JSSX Maintenance Shop

I thought we'd have a look at a few views around the maintenance shop.  Some of these may have been posted before...

JSSX 5068 in the shop to have some work done on it

And there's Brian's motorcycle, parked right smack dab in front of the No Parking sign.  Again.

A pair of leasers from Helm Leasing.  That's a GP40X in the foreground, plus a former CP SD40

Storage trailers out in the "back 40" of the shop's lot.

A view including some of the materials scattered about the area.  Looks like the GP40X is about to head out on an assignment.

Switching tracks now, Brian Smith sent along these two photos of a pair of very weather-worn cylindrical hoppers.  I think that the pictures were taken in the St.Thomas or Ingersol area here in Ontario.  The car numbers are pretty hard to read, but they're both NMIX (NSC Minerals Inc.), which is located in Saskatoon, Sk., and seems to be centered around salt and ice melter products.

I don't know for sure, but I think both of these cylindrical hoppers would have belonged to CN originally, and judging by what we can see as the ends of the cars would have been grey.

Brian asked (jokingly, I think) if I would be able to weather a couple of models like this for him.  I'm not confident enough to tackle a project like these.

Thanks for sending the pictures to me, Brian.  Happy Model Railroading everybody.

Hocking River and Northern Boxcar

A couple of months ago, I saw on a facebook group that another modeler - Tyler - had posted pictures of his freelance railroad, the Hocking River and Northern.  What particularly struck me about it was the project that he was working on was painting and lettering a bunch of 86 foot auto parts boxcars.  And, they were of the 8-door variety, which of course I particularly like.

Taking a bit of a chance, I sent Tyler a message explaining that I too like to run those jumbo sized boxcars, and asked if he would be open to selling me a set of his decals.  I already had an Athearn auto parts boxcar in grey primer in my cupboard, and I could paint and letter it into an HR&N car.  Tyler's paint scheme for the cars is black, silver roof, with white lettering and logo/herald.

The actual Hocking River is in Ohio, and I like to think that my layout is set in the upper midwest region, so it shouldn't really be too much of a stretch to see an HR&N boxcar in a train on my GTW.

Tyler replied to me saying that he would be happy to just send me the decals, and no need to for me to reimburse him.  Sure enough, a week or so later the decal set arrived in the mail.

Here, I've got my primered boxcar masked off, and about to paint the roof.  I used Dull Aluminum for that, as it's the only silver paint that I have.

Once the roof had dried overnight, and not wanting to take any chances with it, I sealed it with flat clear and let that dry for a couple of days.

During that drying time, progress continued on the project as I made a trip to the hardware store, and netted four steel nuts for use as added weight inside the boxcar.

Four steel nuts, epoxied to hold them in place above the wheel sets, add substantial weight to the 86 footer

I replaced the Athearn drawbars with new ones from Details West, part number 1040 which are better looking than the stock Athearn ones

Details West drawbars, Kadee couplers, and Rapido metal wheelsets

With the roof masked off, I began painting the body.  I spray the raised and recessed areas a couple of coats first to ensure they get full coverage.

I tried to get a couple of photos of just the decal set, but they're just too shiny to photograph well, so I'll move on here to show a few pictures of the finished boxcar...

HR&N 860000 out on the rails

And a look from the other end of the boxcar.  A sharp looking diamond shaped herald.

An overhead "drone" type view

Thanks Tyler !  This makes a great looking addition to the freightcar fleet here at JSSX ! 

Some More Gondolas

I'll start off this post with before and after photos of a couple of gondolas (Atlas models) that were brought to me recently to receive some weathering...

The "Before" photo.  Pretty shiny looking to begin with.

Same car spotted at the American Iron facility.  The spray painted graffiti offers a clue as to some of this gondolas travels.

2nd gondola's "before" photo

And the "after" photo.  A hint of the original blue still remains along the bottom sill

I did get going on my Otter Valley scrap metal gondola.  It's not quite finished up yet, but here's a couple of looks at it so far...

This view of the inside of the gondola gives us a pretty good look at the way the Metal Effects Rust treatment turned out.  Keeping my brush strokes vertical helps to somewhat simulate the location of the ribs of this freight car. I'm really pleased with this result.

AIMX 14114 is spotted here just behind the scrap metal yard.  On the outside, my first step was to spray thinned Roof Brown in light layers over the entire car.  I did so in order to take down the original off-white colour. The rust and scrapes were then created with Burnt Sienna and Burnt Umber artist oils.

I got the idea for the white patches on the sides and at the bottom of the ribs from a photo I had seen online.  The spraying of the Roof Brown colour on the sides also helps the fresher white patches to show up.

I first thought of using white decal trim film for those, but decided that might be kind of complicated trying to get decals to settle down properly in those locations. I also thought of masking the areas and spraying them white with my airbrush.  But that might be a pretty complicated masking job.  So, I finally settled on using white paint pens for the patches. 

I still want to put just a bit more rust on this side.  And maybe some small graffiti scribbles on both sides as well.

JSSX 813

At the top of the blog, the header photo for the month of August is a view of JSSX 813 as it's about to run under the Gratiot Avenue bridge. 813 has of course been seen a great many times  before, but here it is again anyway.  It's my favourite locomotive here, and always seems to get noticed by visitors as well.

The blog header photo

Outside of the shop

And another view

Here's a look at the locomotive that inspired my 813 on the JSSX, the Sequatchie Valley (SQVR) 345.  I liked that the locomotive really looked like a hard working machine.

This is the Randy Davis photo, taken in 2011, that inspired me to paint the 813. I read that it had been previously been owned by the Penn Central.

I omitted those giant numbers because I didn't want them to detract from the overall weathering.  Notice the reporting marks placed on the narrow black band which is overtop of a dark grey patch below the window.  On my 813, I never did add the spark arrestors, or maybe they're just covers over the exhaust vents.

Below is a picture of SQVR 345 working on the Walking Horse and Eastern RR. in 2019.

This photo is credited to Reed Reding in Shelbyville, TN. in 2019. I cropped the photo down so it would fit a little better fit here.  I must say though, "Walking Horse and Eastern" strikes me as a great name for a railroad !

So, for some reason, now the 345 has been repainted.  And I'm not too thrilled about the new look. I certainly won't be repainting my 813 any time soon.

This is the repainted SQVR 345 on the Caney Fork & Western, Read Reding having taken the photo just about a month ago.

Thanks for checking in.  Everybody have a good week, and do some model railroading.  My intention here will be to work on that AIMX gondola I showed last week.