .010 styrene and letter D's from a Microscale decal sheet

Some .019 wire will serve as the posts.

There's one of the new derail signs at the spur into Midwest Plastics.  The derail itself is the yellow item between the rails. It's actually open in the photo because of the switching in progress.

And another of the posts over along South Industrial Blvd.

Two spare derail posts lean against the JSSX maintenance building

 

Luc Sabourin told me this week that the 98 year old Dunn Paper plant in Port Huron, Michigan has announced that it will be shutting down and closing.  I looked up an article about the closing on-line, and it will happen on November 18th.  About 100 employees likely to be out of work. Rail Service to the plant has been supplied for the past few years by Lake State Railway, and the Grand Trunk before that.

Dunn Paper in Port Huron, as seen 3 weeks ago from across the St.Clair River in Point Edward

Wisconsin Central Boxcar

Spent considerable time recently weathering this Wisconsin central boxcar. I first faded down the brown with my oft-used method of spraying with ModelFlex Concrete Gray.  That's for the panels and ribs, but then I darkened down right beside the ribs with hand brushed Ivory Black thinned with water. Vertical brush strokes only for that.  Scratch marks on the ribs are done with Burnt Umber.

The graffiti is a Microscale decal.  I used a brand new Xacto blade to very carefully slice the decal vertically beside many of the ribs, and horizontally at the bottom of the door and the door track.  I also used lots of Solvaset to get the decal to settle down properly.  And I do mean lots of it.

On this side of the boxcar, the lighter coloured patches to the left of the door are decal trim film.  Once I was finally satisfied with the fading, grime streaking and decal applications (and that certainly took me a while), I sprayed all along the lower portion of both sides (and the ends) with ModelFlex Rail Brown to grime it up. This really helps to flatten down and age the graffiti decal that's on the other side.

I wish that boxcar was mine, but it belongs to another local modeller.

For something a little different, I think I should be able to get a start on this little project sometime relatively soon. If or when I do get going on it, I'll put up the occasional progress picture.  For now though, certain areas do look to be rather daunting.

I sent away a photo from the layout and had this paint-by-numbers made.  Comes with the canvas, 24 paint colours and 3 different brushes.  Something to do without having to be in the basement.

Evans MISS 304020

George Dutka took this photo in London, Ontario and sent it along in an email this week.  CN's GP38 #4908, formerly of the GATX Locomotive Group.  What got my attention is the way letters in the word "locomotive" on the side have been painted out to form the letters "cn" in the lower case.

Part of the "o" and part of the "m" are painted out to form the letters "cn".  Pretty creative, and would make for a real interesting model.

The header photo up top for September is an Evans 50 foot boxcar, lettered for Mississippi Railway, and featuring the crank-style sliding door.  The door crank is a nice "different" sort of feature, which is what prompted me to buy the model.  I kind of remember loading a few cars with those devices a great many year ago.

The model is made by ExactRail, and I've actually had it for a couple of years now.  It stayed in it's box until this past past May, when it made it out as far as the workbench.

The boxcar as it was, new out of the box

Well, inspiration finally struck and I weathered this one.  Some of the markings on it were inspired by this photo of this boxcar, which is clearly not the same type of car or railroad name, but I liked the "look" of it.  Sorry, I don't have the name of the photographer, but credit to them for taking this picture.

I wish I had faded the blue more than I did, but I was worried about making it appear too "frosty" if I used too much of the Rapido Flat Haze, which is white. 

I used a light blue paint pen to change the colour of the lettering.  Smokebox Graphics reflective striping are about to go on

The reflective stripes are on now, and then roof brown was sprayed along the bottom sill to take the bright shine away.  A bit of it was sprayed along the top of the sides as well.

The 2nd side.  The graffiti scribbles are literally just that.  Scribbles with a fine tipped red pen.

Barn Wood craft paint and then a really light amount of Tamiya's Black Panel Line smeared across the tack boards to weather them.

Out on the street trackage here.  Something I've been adding lately to boxcars is some small pieces of off-white decal around the left-hand side of the door, trying to represent old notice stickers.

And finally this week, for those that might have missed it, congratulations go to Pierre Oliver (we've never met) at Elgin Car Shops who has announced (back on August 29th) that he's acquired manufacturing rights for Rail Yard Models X79 boxcar and G47 gondola.  I find this news quite interesting/exciting as I've watched out for years at train shows and ebay for one of the Rail Yard X79 cars and never seen one,  Here's the link to Elgin Car Shops blog. You'll have to probably scroll down to the August 29th post to read Pierre's announcement.

 http://elgincarshops.blogspot.com/

And a look at one of those prototype X79 boxcars that I'd like to be able to emulate for the JSSX:

Just one example of the Kellogg's boxcars

Brian's New Shelf

My friend Brian Smith has been working away at building a new shelf-style layout for himself.  He got power wired up to it last weekend, so let's have a quick look at just a few photos he's taken and posted on Facebook over this past week or so...

You might remember Brian's B36-7 from November of 2020 when I posted it on the blog after I'd finished weathering it. The reporting marks were changed at that time to Brian's BSTX leasing service.  Come to think of it, I think that GTW boxcar was weathered here too.

On his new shelf layout, it looks like Brian's C44-9 Warbonnet has been through some tough times, but still working...

And how 'bout that backdrop !  Makes it quite hard to tell where the layout ends and the backdrop begins.

Groundcover is started

And another view of Brian's Santa Fe locomotive

Ditch lights are on, and so is the walkway light

This view of Brian's B36-7 is from when it spent a little time here at the JSSX

Down at the Sarnia freight yard, I was still wishing that somebody, almost anybody, would start producing models of this type of covered hopper. Luc has told me before that somebody has plans to do it, but I haven't seen or heard anything about it.  I'd buy a couple of them. Sure would be fun to weather one like this prototype.

Pullman-Standard covered hopper down at Sarnia's C-Yard on August 26th, 2022.

Happy Labour Day Weekend everyone !