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.

Polysar Granules Car

I've had this old McKean Models ACF 5800 cu.ft. pellet hopper car for many, many years.  McKean labelled it a Granules Car.  I don't remember where I got it, but the price sticker is still on the box at $9.45. I've had it on the layout from time to time, and brought it out once again a couple of months ago.  Over the years I've managed to lose one of the 20" hatch covers, and I don't know how I'd ever find one of those that would match, but I'm wondering now if I could get one 3D printed.

My friend Jay stopped in for a visit a couple of months ago, and upon seeing this car, he commented that he happened to have seen one of the prototype cars with the same Polysar logo on the side not too long before.  Jay remarked that the blue logo on the real car had been quite faded, and the rest of car looked to be in good shape.

I should also explain to those that would not likely know, that Polysar was the name of a local refinery here in Sarnia which began as the crown corporation Polymer to manufacture synthetic rubber during WW2.  Polymer became Polysar, which eventually became part of Nova Chemicals. My adoring wife Linda worked at Polysar/Nova Chemicals for 37 years.

The model has always seemed kind of light in weight, but it's certainly not that way anymore.

The covered hopper's roof is easily removable, so I've epoxied two heavy 3/4" steel nuts inside to increase the car's weight.

I've put a couple of slightly darker patches on the sides of the car, and faded the roof and sides including the blue logo, by airbrushing the entire car with Concrete Gray acrylic paint.  I've also added some light weathering streaking and a couple of scratch marks.

If you look really closely a couple of ever-so-slightly darker grey patches are there too, suggesting maybe some work done to the sides in the past.

I decided to give the upper areas of the car sides an overall light rusty look, so I masked off the Polysar logo and airbrushed some rust colouring along the upper portion of the covered hopper.

Although it's hard to see here, I used Camo Brown to paint the wheels and trucks.

The old Polysar "Granules Car" sits on my GTW line awaiting it's turn to be spotted at the MidWest Plastics plant.

In the right place at the right time on Tuesday, we got to watch the Algoma oil/chemical tanker AlgoCanada as it docked right in front of us at the Sidney Smith dock just to the south of the Government Docks here in Sarnia.

Pretty impressive to watch a 426 foot ship moving sideways towards me as I took this picture.  I could hear the side thrusters power up and down as I stood there with my camera. 

Rapido Gondola Weathered

I recently finished this (Rapido) CN gondola weathering project for Don.

As I very often do, I forgot to take picture of the gondola before starting in on the weathering, so I'm sorry for that.  The good news though is that I this one turned out really well...

The gondola was a pretty bright and shiny brown to start with, so I first muted the colour down with burnt umber oil colours that I painted on with a flat brush.  Then, and this is kind of key to the process here, I removed some of that burnt umber with the brush dampened with plain water.  Let's have a look...The dark highlights along the rivet lines and beside the ribs is Tamiya Panel Line Black.  I simply applied that with the handy little brush that comes with the Panel Line bottle.

I just had to see how Don's gondola looked on the layout, so here's a few pictures from there.  

The gondola is posed on a spur leading to one of the layout industries

For the interior walls, which we can kind of see in this view, I brushed on burnt sienna and burnt umber artist acrylics, and then using a damp flat brush went over them with vertical strokes only. When that was all good and dry, I dabbed on Tamiya Panel Line Black in somewhat random places and amounts.

This view gives us a look at the opposite interior wall

 Here we see Don's gondola coupled to JSSX 815.  I think this car turned out great.

Switching gears now, here's a link to a helpful article for scratch building utility poles for our railroads.  The method is written by well known modeler Gary Ruming

Utility Poles in HO Scale

Gary describes in detail the materials and methods he uses.  And he's really detailed about everything.

Everyone have a great week !

Around the Layout

Thought I'd post  a few pictures of scenes from the layout.  A couple may have been shown in the past, but here they are again anyway.

The former CNW locomotive in the foreground is now a leaser, and is operating on the JSSX in this view.  Just behind it is the Ferrous Processing & Trading recycler, and beyond that is the GTW line.

I modeled my 3885 after the prototype NREX 3885

In the foreground is one of the unnamed warehouses on the layout. This one is scratch-built except for the red brick building at the left hand end of it.

I cropped the picture down quite a bit to take out some of the blue backdrop and the facia along the front of the layout.

Closeup of the loading dock at that warehouse in the above photo.

The grey sided building, loading dock, pallets, and dock plate are all scratch built from various Evergreen styrene pieces

Here comes NREX 3885 again, just about to roll onto the street trackage on South Industrial Blvd.

That NW boxcar was sold to another modeler this past spring, so is hopefully seeing plenty of time on his layout.

This pair of oil tanks fill in one of the corner areas on the layout.  I had the idea for this after noticing two tanks near the road at the Imperial Oil facility here in Sarnia. 

The tanks are Pikestuff kits.  The chain link fencing is scratch-built.

After weathering these Jersey barriers a few months ago I set them onto this old flatcar until I decided where to put them out on the layout.

They're still sitting on the flatcar

Enjoy your layout everybody.

Trio of RailBox Cars

A trio of RailBox cars are lined up on the interchange track on the JSSX.  Well, actually 2 are RBOX and the 3rd one down is an ABOX car with the combination plug and sliding doors

On the two RBOX cars I removed the original pad printed graphics and replaced them with Precision Design Co.'s excellent ghost lettering decals

Here is a link to the PDC site if you're interested in trying that yourself:

Precision Design Co. - pdc.ca

Taken on a different day over on the GTW, 5931 drops the two RBOX's at Tri-State Paper

This SD40 sees lots of use.

RBOX 31916 is showing some age at the loading dock

And at door number three sits RBOX 31224 waiting to be loaded.  I made those old notices that have been stuck onto the door and one of the panels from white decal trim film that I sprayed lightly with a beige colour so that they would show some age. 

And here's ABOX 51091, with it's combination sliding/plug doors, looking like it has been temporarily dropped  and intended to go to MidWest Plastics at the next spur down.

That's it for now.  Enjoy your railroad everybody.