Hey, the Blog is Back

Had a failure of the laptop computer the last week of November and so wasn't able to get on the interwebs, email, or access any files.  Actually, the computer itself was fine, but the ribbon wire that connects the computer to the screen broke/failed.

So I bought a brand new laptop, and after a few days was able to do most internet type things, but couldn't load any photos to the blog or create a new post.  I'm not much of a computer problem solver, but I do have a tech guy that I can usually get come to help me out.  In this instance though, he happened to be unavailable for some time, but he's been here twice now, and we think we've got everything under control.

I know that some of you readers had expressed concern for my well being, and I thank you for that. I honestly assure you that I've been just fine.  And thanks for continuing to check in here at the JSSX Railway.

And with that, on to the model railroad business.  I'll try to pick up more or less where I left off.

I had mentioned here last time (yes, back in November) that I'd been invited to attend a weathering clinic presented by George Dutka.  I brought two freight cars along with me, this Intermountain cylindrical hopper and Rapido boxcar.  The clinic was fun, it was great to see George, and he even referenced my weathering a couple of times, plus I met a few people that I had never met before.

New and clean Intermountain CN cylindrical hopper

Rapido 50 foot combination door boxcar.  Also new and fresh out of the box.

George had me hold up my boxcar while I was working on it so he could take my picture.

This is me (hoping to not crack the camera lens), trying out some Pan Pastels to lighten down the shine on the brown boxcar.  And there's my cylindrical hopper on the table too.

Back at home, I painted the wheels and trucks on both freight cars using Rust Texture, which was something that George told us about at the weathering clinic.  I'd never actually used Rust Texture for that before, so that was something new I learned.  George, if you're reading this, Thanks for the suggestion!

Here's that boxcar after I had finished it up at home:

Truth be told, I used a boxcar weathered by the great Rob Arsenault as inspiration for my weathering effort on this boxcar

Light rusting to the roof with Pan Pastels

And as for the CN cylindrical hopper, here it is after it was finished as well

I think it was Pan Pastels Paynes Gray and Burnt Sienna that I brushed on to this car 

A view to show the walkways and hatches

Also, I spent a week or so painting and weathering and putting these silos and accompanying building together.  They came as one part of the Walthers bakery kit.  I had used the brick walls from that kit to create the Tri-State Paper recycler on the layout.

I don't actually have a use for these silos, so I'm not sure what I'll end up doing with them.

That's it for now.  Thanks for hanging in there with me.  I hope you all have a very Merry Christmas.

PC Gondola Weathering

I thought that this time I'd present a few looks at a (Rapido) gondola that I've recently weathered for Don Janes.

I'm sorry that I didn't take a picture of the shiny green gondola as it was new and just taken out of the box.

Although it doesn't really look like it in these photos, I brushed over the outside of the gondola with Burnt Umber water mixable artist oil paint. I dabbed that paint on the top horizontal chords of the car and also on each of the panels, and then used a very slightly damp flat brush to smear those dabs down the sides creating lots of dark areas. 

Now, sometimes, it's not really about the paint you put on the model when weathering.  Sometimes it's about the paint you take off, and that was the plan here.

I used damp cotton swabs (cheap ones) and pulled them straight down at each panel to remove some of the paint that I had just applied.  Doing this left some paint remaining in the corrugations and crevices of the panels.  After allowing that remaining paint to dry for a couple of days, I dry brushed a mix of grey and light brown powders over random areas to add some more grime. A pretty realistic effect overall.

The interior of the gondola was rusted using Modern Masters Metal Effects Rust following the instructions.  It takes about a day with that product for the full rust effect to really develop, but there's really no hurry and I think that it's worth the wait.

This gondola looks like it fits right into the scene at the Ferrous Processing & Trading recycling industry on my layout here.

Also, I've been invited to a weathering workshop presented by George Dutka on Saturday afternoon.  I've never been to one of those type of things before and am looking forward to it.  Attendees are asked to bring brushes, Pan Pastels if we have them, and a boxcar or covered hopper to weather.

I didn't really have a covered hopper to bring, but last Sunday at the train show in Woodstock I picked up this one to bring along.

I'll let you know how this works out.  Wish me luck with it.

Have a good week.

Backdrop Photo Do-Over

I've re-done the background building that I printed and posted about here four weeks ago.  The building is the Fisher Body Plant 21 in Detroit. After mounting my printouts on the backdrop and living with it for these past weeks, I decided that it appeared undersized, so I printed it over again. This time I divided the final image into 4 sections and printed them in "portrait" format on 8.5"x14" paper instead of "landscape" on 8.5"x11" paper so that the prints would be taller.

I set the two final images out on the floor for this comparison view...

The larger print is just under 32 inches wide.

So here is the first (smaller) print as it originally appeared on the backdrop:

And here's the newer, larger version as it looks now mounted on the backdrop:

See it there all the way in the background.  I think this looks much better than my first try did.  Still more areas to take care of scenery wise to improve the general appearance of this end of the layout.  I did get a bit ground foam put down, which can be seen in front of the silos.

Woodstock Model Train Show is this Sunday, October 20th

It's about 80 miles or so from here, but if I decide to go maybe I'll see you there.

Have a great week !

One Car Train

I ran JSSX engine 813 as an extremely short train of a single boxcar this week.  Here's 813 pulling a rather worn looking Mississippian Railway boxcar from the JSSX yard.

Maybe we can follow along for a ways

That's the JSSX office at the left.  That little pile of pallets is the same ones that I showed here last time just after I'd put them together on the workbench.  I quickly brush painted them with "Barn Wood" craft paint this week and then spread a single drop of black Panel Line over the four of them.

Here they come around the curve and about to go under the "new" overpass that I still haven't come up with a name for.

Here's a pretty good look at the MISS boxcar.  I weathered this one a few years ago, and it's one of my favourite efforts.  There's a glimpse of part of an auto parts train in the background on the GTW.

And here's a view of the one car train as it passes beneath the Gratiot Avenue overpass. This is about as far as I ran the train ran at the time.  Maybe more with it next time.

I read once a long time ago that an overpass helps make the train appear to be coming or going to or from someplace, and I think that's true.  I also find that they provide a really nice sort of natural "frame" for taking photographs.

And now for something completely different...Here's the link to an article from the local newspaper, the Sarnia Observer.  I'm sorry if the ads show up with the story.

https://www.theobserver.ca/news/local-news/u-s-drifter-jailed-deported-for-riding-a-freight-train-into-sarnia-a-second-time

Thanks very much for looking in here, and have a good week everybody and I hope you're able to do some model railroading.

Covering Ground

The new Blog Header photo for October is a view of BSTX leaser 5859 hauling a car or two into the JSSX yard.  The JSSX has leased (well, purchased actually) the engine from the Brian Smith Transportation Group.

Not a lot going on around the layout this week, but I did manage to get a little bit of ground cover done.  And I mean it was really just a little bit.  Here's a before and after look at that.

See the gaps at the bottom of the two sets of pillars in the view above.  And the gap between two pieces of Homasote.

A couple of different sizes and colours of ballast laid as ground cover fill in the gaps.

A closer view of the base area at one of the pillars.  The SD38 rolled into view just as I was getting ready to click the shutter of the camera.

I also found a couple of loose pieces of styrene strip, so I cut them into 4 foot lengths, and made a few pallets out of them.

Once I get these 4x4 pallets painted (should be soon, I hope) I'll certainly be able to find a place on the layout for them.

That's about it for now.  Have a good week.

ABOX Re-Weathered

 I had decided this week to re-weather this ABOX car, so here's the before and after views of my ABOX 51091...

The boxcar looked alright before, but I decided to change it to a lighter, more faded yellow.  I removed this previous weathering using 91% isopropyl alcohol and cotton swabs.  Gotta be careful though to not inadvertently remove the yellow factory paint too.

Once the brownish previous weathering was removed, I faded the yellow down to a lighter colour with my usual Concrete Gray.

So that same boxcar now looks like this...

I modernized the boxcar a bit with some graffiti on the side. I like this rendition of ABOX 51091 much better.

Also, I finished up weathering this Rapido gondola model for Don this week.

The outside is faded and dirty, the inside is looking rusty.

As I happened to be standing by the entrance to the layout with my camera in my hand, I took this sort of a detail type picture from South Industrial Boulevard and then posted the photo on facebook's "HO Scale Model Railroading" group on Thursday afternoon.  I was quite surprised when 5 hours later there had been 380 views and 36 comments had been left.  Most comments were general in nature, but a few were more specific.

I like the picture, but I've never had a reaction like that from a posting before. Some of the comments remarked on the litter, the Jersey Barriers, or the guy wire.  No one even seemed to notice the boxcar.

So that was my week.  I hope yours was just as good.

Backdrop Photo

When travelling I75 through Detroit, there's a section of the freeway that runs more east-west than north-south.  And as you drive that section, if you look a little ways to the north of the freeway at the right moment, you might see the former Fisher Body Plant (building 21) off in the distance.

This photo below looks to have been taken from the corner of Harper Ave and Piquette St.

I often thought it would be cool to have picture of the building on the layout as part of the backdrop.  However, when I tried to edit the photo to eliminate the perspective, I could never quite get it to look right.

During another internet search, I found this much better view of the same building which was taken "square on" from just a bit further down the block on Harper Ave.

I cropped just a little bit from each end of the the 2nd photo and also removed some of the sky.  No sense printing the sky as I was intending to cut it out afterwards anyway, and also eliminating what I could will allow the final images to be printed that much larger.

Next, I divided the cropped picture into thirds and printed those 3 images as big as I could in portrait format on plain old copier paper.  I used portrait format so that I could print the images taller and closer to the height of the structures on the layout.

Once printed out, I of course trimmed the extra white paper from the edges, and mounted the 3 images onto a sheet of white construction paper that I had picked up previously from the local Michaels craft store.

I used 3M 77 spray adhesive to stick the images to the construction paper.  That stuff sets up really fast, and as a result, I did manage to tear one of the images in the sky portion.  You can see that tear to the left of the dust collector.  But that was OK because my plan was to cut out as much of the sky as I possibly could anyway.

It took me about an hour or so to trim out the sky from the top of the pictures with my Xacto knife.  And yes, I still have all my fingers and no bandages were necessary either.  I also ran the edge of my brown paint pen around the edges of the picture so that the white edges wouldn't show.

Here's the view from partway down the layout showing how the new backdrop piece fits in. The finished piece is about 25 inches or so wide.

This layout improvement project turned out just about as well as I had hoped, and in this view I think it blends right in !

Have a great week !

Covered Hopper and a Waffle Box

The receiving office here at the JSSX was pretty happy this week, as we've received a replacement hatch cover for that McKean brand Polysar plastic pellets/granules covered hopper that was featured here a couple of weeks ago.  The shipper, and all around good guy, was Kevin Smith who volunteered to send along the replacement part - plus another spare!

Here's the covered hopper with the 3rd from the right hatch cover missing, and the new replacement about ready to be installed

Hatch cover is in place, but looking pretty new compared to the rest of them

Just a little filing of a bit of flash on the new part before gluing into place, and then weathered with a quick dab of Tamiya's Panel Line Black to match the other covers.

I had weathered this Exactrail waffle boxcar a long time ago, and thought at the time that I'd paint one of the doors with primer to try to suggest the door was a replacement.

Truth is, I never really liked the way the door looked, but left it like that.  Until this week.

I masked around the red door with tape, and then sprayed the door black. I then sprayed clear gloss over that, and cut and scraped together new decals for the door from my decal box.  With that done, I loaded the airbrush with thinned Roof Brown and sprayed multiple light layers until I got the door to almost match (on purpose) the one beside it.

With the boxcar back in the same location you can see that the colour difference between doors now is slight, but noticeable.  I like the way it's looking now much better than before.

Have a great week everybody.  And thanks very much Kevin !

September This and That

I really like the photo that I've posted up at the top of the blog for September.  JSSX 815 (which I numbered after my sister's birthday) is dragging along empty CN gondola 143177.  Here's the same picture again so nobody has to scroll back up to the top.

The gondola isn't mine, it belongs to Don Janes, but I did the weathering on it.

This photo is from a few months ago when I had assembled the overpass, has my JSSX 815 about to roll beneath it

I'm not sure whether I'll do it or not, but I've been considering blocking in these windows with siding or maybe concrete block just to change up the look a bit.

Posed these two boxcars on the on-street trackage on South Industrial Blvd. for this photo.

And, I finally got back to doing some work on my industrial building project from a couple of months ago.  I shortened the platform where the silos are located by about 20 feet, allowing me to move the whole thing a little further from the overpass.

I've given the two silos some streaking rust, and also added piping from them into the building although the piping still needs a little weathering.  Weathering streaks have also been done on the warehouse building and foundation.

The whole structure assembly is mounted onto a piece of Gator Foam (I think that's what it's called) that's 6" x 36".

Special thanks go to George Dutka for giving me the Gator Foam quite a while ago. I've finally gotten a round to using it George. I've painted it brown before starting to add ground cover.

Have a good week everybody.

UNPX 123989 Covered Pellet Hopper

C-Yard in Sarnia is always, and I mean always, chocked full of tank cars and covered hoppers from the refineries around here.  Several weeks back when I was down there, I noticed one particular pellet hopper that had graffiti covering the side of the car from top to bottom.  Big grey block letters spelling "OZZY", which I took to be a reference to singer (?) Ozzy Osbourne.  And long ago he did have a song called Crazy Train.  That prototytpe car was too far down the yard track for me to take a picture.

I've never really been a fan of Ozzy Osbourne or his former band myself, but seeing the car did give me an idea, and I do have a few pellet hoppers for the layout, such as this one below.

I understand that not everyone really likes graffiti all that much, so just make of this what you will...

A very clean looking Walthers Plastic Pellet hopper

I laid out letters on a sheet of graph paper, cut them out and transferred their outlines to a piece of masking tape.  I then cut those letters out of the tape and laid it out on the side of the pellet car as a mask.

 Here's the mask laid out on the side of the pellet car. Jimmie. That's the way my Mom spelled my name when I was a little kid.

Next up was to spray the letters and remove the masking tape

I used the lightest colour grey that I had for the letters. That's the way I remembered the OZZY car had looked, but with black or at least dark outlines around the letters.

So I hand painted the dark outline around the letters

I decided to add some weathering to the car as well because why not.  A few light passes of the airbrush loaded with diluted ModelFlex Rust along the top of the car, followed by just a bit of Roof Brown as well.

My pellet hopper out in the wild along the GTW here.  I've also added the reflective stripes.

A look at the more "plain" side. It received the same light rust and roof brown.  There are also some really light and hard to see vertical rust streaks that the camera is hardly picking up.

Final picture shows the pellet hopper spotted for unloading on the MidWest Plastics spur.  Looks pretty good spotted there. I think I'm happy enough with the way this turned out, so I'm sure it'll see it's share of time out on the layout

Have a great week everybody. I hope you get to do some modeling railroading.

Jimmie.