I am trying to catch up on a few projects promised for friends. Here is an ATSF Valley sleeper set up for end of train use with LED marker lights and a Tomar drum head added.
Here are a couple of cars that I finished in the last week. This is a Details West FGE RBL, painted the roof silver and reeefer yellow sides and ends. Lettered with two different sets of Mioroscale Decals, one for FGE cars and the other for the Gothic Data. This is a Walthers 10,000 Gallon Tank car, painted with Scalecoat II Aluminum and Black Paint, lettered with Champ Decals. Thanks for looking! Rick J
I painted white hand rail ends and the sill of #1803. Also added numbers, still need to figure out how to go about making the G&OM shield for cabs and ends and adding number boards. AFTER: BEFORE: Unit started out as part of a 5 unit purchase from the bay. Less than $5 for the unit. This one was an old Athearn "Hi-F" rubber band drive locomotive. I swapped out the old frame for a newer dummy frame with up-to-date Blomberg B trucks. I cleaned the shell and added a N&W style nose bell, MU stands, MU Hoses, Cut levers, firecracker antenna, G&OM standard Leslie Super Typhon RS5TRF air horn and painted the unit a flat black. Incomplete, another 8 units awaiting same process.
Ah, John. I hate to say thins but the hand rails on the U28CG really needs the same hand rail treatment as the U30CGs.
Correct, Russ It's like Randgust said, once one sees wire handrails, the plastic ones start sticking out.....
A recent project of mine was to build an F7B slug with a chopped roof. I used parts from an Athearn F7B and a Proto 1000 F3A. First, the parts from the P1K F3A: Motor, truck halves, side frames, wheels, flywheels, shafts, worms. Now the parts from the Athearn F7B: Body shell, worm housing clips, truck bottom clips, gears, frame. The trucks were assembled and placed in the frame, the shafts with worms were put in and the the worm housing clips snapped in place. A small piece of rubber was placed in the motor well to support the motor at the height needed for the shafts to be level between the flywheels and trucks. The motor was laid on it's side so it would stick up as little as possible. The shafts were inserted into the flywheels and the motors position adjusted so the shaft runs were equal then the motor was secured in place with hot glue. That's the mechanical part done. Two jumper wires were run between the trucks and a Digitrax DH123 decoder hardwired in for motor control. Making the body was a simple matter of cutting away a strip between the portholes and the roof line of an old Athearn Hi-F F7B shell then joining the cut down body and roof together. The portholes and most of the gaps between body and roof were filled with hot glue. Excess glue was cut away and everything was smoothed out. A layer of masking tape was applied to the sides of the body and painted flat black. The paint is acrylic and soaked through the tape insuring the tape adhered well to the body. The fans and exhaust stacks on the roof were cut away and the area sanded smooth then it too got the tape and paint treatment. Click here for a video of a test run. The unit runs very well and is extremely quiet. It can pull a dozen cars on it's own but since it's a 'slug' it'll only be used as added pulling power.
Saturday I received my newest Japanese tram (streetcar). It's a Modemo Tokyo Toden Type 9000 in N scale. You can see how tiny it is by the ruler I set up behind it. I haven't run it yet, but I'm hoping it runs pretty well:
I'm building this structure, using the Xyron Wishblade to aid in the cutting of the many windows. I also am substituting Grandt Line windows for lack of anything else closer to the prototype. Here is the prototype in it's current appearance
Today, it houses people, in 1982, it looked like this... http://johnhill_3009.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=1677704 http://johnhill_3009.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=1677705 http://johnhill_3009.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=1676655 At one point, the side of the building said "Northern Rock Island Plow", so I assume it was a manufacturing facility, I really like the tuck under for the train tracks, which was the deciding factor to model it.
Got them weathered. I used this unusual 'helicopter' angle for these shots, because while this angle is unusual in real life rail-fanning, IMHO this angle is actually the common normal angle in viewing a N scale model. Hence, the roof weathering is disproportionately important in terms of giving a good impression. Now I can move to Sarasota, Florida in peace and pack my modeling tools.
Nice. Hope you get back into the swing of things after your move in short order. We need you to keep pushing the envelope so to speak.