Friday, 29 December 2023
CN Gondola
Friday, 22 December 2023
SWeep 7104
This kitbashed guy had been back in the storage cupboard for quite a while, but made it's way out of there and onto the layout this week. Built from an Athearn Blue Box SW 1200 and GP9.
7104 sits outside of the maintenance shop after it had wheel cleaning done before really heading out onto the layoutFriday, 15 December 2023
A Common Pellet Hopper for the Layout
I know that they're everywhere, but here in Sarnia, plastic pellet hoppers are ubiquitous. CN's C-Yard here might very well contain a couple hundred of them as you're reading this. There's so many of them, that it kind of gets a bit boring. Plus, the many private rail yards around here have even more.
On my layout, I have Mid-West Plastics industry, which has room to hold 1 to 3 pellet hoppers, plus spots for a single boxcar, as well as a tank car on it's spur track.
I found this pellet hopper down at C-Yard one day this fall, and thought the graffiti on this one was quite different looking, so I took the photo thinking that I'd try modeling it as best I could.
This Walthers car (below) has seen only occasional service as new on the layout, but seems quite similar to the prototype car, so I'll use it for this weathering project.
Those sort of vertical rusty areas are rust coloured acrylic paint that I applied with the corner of a makeup sponge. I added the reflective stripes, which are made by Smokebox Graphics
I didn't have photo of the other side of the prototype car, so I kept the weathering simple, with just some light rusting and a couple of unexplained paint patches on the side of the car.
Friday, 8 December 2023
JBOX 149500
I pulled this boxcar out of storage this week to give it a little time out on the layout. When I say "a little time", it's likely to be a few weeks.
This was painted and lettered by me several years ago. I had wondered for a long time before that just what one of these might have looked like if there ever had actually been one in the 1:1 world. This is of course an Athearn model, as Tangent wasn't around back then.
Friday, 1 December 2023
Wisconsin Central Boxcars
GTW 5931 is at the top of the blog for December. Seen here, the SD40-2 is pulling a string of empty 86 foot auto parts boxcars that are bound for the parts plant just a couple of minutes down the track.
A while back, I weathered a Wisconsin Central boxcar for Jamie, and now I've done another for him. And one for myself as well. Here's a few looks...
This first one is done for Jamie...As the boxcar looks (well, looked) fresh out of the box. The reporting marks came already patched like this.
And this next car is mine. The process for this boxcar was done pretty much the same way.