Along the GTW

GTW 6252, an SD38, is pulling into the siding to allow 5931, which will be approaching along the main line from the opposite direction, to pass.

5931 with auto parts cars is rolling by the Mid-West Plastics plant.

A closer view of the 5931

I was a bit disappointed to miss out on buying another one of these CN/GTW SD40-2's in the North America scheme a few weeks ago. 

A look at the GTW line, to include a view of some of my poorly executed trackwork.

I didn't do a great job laying the track, but I kind of like the way it looks anyway.  And fortunately, I don't think I've ever had derailments around here.

 I stumbled across this The Far Side cartoon by Gary Larsen, so thought I'd add it in here.

I'll leave it at that for this week.  Have a good one.

Boxcar Re-paint

Just before we get to the boxcar re-paint, I want to say that I was finally (somehow) able to get logged in correctly to Google, so now I can reply to any comments left in the comment section at the end of the blog posts.

Regarding this boxcar, Luc had asked if I could paint, patch, and weather a model to look like this prototype boxcar for his friend Radisson.  They were wanting the car to be lettered for Radisson's railroad, the ACRR.  So that's what I've spent much of my modeling time doing recently.

Luc and Radisson provided me with this Exactrail model as the victim...A nice looking Exactrail model of a PS 5344 boxcar

I removed the original logo, etc., using Solvaset, cotton swabs, and round wooden toothpicks. The toothpicks were dampened with water to soften them a bit so as to not scratch the model.

Next step was to primer the boxcar to cover the bits of Exactrails's original pad printing that wouldn't come off.

In hindsight, I wish I had used a lighter colour for the primer.  That would have helped to show the brightness of the final coat(s) a bit better, and maybe fewer coats of paint.

Here's the boxcar after the colour coat(s) have been sprayed on. Long ago, Luc had given me a bottle of Mission Models Red Oxide paint, I thought would be a reasonable colour match.  He also gave me Smokebox Graphics decals to be used on the boxcar.

The colour looked to be about right when it was in the bottle and while it was still wet on the model, but it actually dried to appear quite brown.  To counter that, I've sprayed thin and light coats of SP Red overtop, and the result turned out rather well.

Luc had said to me that I could do paint overspray on the roof if I wanted to. 

I hadn't actually done the roof overspray before this. It's a subtle detail, but I think it turned out rather well.  That dark area at the lower corner of the picture is just a shadow

Here's the boxcar, all finished up: re-painted, patched, and weathered. I had sprayed a gloss coat before applying the decals of course, but I also added another coat of gloss on top of the decals.  I think htat helps hide any outline of the decal edges.  Then I covered the whole boxcar with Tamiya Clear Flat to eliminate the shine. 

If we include the patches, the graffiti, and the old notices by the doors, I think that there are a total of something like 78 separate decals applied to this boxcar. (And after cutting all those decals, I still have all my fingers.)

Here's a final look at ACRR 5455, along with sister car 5450 out on my layout

I think this project turned out to be quite successful

Have a great week.  And go do some modeling.

A Bit of Roadwork

5708 is stopped here on South Industrial Blvd., as there has been an intermittent, but ongoing situation with the roadway. That section of the street has been popping up and out of place from time to time, and causing derailments and just not looking very good.  Time to replace that piece of the road.

This piece of the street trackage has caused derailments and caused trains to stop if it happens to catch on the engine's truck.

That section of the road is made of a piece of .040 styrene, cut and filed to size, and press-fitted into place.

I easily lifted out the old piece, and traced around it onto a clean piece of .020 styrene. Then I cut it out just a little bit bigger than the original, and carefully filed the edges down until it fit into place correctly.

I scored a couple of lines into the styrene to represent concrete sections with the back of my Xacto blade, and then painted the styrene with a beige coloured acrylic craft paint to represent aged concrete.

Random cracks in the concrete are simply drawn on with a .003 black artist's pen.  I need to colour in those whitish areas, particularly between the rails. They have been caused by me when cleaning the rails, as I've inadvertently scraped away the paint.

Over on the other side of the layout, along the GTW line, I took this nice photo of 6252 (an SD38) just as it's about to pop out from beneath the Gratiot Avenue overpass.

Have a good week

JSSX 5068 Working

I took the picture of the CN boxcar this week, and liked it enough to post it and leave it up at the header for the month of November. It's an Exactrail 50 foot combination door car, graffitied and weathered. The building where the boxcar is spotted has been closed down for a while, so it's a bit surprising to see a boxcar there. 

Down at the other end of the JSSX yard, a crewman is seen just climbing aboard Dash39-B 5068 as it begins to pull it's short train out of the JSSX yard.

5068 will be heading for the South Industrial job today.

The 5068 from the other side

And here, 5068 has just taken the diverging track on it's way to South Industrial Blvd. There's the old closed down and burned out Gulf Oil gas station in the background

And speaking of closed down, there's the boarded up tower that used to control the diamond that the train is just about to cross.  The drawbridge in the background is a cut out of a photo I took from Water Street in Port Huron, Michigan, of the former GTW bridge over Black River.

Brian Smith sent along this photo of CN's 2755, a former CitiRail ES44AC, a couple of weeks ago.

Brian noted that he liked the stenciling on the cab, but I think there was some sarcasm to his comment.  A Citirail/CN ES44 model would be oversized for my layout here, but if I did have one, I think I might kind of want to model this stenciling.

Have a good week everybody.