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.