This and That for May

A new month, so time for a new photo at the top of the blog.  This one shows GP38 #812, the newest on the JSSX roster here, on it's way to work the South Industrial (Blvd.) job.  This short train is about to take the diverging track, crossing the roadway to the right, and will then rumble underneath the highway overpass.

I like the picture, but I think that I must be my own worst critic because I always seem to see a number of little things that I don't like in my layout photos. But they're fixable 

In this particular picture above, I notice that at the road crossing in the foreground the paint has worn off beside the rails exposing the white plastic the road is made from.  Probably worn off by the alcohol I use in my CRX track cleaner car.

That track switch ground throw appears out of scale.  And that's the smaller size that Caboose Industries makes.

There's a bit of a gap at the corner of the fence at the scrap recycler.

And another thing that I notice is being able to see right through the windows of the grey building from back to front.

 Next: I had an email last week from George Dutka, of the White River Division and Modeling Maine In Narrow Gauge blogs. George wrote to let me know that he'd spotted a photo and description from my layout in Railroad Model Craftsman magazine's May issue.

Thanks for letting me know George!  This is the photo in the Boomer Trail section of the May RMC magazine.

Next again: If you recall my gas station kit project that I wrote about last week, here's a little update on the progress I've made on it so far. No, it doesn't look like much right now, but I'm hoping it'll get there. The trim is painted orange because I'm going for the appearance of a Gulf Oil station.

I put a couple of I-beams across the top of the garage portion of the building.  I would have much rather added steel roof trusses, but I simply don't have any of those.  The I-beams were available from my scraps box.  There's the roof over to the right, and of course the base is in the front of the picture.

And lastly this week, I took this picture of NOKL 818475 as it passed the station here in Sarnia. There's a blue-box version of this type of 3-bay covered hopper that Athearn made, although not in this paint scheme or reporting marks.  I've got one that's lettered for UNPX / Procor.  A car such as this would make for a nice weathering project.

Not sure what the little white stickers/labels are along the bottom sill.  Maybe just reflective, but there's half a dozen of the yellow ones also.