Another weekend is over and done, how did you do? It was a very busy weekend for me hobby wise but only a few hours for model trains. I spent Saturday morning with club members of the NBTN to discuss our wiring set up for the newly constructed yard. The yard is four modules and can easily fit in a small car. We are planning on getting this done for the fall train show season. Other than that, I spent my time on the other hobby. So how about you? Did you get done what you set out to accomplish on Friday? Did time allow you to scenic that section of the layout, build those freight cars or detail those engines? Let us know how you did. We'll come back and do it all over again on Friday, August 24th. Until then... ​High Greens!
Over Friday night and Saturday morning, I soldered feeders, isolated the frog and weathered a Shinohara Code 70 #6 curved switch. I installed it on the east end of the Ravenswood yard run around track for the yard lead/track 1 entrance. I also glued down the remaining tie strips and weathered them as needed. ...and I did a small amount of ballasting. This will be next weekend's chore, ballasting the Main, R/A and Lead tracks. If I could come up with a 1/87 scale come along as well as 3 or 4 men and a rerailer (because ballasting this way is prone to causing minor 1:1 scale derailments) I could do the whole layout like this and it almost worked like the prototype!
Well, now that you mention it, I did build those freight cars. I started the project slowly a few weeks back, painting and weathering the trucks. Over the weekend, I moved the whole project back down to the basement, since the weather finally broke and I don't have to work upstairs in the AC anymore. So, now I've got 6 more Milwaukee Road boxcars on my layout. Three of them are Accurails, and I had to re-number one of them to avoid duplication. I gave up on trying to do a matched-color decal, and instead got "close enough" with acrylic paint, and weathering made the slight color difference unnoticeable. The other three are "Rib-Side Cars" from one of those small ads in the back of train magazines. These cars were built for the Milwaukee. The cars come pre-lettered, but without numbers or "born-on" dates. Each kit has a decal sheet and the instructions specify the range of numbers appropriate for each version of each car. So, you can build up a fleet of uniquely-numbered cars without having to worry about what numbers the manufacturer put on their sides. They're nice models, too, with separate ladders and end details, and each car comes with both steel and wood roof walks to further match them to their prototype. If you're a Milwaukee modeler and want to increase your fleet of "home road" cars, give these a try.
