Not Much Happening

Not much happening on the JSSX this week, as the weather's been really nice here and I haven't spent any time at all really at the layout.

I was noticing this covered hopper though. Lettered for Nova Chemicals, this Walther's model has been around for a while and came as one car in a two-car set.

I gave it to a Not nephew who said he could put some graffiti on it for me.  Looks pretty good.  Then I did the dark streaks on the sides and not too long ago added the reflective stripes.

This similar 4-bay covered hopper was down at the Sarnia yard recently.

I have this way-too-clean-and-glossy looking 86 foot 8-door boxcar sitting out at the bench now awaiting weathering.  Just a matter of getting inspired enough to get to work on this very nicely made Tangent model.

Maybe this will be inspiration enough to overcome the inertia...

The same boxcar with the same number, as found at rrpicturearchives.net.  This photo was taken by Alan Gaines in New Haven, get this, exactly 17 years ago today.  An overall flat appearance, plus a little bit of written graffiti in the centre portion promoting the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (?), as well as a couple of nearly unnoticeable small darker re-paint patches, and some dark streaking on the panel seams.

I like it, so all of a sudden, Jim's got a not too difficult looking project to work at.  No photos of the other side of this boxcar, so I'll look through that web site at other cars that are close in number to this one.

New SD40 for the Layout

 I picked up this Kato model SD40-2 through a facebook group 3 or 4 months ago, and it's been sitting out on the workbench pretty much ever since. I liked this one because it's sub-lettered GTW which interchanges with my JSSX, and it's got the CN North America map logo which is my favourite of the CN orange and black schemes.

The engine runs fine, and really has just been waiting final assembly of the basic details included in the box.  And weathering.

After first masking the cab windows, I sprayed 3 coats of ProtoPaint Flat Haze over the whole engine, and added a light touch of streaking grime to the sides of the cab.

The Flat Haze turned out alright on the cab, and turned the black long hood more toward grey, which was more or less what I thought it would do.  I wasn't overly pleased with that, but it wouldn't really matter much as I was intending to get the engine looking more like it had been accumulating road grime over the years.

The road grime look was accomplished by building up light layers of thinned Roof Brown.  The detail parts sprues in the above photo are that black delrin plastic, which doesn't really hold paint all that well.  I sprayed the parts with Stynylrez surface prep - first time I've used it - in the hope for better adhesion of paint.  Time will tell.  I painted the step rails with a light grey, as I felt that white would be too clean looking.  Stanchions at the front and rear of the locomotive are painted in CN Orange.

Online photos of the real 5931 showed an all weather window on the engineer's side, so I wanted to add that feature. That led to a small problem though, as the model has locating holes for a sunshade that would be exposed above the window. I cut the end off of a micro-brush and used that to fill the holes.

Now you see 'em...the locating holes plugged with white plastic above the all weather window

Now you don't...just a tiny dab of Floquil CN Orange hides the 2 plugs. At the bottom of the photo, that white thing pointing toward the cab is/was the micro brush I used to plug the holes. You can also see here a bit of fuel spill streaking on the fuel tank. A couple of Vallejo products were brushed on for that effect.

In no particular order, here are the various paints, etc. that were used in this weathering project.

That's about all I can do on this one for now.  I'll still want to get mu hose sets at least for the front.

Anyway, if you've followed along this far today, I think you deserve to see the SD40 out on the rails, so here are a few shots of 5931 in service...

I'm really pleased to have this addition to the layout.  Thanks for looking in.

SW1200 1317 Work Assignment

 EMD switcher 1317, in it's original CN paint, has the work assignment today.

Used only occasionally on my shortline, I've still not added JSSX lettering to this SW1200.

1317 couples on to the cars that the GTW has dropped off at the interchange track

1317 has dug out 2 covered hoppers and an empty gondola

The empty covered hoppers are designated to be spotted at the team track at the far end of the JSSX yard. Likely going to be loaded with fly ash.

The track runs in front of an old railway express building, long since closed down and boarded up.  The shortline stores it's maintenance cars on that track though, so they'll have to be moved out to allow the empty covered hoppers to be spotted there.

The few pieces of equipment that make up the JSSX work train amount to 2 flat cars and an American Crane.  This crane, manufactured by Walthers, is unpowered. I have another that is motorized, but not upgraded to DCC so it remains in it's box.

1317 shoves the two covered hoppers into position

Getting one of the hoppers into position

A nice close-up of 1317

Fencing around that Gulf Station

If I look around here long enough, I can find what I'm looking for.  The photo below shows what was remaining of my chain link fencing kit made by Walthers.  I've been wanting to put fencing around the burned out/closed down Gulf gas station, and I knew I had a some fence posts here somewhere.

Walther's moulded fence posts are at the right-hand side of the sprue.  That's a gate that I won't be using at the left side.  Wire for the top and bottom of the fence is in the plastic packaging.

Below, the  fence posts have all been installed and the wire added along the top and bottom of the posts.

The actual chain link portion is installed, and weathered up to be old and rusty. I used wedding veil tulle for the chain link. I've omitted a picture of the tulle before I added the weathering to it, because the material is white and so finely woven that it couldn't really be seen very well in that photo.

A couple photos with the building and fence actually in place on the layout.

If I should one day tire of this building and scene, since it is all mounted on a piece of .040 styrene, I could lift the whole thing right out, and drop another small scene with the same size footprint right into place.  As far as I know, that idea was originated by George Dutka, who does that on his White River Division.  At least that's where I got the idea from.

So, this project is now pretty much done.  The only thing really left to do would be to maybe add barbed wire around the top of the fence.  Perhaps some brown (rusty) thread.

Saw this very well "aged" 3-bay covered hopper down at Sarnia's C-yard on this past Monday afternoon. The large grey patch area at the right-hand end with that rusty coloured streak running down through it looks (to my eye anyway) to have a barely discernable ghost image of a black CN logo. Reporting marks are FLOX 79164 are worn and may be in a couple of different fonts as well.

A nice combination of grimy and rusty streaking, along with those darker panel lines.  A covered hopper weathered like this would look real good on the JSSX.

Canada Day weekend

Canada turns 155 today, so a collection of Canadian type stuff for the Canada Day holiday and weekend seems like a nice idea.