I'm waking up to the first cold morning of the fall, time is running out on this year. As predicted, I got nothing railroad related done this past weekend. Saturday was spent working for the magazine and Sunday was spent doing the domestic activities of laundry, grocery shopping and spending quality time with Angela. Work has taken over just about every aspect of my life right now and is making it difficult to get anything railroad related done. So how about you? Have you had better luck than I? Let us know what you did this past weekend with a picture or two if you have them. We'll come back here on Friday the 11 and do it all over again. Until then, have a great week and... ​High Greens!
I went to my LHS, bought some coloring for Hydrocal and next year's MR calendar. Then, it was off to Maine for the weekend. We passed over the short narrow gauge track down by the car ferry dock in Portland, but that was about it. On the other hand, we saw "Into the Mind," a ski movie, took a nice bike ride and had a couple of fabulous meals together.
A trip to the LHS on Saturday, then I started work on converting a spare Athearn SW shell into a SW1200RS (SW1200 with modified headlight/numberboard assemblies and a few other extras). The headlight/numberboard assemblies are now in place, with a bit of putty to fill in some areas, and I installed some extra grab irons on the side and top of the hood. I'll need to change the stock stacks with some big spark arrestors that CN put on their units, and work on other details to spruce it up a bit. Lots of fun.
Finished up the "rocks" on the cliff-hanging Johnstown Branch on my HO Scale Gulf & Pacific Railroad:
John, Those rocks look amazing. Let me guess....col....a combination of several molds, hydrocal and Bragdon's Geodesic Foam. Nice coloring on those rocks. The combine passing through the scene is the envy of this TB participant. Ken, Thinking about assembling a paint booth, of my own. Any ideas or plans you might be working off of?
I dug out a couple of cars, changed out plastic for metal wheelsets, and did some more weathering using some new weathering pigments I picked up. On one of the cars (Athearn BB 50', boxcar red, NP markings) I applied the chalks to give it a look like it's been used hard for over 25 years. I need to swap out the friction-bearing trucks for some roller-bearing ones, so I'll have to do some scrounging. On a red 50' Great Northern car, I used a cotton swab and some 91% isopropyl alcohol to knock off the new-car shine, and dull it up so it looks like the paint has faded a bit (red is notorious for not standing up to sunny days- ask and Katy fan). Next, I'll use the pigments & weather the car up a bit, but before then I may add some different decals to represent new stenciling and rebuild work. IMO, shiny is bad, unless it's rails & wheel treads.
I set up an 18 X 6 foot NTRAK layout and ran trains all day Saturday and Sunday at the Galveston Railroad Museum train show. Well, ran trains from about 9 till 5 each day anyway. That is a lot of standing but it was worth it.
