Kit Bashing "The General"

John W Reid Aug 27, 2010

  1. EMD trainman

    EMD trainman TrainBoard Member

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    JohnReid,

    Welcome to the G scale section and glad to see you here. I'm pretty sure you will feel comfortable with us G scalers. I remember that General MPC model kit back from the day. I like what you are doing with the Bachmann passenger cars. I had no idea they were so easy to work with. I noticed someone made a post about how they actually motorized the General MPC locomotive, that was very interesting. I seem to remember another MPC locomotive kit but can't remember for the lif of me what other one I'm thinking of.

    Anyway, enjoy your stay, let everyone you moved here thanx
    EMD Trainman
    G scale moderator
     
  2. John W Reid

    John W Reid TrainBoard Member

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    Weathering wood,everybody seems to have a different method here is mine.
    The woods I generally use for model making are basswood,pine , birch tongue depressors and various sizes of coffee stir stiks.In pic 024 in my G scale album you can see the different types that I have collected till now.They are very strong. The raw wood has only been highly polished.
    I like the barnsiding look and this is the way I do it.
    Mix up a thin wash of paint using flat acrylics. Why flat acrylics ? because there is no varnish in them, to make the paint shine and who wants shiny barnsiding.For this wash I use Nimbus Grey with a touch of Raw Umber added plus lots of water.I brush this on the wood letting it soak into the raw wood.Do not use a sealer at any time during this process.After 2 or 3 thin coats you should have a nice gray with some of the wood grain showing through.You want to take advantage of the transparency of acrylics for this technique.When happy let the wood dry or use a hair dryer to speed up the process.This wood is now ready for use and should have an aged look about it. To be cont....
     
  3. John W Reid

    John W Reid TrainBoard Member

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    Thanks Trainman !
     
  4. BoxcabE50

    BoxcabE50 HOn30 & N Scales Staff Member TrainBoard Supporter

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    Do you have a particular brand that seems to provide the best results desired?

    Boxcab E50
     
  5. EMD trainman

    EMD trainman TrainBoard Member

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    JohnRied, you captured my curiousity, so I jumped on the E-store and checked around. Sure enough they had listings for locomotive plastic model kits. I found a Hudson plastic model kit made by Monogram and a Big Boy plastic model kit made by revell, but both were only HO scale or 1:87 scale ratio. There was a General in the listings also for those who may be intrested in it.

    Those other two model kits must have been what I remembered, but never realized what scale ratio they were, looks like the General may be the only G sized locomotive plastic kit made.
     
  6. John W Reid

    John W Reid TrainBoard Member

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    ......because of its transparency it is necessary to hand select each piece of wood used for color,grain,unwanted out of scale imperfections etc.....
    With this station /passenger car I have lots of leeway with the wood but remember that at one time this was a functioning RR car, so I will build it aged but some of the original car will still be there.When I get to building Morton's luxury car when using various hardwoods ,I will have to be much more careful with both the miniature carpentry and wood finishes.
    OK so now we have a lot of stained wood of various wood tones and grays.Now we will have to decide whether or not to take the weathering process a little farther at this point or not.If you will always have easy access to the wood like on the outside of a shack wall ,go ahead and use it as is, but if it is inside in a confined area you can take it a few steps further at this time.
    (With this method no airbrushing is required and the methodology is very forgiving of mistakes.)
    Get an old toothbrush with stiff fine bristles,then mix up a very thin wash of raw umber and water.Raw umber is best for this step as it makes for a nice representation of mud flecks,fly sh.t etc...Dunk your toothbrush in the mix and flick off most of the contents onto a sheet of paper with your thumb.When you get down to a very fine spray then flick it on your work ,either board by board or section by section that you are working on.If you have prepared your boards properly it with instantly sink into the wood and dry very quickly.Keep doing this until you are satisfied ,and remember some boards that are close to the ground may require a gradual change in intensity top to bottom.Later some may even require a little mossy green were they come in contact with the ground.
    to be cont.......
     
  7. topgoz

    topgoz TrainBoard Member

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    I've got both the General kit and a 1:26 scale Minicraft model of Stephenson's Rocket that I bought overseas. Someday, I'll find the time to build these two kits. Perhaps living in Kennesaw now (home of the General) will give me the inspiration to make time to build them.
     
  8. John W Reid

    John W Reid TrainBoard Member

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    I use JoSonja paint mostly because I first began painting decorative bird sculptures.I have heard a lot of good things about Vallejo paint that a lot of figure painters use.Both dry absolutely flat and you can add your own mediums to it.:tb-biggrin:
     
  9. John W Reid

    John W Reid TrainBoard Member

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    You have the real thing right there ? Wow! better get goin".
     
  10. John W Reid

    John W Reid TrainBoard Member

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    ......On the areas where you may only have restricted access to later on, you may want to do some of the detail now such as dents, nicks, scratches,putting up old of new signs,making rusty nails and nail holes and pre-shading with chalk pastels.
    With the use of pastels on dry unfinished rough wood, this is where my method is a little different than most.On most surfaces chalk pastels will easily rub off but on rough wood surfaces they are quite permanent as is, with no fixative required.Remember I am doing a diorama here, so it is just to look at.If I was using the same method on shiny plastic that is meant to be handled,I would roughen up the surface to get a little tooth in it before applying the pastels and then use a pastel spray fixative over that.I will mark that on my list for further experimentation.

    For now lets just deal with the barn siding look.OK so now we have this gray transparent surface with a little wood color and grain showing through.Perfect! Lets add some nail holes and rusty nails which is common with most old wood.Find a pattern that you like or just put a few here and there but remember you are probably( in real life )nailing into joists or studs which will create its own pattern.Rather than have a whole bunch of old boards with a straight line of nails running across them which is boring,you may want to create a different pattern.I often use a kind of zig-zag pattern to avoid this.......to be continued(the doorbell is ringing!) :tb-err:
     
  11. John W Reid

    John W Reid TrainBoard Member

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  12. John W Reid

    John W Reid TrainBoard Member

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    For the area between the side of the ceiling and the cars wall,I decided to use some paper backed wood veneer,in this case maple.Rather than use glue I used florists wire to secure it to the plastic.I try to stay away from toxic glues as much as possible.Once I get the basic wooden frame up I can go back to using the regular carpenters glue on the rest.
    Paperbacked Veneer is great to work with as you can cut it cleanly with a pair of scissors or Xacto blade.The glue between the paper and the wood acts like a vapor barrier so their isn't much warping when using water based carpenters glues.The glue when dry is also waterproof.
    Over this I have stared to apply the aged tongue depressors using pegs to secure it down while drying.Once I get the basic framing finished I will feel much better again getting back into woodworking territory.These plastic cars are great as a starting point and have saved me a lot of time getting to this point.The basic framework for Morton's luxury car will be a lot the same except it will be finished in polished hardwoods and brass.

    For step by step photo's see my photobucket album "G scale trains"
     
  13. John W Reid

    John W Reid TrainBoard Member

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  14. John W Reid

    John W Reid TrainBoard Member

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    Using the smallest coffee stir stiks in my arsenal ,the movie side sheathing has begun.First I cut out some veneer and glued it over the plastic, over that I glued the vertical sheathing which is slightly larger that that depicted on the model.The outward side has been aged a bit and will be finished later as in the film.
    I really don't know how this set was built for the movie and of course you don't see any of it in the film.I don't know of any pics that have survived of the actual set so I will just have to use my imagination here.
    I am assuming that a real old railway car was used and a set built around it.I am probably wrong about this but using an old car makes it more interesting for my purposes and I think for my RR buds following this thread and gives me a great place to start.
     
  15. John W Reid

    John W Reid TrainBoard Member

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    [​IMG]
    Photo by Southwesterner,:tb-biggrin:
     
  16. John W Reid

    John W Reid TrainBoard Member

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  17. John W Reid

    John W Reid TrainBoard Member

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    I came across this pic just today.Wow ! great timing as I had just started to sheath the movie side of this car with wood.Although it is not exactly like the car in the movie it sure is loaded with research info.
    Like Sergio I love detail,attention to detail was one of his great strengths.
    The trick here is to maintain enough of the original passenger car while aging it.Some of the original carpentry on the car was of high quality and must be retained while a lot of the added stuff looks like it was just slapped up there any old way but you and I know that everything there was precisely planned to be there.My diorama is not meant to be an exact copy of his film sets but something similar.
    The wood siding that I put on the model today was treated with a couple of washes of the gray mix.Some edges were left broken on the ends. Remember old breaks can be aged too but new breaks should show a change in color back to the original wood.
    I left enough of the windows outline to identify this as an old passenger car which is an important consideration as you want your viewer not to question what it is.
    I then took a sharp needle and added some nail holes not in a pattern but not just randomly either. Then I took a sharp HB pencil and added a little graphite to each hole to make it look like a nailhead.Later when finishing the weathering I will add a drop of water to each hole which will swell the hole back level again but leaving behind something that looks like nails.I will then add some rust and have it running into and down the wood.The whole thing will be softened using pastels which are put on last after all the handing is over but that is still a long way down the road.
     
  18. John W Reid

    John W Reid TrainBoard Member

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  19. John W Reid

    John W Reid TrainBoard Member

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    This is the interior of the same wall.I placed the rough cut boards horizontally because if I decide to light the car from above it will have a more dramatic effect.I covered over all the windows except one which will have shutters.(mostly for my picture taking purposes) These boards in real life would have been put up there in an attempt to make this area livable.The interior will be weathered but not to the extent of the outer side.How this car got there is not really explained in the movie.It looks like it got there in pretty rough shape to begin with.Why ? because if the railway was just pushing through this area, where did an old weathered rail car come from? It could be that its present resting place ,is just its final resting place , at the end of a long hard trail across the country.(maybe on a flat car)Anyway that is my story and I am stickin' to it !
     
  20. John W Reid

    John W Reid TrainBoard Member

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