Follow A One Car Train

 I thought that this time we'd try to follow along as JSSX 813 heads out to drop off an RBOX.

Here's good old 813, lights on, and just leaving the maintenance department.

813 in the JSSX yard has hooked onto the RBOX car.

After leaving the yard, the train reaches the front of the railroad where we get a closer look at RBOX 31916 (an Intermountain model).  I think of a train doing switching in this area of the layout as 'working the front'.

And a "going away" view of this very short train at the switch where the JSSX diverges off toward the South Industrial Blvd. section.

Here's a clear look at the switch where "the front" section diverges off to the left to begin the route over to the South Industrial job.  Over to the far left is a GTW train passing under the overpass.

Just entering the street trackage at South Industrial Blvd., 813 will have to drop the boxcar and runaround to it's other end and then shove it into it's spot at the customer.

During the run around it looks like the truck driver got out of 813's way just in time.

And there's RBOX 31916 finally being shoved into place at the customer's dock. Look closely to see railroad employee standing at the far end of the  boxcar

Thanks for looking in.  And have a Happy 4th of July.

My SD38 is Back in Service

Several months ago, last year sometime actually, the LED ditch lights on my GT SD38 inexplicably went out and would not come back on.  Not having any idea what I was doing, I tried in vain to get them working again.  Failing at that, I put the engine away in it's box and stored it in my cupboard.

I pulled the SD38 out again just this week, to take another crack at getting the ditch lights working again.

Here it is earlier this week.  The headlight at the top of the cab work, but not the LED ditch lights.

Here it is on the bench, opened up.  I'm looking at this as a bundle of wires, as I don't know or understand anything about wiring.  The lighting was all contracted out for the LED ditch light installation almost 9 years ago.  I've lost track of where the fellow went that did the work for me back then.

Anyway, after staring at this wirey mess for a minute or two, I took the bull by the horns and jiggled the wires.

And also somehow in all this I managed to knock off both of the cab's sunshades.

With the wires jiggled, I placed the engine on the layout track, and the unthinkable happened.  I tried the lights, and they worked.  Imagine that !

Here we go, with the shell back in place, couplers re-installed, powered up, and the lights actually still working.  But I've still got to replace or repair those sunshades.

I've always really liked this engine, so I'm happy to have it back in service.  As I was running the SD38 around the layout for the first time in 8 or 9 months, I thought I might as well have it drag the CMX track cleaner car around and get the rails shined up.

So, not much else going on here this past week, but at least I got that much accomplished.

Have a good week out there.  Happy Canada Day next Wednesday.

CSXT Patched Boxcar

A very nice article titled "Fixing the Cause of Derailments" was written by Paul Hurly and printed in the May 2026 issue of Railroad Model Craftsman.  Paul included this picture of my 86 foot CSXT patched auto-parts boxcar as part of his article.  It was a real nice surprise to see have my model included in the article with a picture of it printed in the magazine, particularly considering that this boxcarcar is one of my favourites.

This former L&N boxcar is an Athearn blue-box model that I patched and weathered about 6 years ago. The stirrup steps have also been replaced and the reflectve stripes added.

With Paul's RMC article fresh in my mind, I thought I'd show a few other photos of that 86 footer.

This is the way the Athearn boxcar looked originally.

This is just a view to show the coupler box that I used to replace the original Athearn swing arm.

An older view of the side of the car not shown in the article.

And a look from the other end

And that'll be all for this week's post.

Summer's here !  Enjoy the warmer weather.

Ex-Berlin Mills Boxcar

My "artist" paints have been getting pretty old and kind of drying out a little bit so I made a trip out to the local Michael's craft store this week. I was a little surprised that the price had gone up as far as it had, but I picked up tubes of water mixable oil colours Burnt Sienna and Burnt Umber, a new 3/0 brush and a bottle of "Bittersweet Chocolate" craft acrylic.  Then I got discounts when I paid so that helped.

Everything happened to be on sale for 10% off when I was there, but the tubes of paint were also buy one get a 2nd one 50% off.

I've finished up that former Berlin Mills boxcar now, so here's a few looks at that:

Here's the underside of the boxcar after it's been sprayed with that "Bittersweet Chocolate" paint that I got at Michaels.  Of course this won't be seen much, but I typically do it anyway.  I also sprayed some flat black nearer to the ends.

Here's a view that shows wear on the end of the car. On the top of the horizontal ribs I've brushed on some PanPastel Burnt Umber powder.

The boxcar out on the JSSX showing it's wear and tear. Can't really see them, but the wheels and trucks have been painted/weathered with Vallejo Rust Texture.

Weathered EEC 3148 on the spur at the South Industrial warehouse fits right into the locale.

 

That's all for this time. On to the next project. Have a good week.

Getting Back to Some Freight Car Weathering

Spent a considerable amount of time the past couple of weeks organizing photos into folders on the laptop.  I had far too many pictures that just weren't "keepers", so I simply deleted those. But going through everything has certainly kept me busy.

With most of that done, I began trying to catch up on weathering some cars for other modelers. I got started on this Rapido boxcar, but it's nowhere near finished up yet.

This is the Rapido model in it's original form.

This view shows the boxcar roof after the first two coats/layers of Vallejo Rust Texture, which I just brush on. The silver of the boxcar roofs is not easy to completely cover, so I generally find that I have to put on a 3rd coat of the Rust Texture.

Now there is no sign of the original roof colour.  This view is taken after that 3rd coat of Rust Texture, and then some Pan Pastel Burnt Sienna powders to vary the colour a bit. 

The boxcar's original blue paint has been aged or faded using Rapido's Proto Paint "Flat Haze".  I hadn't used this product in quite a long time.  It made for a nice change for me.  Also, one side of the car has begun to get some rust.

Weathering continues with more rusting, making use of Pan Pastel Burnt Sienna and Red Iron Oxide. I'll be taking some of that back off with0 Q-tips dampened with a touch of water.

The other side is underway with rusty scratches and overall rust on the door.

So, that's is as far as I've gotten with this boxcar project.  Still have plenty more to do, including the ends and underside of the car and the wheels and trucks to work on as well.

Leaser Engines on the JSSX

When I first started the JSSX, one of the things I wanted to do was have the shortline use leased power, which would provide some variety of locomotives and paint schemes.  I thought I'd show a few of the leaser engines that find their way onto the JSSX from time to time, which is really just code for I haven't really done much productive work on the layout in the last couple of weeks.  Thanks for looking in.

South Industrial Blvd. has boxcars spotted on spurs lining either side as HLCX leaser 5556  has come into view while switching some of those cars out.

A closer look at HLCX 5556, a former CP SD40

Former Chicago North Western SD38-2 NREX 6656

And also in CNW colours

I had ditch lights installed on GP38-2 NREX 3885

Just for comparison, here's the real 3885

Alan Gaines photo found on the internet

And one more of my lease engines is LTEX 3415

A former Union Pacific SD40-2 with the "snoot" nose, Sean Steele did a wonderful job painting this one for me.

And  from time to time I've posted pictures of lake freighters that pass by locally in the St.Clair River. Here's the first lake freighter photo I've taken this year, the 826 foot Lee A. Tregurtha as it was passing under the very busy Blue Water Bridges on May 13/26 on it's way to Marquette, Mich.  This one was built in 1942, which according to my math makes it 84 years old.

Notice the lineup of cars and trucks stopped on the bridge to the USA.  They'd be getting a nice view of the boat from up there.  I used to cross here 5 days a week in both directions and every once in a while, I'd get that same view of a passing freighter from up there.

Have a good week out there everyone.

Dual Diameter Tank Car

A look this time at a whalebelly/dual diameter tank car (remember those) that I had for many years.  These tank cars are listed as being 67 feet 5 inches long, so kind of big.  A nifty looking car, I used to see these in the yard here at Sarnia fairly often, sometimes they'd be in short strings.  The prototype cars have all been taken out of service due to safety concerns.

To start, here are a couple of prototype photos that I found on the internet.  Photo credit goes to the photographers and railcarphotos.comSal Crisanti photo, 2007.

Peter Bieber photo, 2006

And so here are a few views of my Atlas model, which I weathered pretty heavily several years ago.  I used thinned Burnt Sienna and Burnt Umber artist oils for the rusting.  I've always liked the way ACFX 17440 turned out.

I actually entered this model in a weathering contest on TWS-rustbucket.com after I had finished it.  I didn't win.

 

This tank car very rarely gets out on the layout because I simply don't have anywhere for it to go.  It's better suited to be spotted at a really large industry or refinery and my layout really isn't big enough to have that.

So, I decided last week that I'd see if I maybe could sell this one, thinking that then I could use the proceeds to get something else some other time.

I gave my dual diameter tank car a final ride around the layout as part of a train before I advertised it for sale.

And here are a couple of portrait type photos of ACFX 17440 that I used in the ad I placed in a facebook group.  I generally use these type of views when I want to post something for sale. 

I quickly and easily set these up these photos by laying a sheet of black construction paper on the workbench.

I was kind of sorry to see it go, but ACFX 17440 was sold in a day, and now has a new home in eastern Ontario.

That's it for now. Have a good week everybody.

Switching at MidWest Plastics.

Spent very little time at the layout this week, but I did take about 20 minutes or so to do some switching at the Midwest Plastics plant.  Here's a few looks at what went on there...

The Midwest Plastics spur is there on the left, with a tank car of resin and a pair of plastic pellet covered hoppers waiting to be lifted out.

And here comes the GTW train (SD40 5931 leading) that's going to switch cars in and out.

The engines beginning their run-around move to get into position to pull the cars out of the industry's spur.

The plant does have one boxcar loading door at the far end. A view from beneath the overpass shows this ex-MTW car as it's being shoved into place.

Here's that same boxcar tucked in behind the fence and quite a bit of overgrowth.

The local railfans (that's me) are happy to see this former DuPont 3-bay covered hopper making an appearance on the line. Plus one, or maybe even two, loaded airslide hoppers as well.

Another look at the covered hoppers as they're entering the industry property.

I failed to get a picture of it in the train, but the GTW also dropped this tank car of resin at the molding plant.  (The tank car was originally labelled as for chlorine service, but I removed that lettering and use these as liquid resin cars - I'm thinking of it as modelers' license.)

And this last shot will be of the engines getting ready to head back the way they came from.  Or maybe they've got some more switching to do at the paper recycler next door to the plastics plant.

That'll be it for now.  Have a nice long weekend everybody.