A Touch of Grey

I had ordered this tank car at the same time as I ordered last week's featured replacement switch because, well, why not ?  It's an Atlas tank car (17360 gallon) that will fit in nicely with the few other tank cars that I already had.

This particular model is for transporting chlorine, but I just use them for general service as I like the size of them and I'm not really all that dedicated to modelling with prototypical accuracy.

It only took me about 20 minutes per side to remove the "Inhalation Hazard Chlorine" lettering at the right-hand ends of the cars.  I used MicroSol on a small piece of paper towel to soak the printing,  followed by some gentle scrubbing with a damp cotton swab.

 

I have a couple of slightly different shades of Microscale trim film on hand so I've cut some pieces and applied them as paint patches on both cars.

I've managed to somehow misplace my reflective striping stickers, so the newer tank car is missing them

A couple of views of the grey tank cars being moved along the JSSX. 

Passing by the Ferrous Process & Trading site

And that's it for now.  Have a good week.

Derailment Trouble & Repair

Ran into some problems here in the last little while, in the way of track issues. Might sound crazy, but this type of thing seems to happen here when the winter arrives and then again as summer gets here.  Two examples of problems are below:

First, one of my railcars, just one mind you, consistently de-railed at one spot. With a little closer examination, here's what the cause turned out to be...The curved stock rail had developed a nasty inward kink to the left of the switch rod.

I removed the switch, and tried to epoxy the rail back into place, and left it to cure overnight. The epoxy didn't work out, so I scraped the epoxy out and tried gluing with CA and allowing that to cure for a day, but the rail didn't hold in place with that either.

Nothing much to see here with the broken switch removed. I was able to slide all 6 rail joiners back, so then I misted the ballast with water/alcohol mix and lifted the switch out.  I cleaned up the cork roadbed with a paint scraper. 

I found and ordered a new switch from the Otter Valley Railroad website, and it arrived in a couple of days. Always good service from them.

The new switch is a Peco "Unifrog" type.  I'll use that Floquil marker shown above to paint the rails.

And so here is the new switch installed on the GTW and working just fine

I did paint the rail sides (I think that's called the "rail web") with that paint pen, but I'm not too crazy about the colour the rails turned out afterward.  Looks too brassy now, so I guess I'll still have to go over them with some brown paint.

Changing gears now, here's a really nice photo that was posted on fb by Lorraine Morrill looking west toward the sunset last week at the Sarnia VIA station.

Such a nice picture

So that's it for now. Have a great week everybody.

Bulkhead FlatCar Again

We're actually going to start off this time with this link 🔴 LIVE Trains Railcam | Houston, Texas (Tower 26) PTZ to the Tower 26 live webcam in Houston, Texas.  I happened across this on YouTube last Sunday, and it certainly seems to be a busy enough spot.

And now another look at the bulkhead flatcar that I put the wooden deck and ends.  I've finished what I wanted to do to this car, except I haven't made a load for it yet.  The instructions from Imagine That said to attach the parts with gel-type CA glue, so I did.  Here's a view of how I held that in place while the CA cured overnight.

I know size of the clamps might look like overkill, but that's what I had, and they worked.

I've added a bit of graffiti (decals) to the side of the B-end bulkhead and to the front of the A-end bulkhead. I wasn't sure about applying a decal to actual wood, so I first gave the wooden bulkhead surface a double-shot of Tamiya's clear gloss.  The decal was an old one from SGS (thanks Sean).

 Hard to see them in this view, but I've also added the Smokebox Graphics reflective stripes.The entire car got a light spray of Rail Brown to flatten down the colour and then Tamiya Clear Flat to seal it all up.

As for making a load for this flatcar, I was going to use some Rix I-Beams that I have, but they're 50 feet long, and the actual flatcar deck is only 48 feet in length.  The bulkheads each take up 6 feet of the 60 foot overall length of the car.  I don't feel confident that I could cut length off of the I-Beams very well, so I'll have to think of something else. 

And so I'll close out with this scanned this photo of CN 1317, taken probably around 30 years ago or so, by the late Bruce Peachey.  I lightened the contrast on the image here by 20% in order to be able bring out the trucks and fuel tank a bit better.  Seems like scanned photos often appear darker than the original print.1317 is sitting down alongside the St.Clair River here in Sarnia.  It would have been there to work the CN car ferry that would run back and forth from Sarnia to Port Huron, Michigan.  That's Port Huron in the background of course, and if you look at the upper right end of the picture you can just make out the Bluewater Bridge, back when there was only the one bridge.

Have a good week everyone.  Take it easy if you're shoveling snow.

Photo Struggles on the JSSX

I was wanting to get a good photo of my LTEX SD40 leaser engine coming around the curve pulling a few covered hoppers.  Using the overpass to sort of frame the view, but I either didn't notice or couldn't really see under the bridge what the camera could see.I often find that photos from the layout can be quite helpful in making the layout better.  The camera seems to see things in photos that I don't really notice otherwise.  A case in point is above.

Cropping the bottom portion of the photo takes out those exposed drywall screw heads, but really doesn't do anything much for that spider web, does it?!

A slightly different angle of view, but there's another web.

I finally managed to get a couple of shots that I'm pretty happy with

But I think I like this next one best

This interesting aerial photo of Lambton Diesel Specialists here in Sarnia appeared on my facebook feed a couple of weeks ago.  I saved it with the intention of posting it here. No photo credit was given and no photo date either.

Lots to see...various vehicles, some of the footings from the original CN roundhouse's footprint, a blue and red Imperial Oil switcher, a flat car with 2 diesel engines on it, a CN slug, a CN switcher, A CP switcher, 3 SW9 and slug sets, yard leads, and the CN main at the top left the CN main leading to the St.Clair Tunnel.

Photos From Around the JSSX

I posted this first photo on a facebook page a couple of weeks ago, and it appears to have been pretty popular on there, with over 400 views.  I never get 400 views.I featured the MISS boxcar on the blog back in May 2024.  Of course my favourite engine, JSSX 813, has been here on the blog countless times.

813 working again, and lurking there in the background over on the GTW is one of their GP38's.

This time on the JSSX, my 813 is pulling that former ROCK boxcar and a pair of old SOO LINE cars

Over at the maintenance building

This old flatcar has been loaded up with spare concrete Jersey Barriers.  That pallet is one of my creations from a couple of years ago.  A couple of old boxcar doors, a set of concrete steps, a random plank, and a few lengths of old rail.

And there's that engine 813 sneaking into the picture again

Below, a single boxcar spotted at one of the warehouses.  I really should put some trees in at the end of the tracks here to hide the backdrop wall a bit.

Shortline track can often have a few wobbles develop over time.  That's my excuse anyway.  Truth is I'm just not good at laying track