A Workshop Wednesday submission, Worked over the past week on the collection of out-of-production Accurail hoppers for the Crawford and Cherokee. In more modern times of the 1925+ era, these hoppers will appear. A neat thing about them is that Accurail offers a decal set to renumber cars, and there are still some (decals) available on their site. I think only one road number of these cars ever appeared. I have been picking these off of eBay every once in a while to have maybe a dozen hoppers from mainly the Frisco Lines and the MoPac. Here is an example of three MoPac cars with new numbers (my alignment leaves something to be desired): MoPac-Hopper-Renumber by rjthomas909 posted Feb 6, 2019 at 8:25 PM These will also get weathering. I had done up a few Frisco Lines cars for the old layout, and had weathered them. They appear in some of my layout build thread posts. Here are some comparisons. Quite a striking difference for the oxide red Frisco Lines cars. SLSF-Hoppers-Weather-Renumber by rjthomas909 posted Feb 6, 2019 at 8:26 PM MoPac-Hopper-Weather-Renumber by rjthomas909 posted Feb 6, 2019 at 8:30 PM Still have 2 or 3 Frisco Lines hoppers to decal, and will need to get the airbrush after these and the 36ft boxcars that have been built such that they are presentable. Although the decals seem a bit off in color, you can't really tell when weathered. Take Care All.....Great stuff this week above! -Bob T.
Great work William. Is this a pic of the swing bridge? Looks really good. Smooth, I expect no less from a Roadmaster. Good looking train too.
Bill, at first glance I didn't recognize your layout! Of course it has been a while since a saw it last. You have made great progress and it looks very nice.
Even more Old Reefers, and a caboose: I worked on this Old Time Car, too: It's an oddball MDC Roundhouse car that I'm trying to convert to a PRR XL car. I shaved off and sanded the sides, and cut car siding and glued it on:
I've shifted gears this week. First thing was to re-arrange my storage area over by my work station. I lowered the shelves and moved items over to the storage area on the opposite wall. Here's a pic from several months ago as to what it looked like then: And here's what it looks like now: As of Tuesday, over against the right front wall, there is now stacked this: Yup. Plywood. Two sheets of A-C yellow pine waiting patiently. The rest of my Tuesday morning was going to/being at/and coming from, Fort Smith, AR. When leaving I had: * A pile of L-brackets. * Info from Home Depot on what I needed to do to procure a set of fold-able saw horses they offer via their online site. * Info from the local dealer that handles Homasote. That night I ordered a pair of saw horses from Home Depot. They're to be delivered Monday. Today I will start the process on 5 or 6 sheets of Homasote, AND I have enough code 7o rail joiners, insulated rail joiners, and small spikes headed my way to just about do the entire layout. At this point, it is my HOPE that I can start making sawdust next week after the saw horses arrive. It's getting CLOSE! The Ozark Sub is about to commence it's anticipated life long journey. Andre
Just looking at that paint booth again, can you get me some close up's of it? Still thinking about it.
I can indeed, Bill. But it may be tomorrow before I'm back out there. It's so well made it will last someone a lifetime! Andre
Today I installed two pieces of track and painted them with flat black. Need to go to the grocery store now and will install ballast when I get back. Stay tuned for a photo of the diorama after ballasting. If there's time I'm going to start adding foam for mountains and hills. Joe
I've started adding fascia and the card card system to the layout. I need to use different screws to secure the fascia.
Just finished installing ballast for the tracks, next is cutting foam for hills and mountains and determine where the water is going to be. Have decided not to use the road where it sits but may have a dirt road in another location. The road will be nothing more than a improved one lane goat path. Joe
I went out and downloaded custom fonts to experiment with decaling. I made a print out to get sizing right and for the heck of it I taped it on to see how it looked. Didn't turn out too bad. Not sure how to go about printing out white letters on decal paper though.
Ethan, have you seen these: K4 Frisco Decal Set: https://www.ebay.com/itm/K4-HO-Deca...h=item2f2a3a7c40:g:3HMAAOSw9eVcUybz:rk:2:pf:0 I bought a set and am going to give them a try. -Bob T.
Tom, that is the swing gate, but I have joiners on it right now, until I can figure a better way. I am thinking about how to do that. If anyone has idea's let me know, I accept Good and Bad ideas.
Joe starting to look good from here, let us know what the ballast is that your using, I like the brown in it. Oh,,, one lane goat path's are the best looking. Thanks Keith, it's improving.
Hi Ethan, to print my own decals with white lettering I use white decal paper and and tell the computer to print white letters on a background of whatever color the car or building will be where the lettering needs to go. Since the normal inkjet printer doesn't print white the printer will not print anything where the letters go and the white of the decal paper will show through the background color which will print. Robert