| Navigation: | Home | Blogs | 2014 Posts |
|
Posts from 2014 |
Happy holidays from the B&CC. This month was all about the freight doors, which got replaced by articulated doors (see the replacing the plastic detail parts page)
I've finally gotten back to doing something concrete with respect to modeling and the layout. Put aside the Montana Theater drawings and have started working on replacing the plastic detail parts on my way cars with wood. First up has been the Grandt Line NG caboose doors, which can be replaced with 1/64" aircraft plywood and 2"x2" stock lumber.
Unfortunately, the month of October didn't see much in the way of modeling progress. Between responsibilities at work (long story), and volunteering to help with various things at the region (longer story), my free time in the basement has been severely curtailed. The end result is that I've only made a little progress on the drawings of the Montana Theater front.
Ouch! Forgot that I hadn't sent anything for August and here it is the end of September already! This update is a potpourri of things:
Where has the summer gone? Again, only one update - lost a week of modeling/railroading time to a medical emergency with my daughter right after the first weekend of the month and (once that was clear) spent another week taking my family to visit my family and be the "dutiful son".
I still owe folks photos of the photo rack, so this month you all will have to be happy with photos of my experiments with modeling Oil Lamps with SLEDs, following in the footsteps of Laurie McLean (thanks!):
Only one update for this month as well... just too busy! First - a belated happy Canada day to my friends up north and a happy Fourth to my friends in the 50. The joint regional in Memphis was a blast! Got to meet a whole bunch of new folks and give one of the clinics I'm scheduled for at the upcoming NNGC. Well worth doing because I'm pretty sure I'm going to restructure it so that it "pops".
Once back, I put aside modeling to work on some 12" scale woodworking (I dabble in that also) as a break from the 3.5mm scale stuff. I might include some photographs of the result once it is all done (still need to finish [literally and figuratively]).
But, as promised last month, I *do* have some photos on the super detailing:
No update for the back half of April (busy getting ready for the TLR) and only a single update for the month of May.
The first weekend was the TLR regional meet in Sioux City, IA - always good to close down the hotel bar with those folks - already looking forward to Thunder Bay next year.
After this month, I'm even more convinced that a model is never really finished. I've spent it working on super detailing and operationalization projects:
Finally time to operationalize the L&P connectors. I've not really looked at these since 2009-10 (when I first built them) except to open up the pocket holes. When I tried to string the cars together, I found that the pins from Comstock Carshops were too thick to work effectively. My wife's comment was "well why don't you use very fine dressmaker pins" (?!?!). A 250 pin box later, all the cars are strung together - still have to check the engines (more on that later). Here's a sample of one of the connections
While working with the L&P connectors, I realized that the cars were missing
some obvious details (I'm not quite sure how I missed them the first time),
so I've been
adding stirrups under
the corners of the freight cars. In addition, I realized that I forgot to
scribe the decals on the board and batten siding - easy enough to fix (just
find a razor blade) but oh the difference that it makes. Couple that with weathering
the decals with 5-to-1 thinned coats of the base car paint and here are the
house cars that I've done so far...
301, 302,
303, 304,
305, and 306
I still need to do the weathering and scribing on the other cars and add grab irons to the house cars over the weekend, so look for more photos next update (hopefully of the whole fleet)...
It turns out the Kimber Mill was missing a couple of details - dull coat on roof (easily applied), marking up the leather belts (dry brushing with grimy black paint - definitely do this *before* putting the belts on). In addition, it was *way* too clean, so I've been adding 15" scale strips of 500 mesh wire screen around the corners of the mill and I'll be covering them with fine iron ore ballast and then washing with thinned mud acrylic... I'll take pictures when done and for those at either the joint MCoR/SER regional meet in Memphis or the NNGC in KC, I'll be giving a clinic on how I build (and researched) this beast.
I've pulled apart the motive power to "operationalize" it - I'm making sure that the engines work just fine when DC is applied to the motor. Next, I'll apply metal polish to a test track and clipper oil to another test track and see how the engines pick up DCC. If neither of those techniques are good enough, then we'll add Tomar wiper shoes and see if pickup improves enough (thanks for the idea Jeff!). If *none* of those work to my satisfaction, then I'm looking at using batteries and radio pickup inside of idler house cars to go dead rail.
While I've got the engines apart, I've decided to fix a couple of things I didn't like from the first time around:
And then it was done. I finished up the Kimber Mill by:
The Kimber Mill is closer to being finished:
Another small update (in terms of pictures this time). Finished the 1"x12" lap siding and added the 2"x6" and 3"x3" trim: south-east and north-west corners.
Started work on the lap siding for the gables as well as the 1"x8" roof decking that will support the tin roofing: an interim picture.
Spent the first week on the left coast for work, so this update covers the rest of the month.
More work on the Kimber mill:
Wasn't able to get a whole lot done the last three weeks (work being what it's been). One semi-shameless plug that has been in the works for a while: many thanks to Tony Koester for persuading me to submit an article about the B&CC layout to Model Railroad Planning 2014.
Starting off the year with some cleanup. I had forgotten that the Water Towers page was still pretty bear of text until a visitor pointed it out to me. So, I've done a bunch of updating to it.
In addition. I've updated the Cars build page to reflect the fact that the end sills from Comstock Carshops were essentially a special order (I got them off of Ebay).
And what is an update without more from the Kimber Mill:
