Some RBOX's on the Layout

Work continues (still slowly) on my SD9. Maybe more on that one next time.  In the meantime, here are a few looks at some RBOX's that have been out and about on the layout.

RBOX 31224 sitting off-spot just outside of the paper recycler.

RBOX 31856 has some sealant on the roof seams.

RBOX 31916 in a nice view of the roof

RBOX 37073.  (actually, I just sold this one)

And a couple of 60 foot ABOX cars as well...

ABOX 51114 at Tri-State Paper.

ABOX 51091 sitting on South Industrial Blvd. some time ago.

Have a good week everyone.  Spring is finally here.  Yay.

A Little SD9 Progress

Work continues on my ex-SP ex-Willamette & Pacific SD9 that the JSSX acquired.  Being an undecorated kit locomotive, I'm finding it a bit tricky doing the painting and installing the parts, but as I chip away at it progress is made.  Here's the inspiration photo of the prototype.

I know my model will not turn out exactly like the prototype (Richard Gibson photo), but hopefully it will at the least be an interesting and plausible, well-worn addition to the JSSX fleet.

Here's a few photos of my progress:

I've painted the area including the grilles in white, similar to what the W&P did. I know it looks quite stark here, but the eventual weathering will take care of that.

I tried putting the wide white stripe below the dynamic brake where the Willamette & Pacific lettering is located, but thought it looked horrible, so the JSSX has painted over the stripe with black. Maybe a shade of grey different from the body colour would be better.

As for the parts, on the roof so far I've installed 6 fans, 2 horns, the cooling piping assembly, and 13 eyebolts.

I've got the SP "wings" on the nose.  I used Microscale decals for those.  I carefully cut them out, lightly sprayed them with the grey paint that I used on the shell, and then sprayed with the same SP Scarlet that I used on the nose, and yet the colour doesn't quite match the nose.  I'll still need to paint the trucks and fuel tank in grey.

That's about it so far on the SD9.  I did some switching on the layout this week, so I thought I'd show this one picture from that.

Moscow, Camden & San Augustine boxcar spotted at the rail dock.  I don't know what they make or do in this place, but it gets kind of tricky to get the boxcar in there with a run around in the street followed by a switch back that involves pulling cars out from the neighboring industry.

Happy March Break everybody !

 

This and That

 Just going to show a few looks from around the layout

Sure appears that this one-time Gulf station has probably seen better days. I kind of kitbashed the kit by boarding up the windows, left a couple of them open, and added the graffiti scribbles.  For the roof, I cut a piece of cardstock to fit and took that piece outside to burn the hole at the back edge of it. I forget the name of the kit manufacturer, but I believe they've gone out of business.

A glimpse inside Door #2 at Tri-State Paper reveals bales of recycle paper ready to ship out.  I searched online for photos of paper bales, and printed a few out. They're pasted onto some pieces of styrene and I set them into place by the dock door before I put the roof on the building.

Here comes JSSX 815 on it's way to do some switching over on the South Industrial spur

A couple of FBOX's spotted on the South Industrial.

That undecorated SD9 that I started working on a couple of weeks ago is progressing slowly.  We can see here that I've got it painted, the 6 rooftop fans are installed, and a few of the other parts are painted and ready to install as well. I've also made up that short length of chain link fence that will go on the layout.

That'll be all for now.  Happy Daylight Savings Time everybody.

The Sweep Returns Onto the Layout

Spent a few minutes out railfanning around the layout this week, and caught the old CN Sweep on a little switching run.

I kitbashed this engine several years ago.  It's an old Athearn blue box switcher frame, motor and cab, with an Athearn blue box GP9 long hood.  Not absolutely perfect, but I put new wheels on it a couple of years ago and it runs really well.  The lights are led's that I had installed at Pete's Trains in London, Ontario.

Here's just a few looks at my SWeep 7104 at work:Running light as it passes behind the transload area on the JSSX

Side view of 7104 at the same location as the first photo

I like this view beneath the Gratiot overpass, with an auto parts train passing by in the background

7104 as it has just picked up Railbox car at the Grey Warehouse

This is actually an older picture, taken beneath the Gratiot overpass

Have a nice week out there.

Undecorated SD7 Project

Something that I'm intending to be chipping away at for a while is this Proto 2000 undecorated SD7 model that I dug out of the storage cupboard a couple of days ago.  The intention will be to letter it for the JSSX.

There's the shell, the chassis and motor, and a sealed baggie that's full with a lot of detail parts that came with the Proto kit.  Quite a set of instructions came with it too.

I bought these items from Otter Valley a couple of months ago with this engine in mind.  I thought I'd get two of the ESU basic style decoders because I figured it cant hurt to keep a spare around, right?

I plugged one of the decoders into the engine, and set it on the programming track beside the JSSX maintenance shed. 

Once programmed, I ran the SD7 around that layout looking just like this for about 20 minutes or so.  It ran really nicely in that trial run.

Here's a look at the inspiration for what I've got in mind for my model.

I'm hoping that the model turns out to look something like this.  I won't be including the orange P&W logo, that's for sure, and the bright white band below the dynamic brake blister won't have the Willamette & Pacific printed on it either.  And I'm also unsure about that light package.

I've got what's left of some old Microscale decals that I think I can use  for the SP "wings" on the front of the short hood.

I'll try to post progress as I go along, but I expect that this is going to take me a while.  Wish me luck.

Have a good week.  Do some modeling.

Upgrade to an Industrial Building

When I put together this industrial building a few years ago, my idea at that time was for it to represent some random industry that had closed down and been left abandoned.  To try to make it look that way, I broke all the window panes out of it (something like 2200 individual panes in total).

It's made up of parts from three of the Walther's "Roberts Printing" kits

Anyway, it didn't take long for me to start thinking back then that it was kind of a waste to not use a spur that could be used to create boxcar traffic in and out.  And so, I began telling myself that maybe just the main floor could be somebody's warehouse and then I'd be able to rotate box cars in and out. So then I covered over the first floor window sections with "steel" siding.

That was a few years ago, and I've decided recently to somewhat change up the appearance of the building by covering over all of the windows with siding that I cut from Evergreen styrene.  I test fit each piece as I went along.  There were a few that I had to file a bit to get them to fit into the window recesses. I honestly don't know what the Evergreen part number is that I used. I painted the "steel panels" with Krylon Camo Brown spray paint and simply press fitted  each one into place.

So here's a few looks at what kept me occupied this week...

The building as it was until this week.

And as it now stands with all of the windows covered over.

A 3/4 view showing the siding panels now installed in the building.  I'm happy with how it's turned out, and the siding panels can be easily removed if or when I ever decide to go back to the broken window look.

That's it for now.  Have a good weekend.

E & C Shops Boxcar

Here's an old E&C Shops boxcar that I picked up at a train show 2 years ago or so, and I've finally gotten around to doing some weathering on it.  Or, I should say that I got around to putting it together and weathering it.  This one is from back when having a model meant doing some assembly after purchase.A view of the pre-assembled pieces.  A few things about this one are that the metal weight was too long to fit on the bottom floor inside the boxcar so I cut it and installed it in 2 pieces and the wheels that came with it are plastic.  When I clipped the brake from the sprue, it went flying off somewhere, and I've never seen it since. Oh, and the plastic body had curved or warped itself inward so the roof that was supposed to be simply press-fitted continually popped off.

So, I cut the metal weight and centered it on the floor of the car, ordered replacement wheels because I didn't have any, found a brake piece that was close enough in my random parts box, and glued the roof in place.  Other than that, things went rather smoothly.

The picture's a little dark, but here's the assembled boxcar as it looked to begin with.  Not much in the way of details on the doors.

The Ashley, Drew and Northern operated over 40-some miles in Arkansas, was acquired by Georgia-Pacific, so I'm assuming they hauled lumber.  The pine tree logo on the sides would also be a clue to that

I had this photo filed away of a similar model done by Norm Madore to use as influence over what mine might become.

Norm Madore photo

I liked that Norm's model had faded to a blue tone, so I tried to do that to mine as well. Green is made up of blue and yellow, and the yellow would fade away first leaving the bluish colour. That's how I think it would work.  I don't think I quite got there, but pressed forward anyway.I masked over the white doors.

So here's the one side after it's been beaten up a bit.  Burnt Sienna and Burnt Umber for the rust.  It turned out darker than I think I wanted it to.

And skipping ahead now, my ADN boxcar has made it out onto the rails...

I'd kind of like to patch the reporting marks, but not sure yet which reporting marks might be appropriate for this boxcar.

Sure is one beaten-up looking boxcar as it rolls by in a train.

A look at the B-end.  If I ever find the brake wheel that flew off (slim chance at best) I'll take this one off and put the right one on.  I also have added the brake line to the model.

Looks like it should be in the scrap yard where the gondola in the foreground is.  The car really did go from the original green to blue though.  I had faded it first with the beige coloured concrete gray that I like to use, and then just a really light layer of very thin light Craftsmart blue which made all the difference.

Spotted at Door #1 at Tri-State Paper.

That's all for now.  Stay warm out there.

Runaround Track

Well, I actually did get my work done on that runaround/siding track that I wrote about last time.  I removed the (Peco) #6 switch/turnout from one end, and put in a (Peco) curved switch/turnout about 16 inches further back, so the siding became that much longer.

There's the old turnout laying by the pile of ballast, and the new curved turnout set into in place.

And the way things sit now with almost everything complete...new turnout, new ballast, some ground cover materials in place.  Still have some details to do, such as painting the rails and ties and add the ground throw for the switch.

The work didn't actually go too badly really, and the trains are running through there on either track and in either direction with no troubles.  So far I'm calling this a win.

Now, I can easily fit seven of my 86 foot cars plus two GP engines in the runaround.  I'd like to do pretty much the same thing at the other end of the runaround as well, and that would add another car length in capacity.

To close out now, I thought I'd show this (scanned) photo that I've posted on here before, which I took while facing east from the west end of the platform here in Sarnia sometime way back in the 90's.  Here it is again though, just because this is how I've been feeling all this week when I look or go outside.Kind of makes my back ache just looking at it this.

Happy January's Over With everybody.

Run-Around Siding

Just a look at the run-around that I've been seriously considering trying to extend, which is used when switching freight cars in and out of the four industries that are located along here.  

The reason I've been thinking about making it a little longer is just so I could add an extra 86 foot boxcar to the train that serves my auto parts plant. The siding starts as the track comes out of the 180 degree curve at each end of the layout. I've got curved switches that I can use for this. As it is, I can get a maximum of six 86 footers and a pair of GP38's to fit into this run around, but I'd really like to get one or maybe even two more of the big cars into the train.  At the left in the picture, you can see the end of one of the 86 footers spotted into the parts plant spur.  And waaayyy down at the far end of the track, the red and blue GP 38's are just coming into view.

SD40 switching boxcars into the auto parts plant.

At the opposite end of the run-around is the Mid-West Plastics plant. 

And in between the parts plant and the plastics industry, we see a trio of NSC fifty foot boxcars (Atlas models) in GTW paint spotted at the busy Tri-State Paper recycler plant.

Ferrous Processing spur runs off of the other side of the run-around.

Wish me luck, 'cuz I think I might actually try to lengthen this siding.  More on this as I move forward.

86 Foot Boxcar Weathered

I'd started to give this Blue Box 86 footer some time on the layout, but didn't really think much of the fresh and clean look of it so it landed on the bench for 2 or 3 dys for a little weathering.  It took me about 3 - 4 hours working time, done over the course of 3 days, allowing for some drying time for the paints as I went along.

This is one that I re-painted and lettered last year

And so here is a full side view as the parts car looks now, weathered.  Quite a transformation  if I do say so myself.Posed here off-spot on a spur next door to my parts plant.

I sprayed the boxcar with my normal thinned Concrete Gray through the airbrush to get a light fade to the overall paint. (I like this picture)

Same location, but a look from the other end. The rust and it's streaking are done as usual with Burnt Sienna and Burnt Umber acrylic artist paints. Smoke Box Graphics reflective stripes added as well.

And knowing how I like the 86 foot boxcars, my friend Chuck in the Chicago area took it upon himself to send me a boxcar that he feels no longer fits in with his collection.  Chuck told me that he had painted and lettered this Athearn boxcar some twenty years ago or so.

Have a look:

Nice that the former Conrail boxcar has been re-lettered to NYC.  Thank you Chuck !

The Information Technology team (me) here at jssxrailway has added a new blog to the sidebar so that we can now connect really easily to The Hills Line blog which belongs to James McNab.  Looks like a great layout and really nicely composed blog.  Here's the introduction to it: 

The Hills Line is an eight-mile industrial spur of the Iowa Interstate Railroad serving the eastern Iowa towns of Iowa City and Hills. This HO Scale version replicates the practices, policies, and procedures found on the prototype to provide guests and operators a flavor of real-life railroading.

Click on the link in the sidebar to go directly to the Hills Line blog.

Happy Modeling everybody.  Have a good week.