On The JSSX This Week 9/01

Activity on the JSSX this week, starts with GP38 #815 seen here heading back to the shortline's yard with a couple of empty high-cube fifty foot boxes that will forwarded on to Grand Trunk.

By way of any actual model railroad progress though, a little bit has been accomplished. I put this short section of roadway guardrail together while waiting for other paint, glue, or decals to dry. Made by Rix Products, I've got it weathered and ready to set into place along my street trackage scene in a couple of days, but at the moment the paint is still wet on it.

As for that building I reported on last week - the one that hit the floor hard - I got the all of the windows and the fire escape replaced/repaired, and also worked on the small roof section. After wiping the dust from the roof, I followed a tip I learned from the instructions sheet in a Downtown Deco kit. Using a black Sharpie pen, I marked out black lines to represent rolled roofing and tar lines.  Then I went over those lines with a bead of white glue, as seen below.

The white glue dries clear, but raised just up a tiny bit, giving some relief to the flat roof.  I then brushed on some grey and brown powders for colour variation, as well as rust powders where some of the roof vents would go. Finished roof section is below.

I also spent time working over this covered hopper, which I had picked up at the Woodstock Train Show back in the spring.  Hoping for weathering ideas, I looked around on the interwebs for pictures of any UP cars that look similar to this, but was unable to find any.

Apparently, the weathering was going to have to come from my imagination.

I figured I'd patch out the reporting marks and the large "UNION PACIFIC" lettering on the sides, and then add some light rust weathering. For the patches, I applied flat black decal trim film from Microscale over the letters, but the next morning most of the decal film had curled up and lifted off. I've never had that happen before. I tried flattening the decal patches down with more Solvaset, but they just curled and lifted again shortly afterward.

I then thought I'd take the trim film off completely, and paint the patches over top of the letters. I was quite surprised when the masking tape I used to remove the remaining bits of the trim film also lifted that original black lettering completely off. Weakened by the Solvaset, maybe?

I moved on to Plan C, which was to then just mask off a few panels and paint some flat black patches on with the airbrush.  I painted out the reporting marks with grey trim film (which stayed in place) and changed them to AEX, but kept the same number.

Also this week, in 1:1 railfanning, I happened to notice this run-of-the-mill Nova Chemicals pellet hopper was sitting in C-Yard here at Sarnia. Typical of the Nova cars we see around here, NCIX 1248 is about as clean as could be, no graffiti and no rust.  But, it caught my eye just because the number 1248 matches the street address of my boyhood home.