Good morning from sunny and hot Northeast Ohio! Here is what I managed to get done the last week! Tichy Panel Side Hopper kit, painted with Scalecoat II Black and lettered with Mark Vaughn's Wabash Decals. The Wabash rebuilt some of their USRA hoppers with panel sides when the original sides deterioted in order to haul more coal in the same size hopper, these cars lasted until the N&W merger. Next, another Red Caboose PRR X29 Boxcar kit, painted with Scalecoat II PRR Freight Car Red and lettered with K4 Decals. The Pennsy had several thousand of these cars and rebuilt many of the worn out cars after WWII. I also built another pair of Bowser H21a hopper cars to add to the fleet, these were factory painted, but I dull coated them to get rid of the shine. The PRR had over 20,000 of these hoppers used in coal and ore service. Here is some of the rest of the fleet of H21, H22 and Gla hoppers behind one of the Pennsy's massive N1s 2-10-2's. Have a great weekend. Rick Jesionowski
I have had little to no time available for modeling on my N-Scale Housatonic RR this summer, but I took 5 minutes last night to test out a proof of concept for the solar panel array on the roof of Becton Dickenson. I had previously attempted to make my own solar panels by printing on transparency film, but I just couldn't get that realistic blue silicone look I wanted. A couple of days ago I stumbled across small solar cells for calculators and cell phones on Amazon. At 100 for $15 I gave it a shot. These are currently simply placed on some styrene strips for proof of concept. I will need to make racks and wiring chases for them, but I am happy with the possibilities these offer. I am going for the overall visual effect on a background building, not detailed model panels. The first photo shows one of my home-made panels on the left for comparison. Again, these are just plopped on some styrene to get an idea to see if this is a viable approach.
UP in Texas! Here comes the Chief! Panel sides. An idea whose time had come. Solar panels...interesting.
Man, I like how those look. I've been looking at these same panels for a different solar project I want to do on my layout. deciding how to do the frames before getting some
The Lovelock local is running light today. After setting out three cars in Battle Mountain and picking up two loads from EP Minerals in Lovelock, it is seen here threading it’s way east through Palisade canyon on the return trip to Carlin.
Not exactly what I planned due to some issues with some flat cars. Reading Alco Century C-630 (Bowser) locomotives roll past Chessie SD-50 (Walthers Main Line) at Leiperville Union Station. This is the first time I had four DCC locos on the layout at the same time. The Chessie units were not moving at the time and dummy me forgot to turn on the headlight.
