More loads finished up over the weekend and will post more about them this week as time permits. In the meantime, here's a look at one of the finished loads.
Following up on the truck frame load, to fish it up, I had put a coat of paint on the etched metal chains and separated them out. Then applied them to the frame sets with the bracing attached that I did the week before There are five sets in a pack but only 4 really fit an 89ft flat Like I really need it, but I could get two more sets, and then I could do 3 more cars. Maybe I'll just stop of these two.
The autorack loads came together pretty good. Last I posted on them I had just started the first load. Since I managed to way over populate my layout with cars, I had plenty of stock to choose from. Each rack holds 10 cars and I'm hard pressed to notice these gone from the layout but at least now the traffic doesn't look so much like Atlanta at rush hour. Here are all 4 sets of cars added to fake floors and ready to be installed. Once the tacky glue had set, all I had to do was slide them into the racks. As for what you can see, I put a small flashlight behind an empty rack so you can see the empty look Then did the same once I loaded one of the racks so you at least get the idea. If the light catches one of these on the layout, you can actually glimpse its loaded. All 4 have hit the ready track and moved on to the layout. Very easy project and the cost to add the loads was very reasonable. Enjoy!
Those are the cheap cars we got on Amazon right? I have them too, and really like them. I have so many vehicles and want some more, that I am starting to look like LA traffic I went crazy with RPS vehicles, let's say and now want some of those Oxford and Royal Models vehicles BTW, everything looks great! I need to make a diorama dealership now
Yes, those are the cars from the amazon. Getting ready to order some more trailers from Royal myself.
I've had this BNSF sign sitting on my work bench for several weeks. I think I may have decided where to place it. Maybe?
Next up is a little fencing. Wait... What.....No no no, not with swords, put that away. I mean chain link fencing. I really like the look of the GMM chain link fence. There are a lot of places I want to add it but only doing a little at a time. This set is destine for the blue house business. Have it all removed from the spur and ready to go. Here it is set out by where it will be installed. This won't finish it as I will still need one more segment to get it all closed in. I was about set to install it as is but now I'm thinking I want to redo that section of rad before instead of after putting up the fence.
Very nice. I like it. How wide do you make your roads. Like the road in the picture there what is the width of it? Thanks, Sumner
This is the product I used for roads. 1 3/4 inches for the straights and the curves tend to be about 1/8 inch wider depending on how you trim them. I've always intended to redo the roads at some point so that they don't all have that freshly paved look.
My balloon car from M/T came this week and I got to open it when I got home yesterday. It's really a cool looking car and load. I started unboxing it but didn't finish That's where I stopped as I discovered one of the couplers was blown apart. I stopped there because I didn't want to lose any of the parts and was hoping to be able to reassemble it. However, on closer inspection, it looks like one part is broken and stuck in the truck frame as well Now I'm looking closer at the picture and not sure I can repair it. It was packaged really well but all I can figure is this thing must have had a super rough trip from OR. to GA. If I can't fix it, I'm pretty sure I can buy a replacement coupler like that from M/T. Regardless, whenever I get around to assembling it, it's going to be super cool.
Well, back at it with more loads. One that has been on the back burner since last fall is the tractors for a Southern flat. This was a M/T release from early last year. It sat on the shelf until fall when they got a first coat of orange paint. The first coat wasn't good and a succession of busy or rainy weekends left the second coat of orange undone until a few weeks ago. They still didn't looks so great but i went with good enough for now. This is how they looked a month ago. I started on painting the tires and windows and still not great. Struggling with detail painting lately but that's another story for another time. Without a whole bunch of assembly pictures, we fast forward to this past weekend and here we have them glued together and on the flat car. All they really need at this point are some tie downs. Bought some brass rod at lunch today that I can use for that and finally get this one wrapped up. More to come on that. I do see some touch ups that are needed as well.
Next up in the queue was this ATSF flat. It's been sitting on the work bench asking to be loaded for a while now. Like the tractors, we flash back a months to see the start of this project. Here we have a bunch of yeller straws and some coffee stir sticks. Just the stuff for a pipe load. In a rather crude fashion, I glued the straws.... ummm... I mean pipes together making 4 sets of 4, Now we fast forward to this past weekend. The yellow just isn't right and I kind of thought about black but decided I'll save that for another time. Thinking that the light green used on pipes for gas lines might look good, I dug into my paints. Nope, no NYC jade green. Not really sure I ever had any to begin with. Next option was a small tote of craft paints that I kept when cleaning out my parents house several years ago, I scored some white and green paint. Just the stuff and surprisingly, it was still good. I also found some Iron Oxide Red that is a perfect match for the brown M/T uses on BNSF 3 bay covered hoppers After a little mixing, I hit upon a color that worked for me and away we went. It does look a shade or two lighter in person than it does in the pics. They still look pretty crude at this point. I had already cut some scraps of wood do go with the load so once that paint dried, it was on to stacking the sections. Did a little touch up and set them on the flat. They could still use a little more touch up but this works for now. I had hoped to finish up this load by using some black thread as banding before attaching it to the car but instead, helped my wife discover she was out of black tread. Should be able to pick some up this week and get this car done and over to the layout where it can rack up some revenue miles. Then it was on to the next task, cleaning and organizing the train room. No pictures of that train wreck today
Now then, on Sunday afternoon, I went back to do mor work on organizing the train room. It didn't happen. I got a couple of trains running (we'll come back to that) and mad a cup of Earl Grey tea. I looked around the room but wasn't sure what to work on. I sat down at the workbench with my tea and there it was, the balloon car that I set aside thinking I wasn't ready to tackle it. I started by removing the 3d printed parts from the base. That part is so much fun. It makes a nice mess. The mess part may so up at some later date, we'll see. In assembling these parts, I broke one of course. Nothing a little CA wouldn't fix though so we continued forward. The more i looked at this kit, the more I liked it. Here we are removing some of the laser cut parts. They came out very cleanly. These parts fit together nicely and took just a touch of CA to hold them together. And they all fit just right into the base. Then it was time to fit the solar panel array to the 3d printed part. Once it dried for a bit, it slid right into the base and then onto the flat. I still need to remove the dark center ring section but that is on hold until I repair the coupler on the flat It's in transit from M/T now. Can't say enough about their great customer service. Once I get that fixed, I'll remove that last part and find a nice shelf spot to display this car. Overall, I am really happy with how this car turned out. Thanks to M/T for such a cool car and kit! Now, back to the trains I set loose on the layout before I dove into the balloon car. On one track, there is a short freight that I mainly use to allow newly loaded cars to make a few trips to ensure I haven't made a mess with them. That train ran flawlessly. On the other track, I had a coal train set up. It had been running on Saturday with no issues. So Sunday, I decided I's add these new Rapido hoppers into the mix. They are beautiful cars and I need to get some better pictures of the but they had an issue, they made a squeaking noise. It took me a little bit to realize it was coming from these cars but I ended up removing them from the train for now. It wasn't just one, it was from all 4. They are back on the repair track for some trouble shooting. Not sure what I'm going to find. That will be a topic for another day. For now, that's all I've got from the weekend. Hope you all enjoyed my long winded post
I think they look pretty good! I struggle with detail painting myself-I moved to various brands of super fine tip markers. I still end up coloring outside the lines though! Balloon car looks good too! I ordered one through PWRS and they are holding it and some other items until I finish moving back to the US. I hope I can make mine look half as good as yours. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
