Modeling with Children: The Tugboat Adventure

An N scale tugboat by Model Tech Studios has been keeping Graham and me busy at times. The project has been fun, especially teaching Graham about how to paint, clean parts, and clean one’s tools. We have had a lot of fun with “the ship” since Graham received it as a Christmas present. Of late, Graham has been busy doing most of the painting of the small white metal parts, he can actually see what he is doing unlike myself. We discussed what color we wanted to paint the tug after looking at Railroad tugs: Part II by Preston Cook in the May 1983 Railroad Model Craftsman. We did not use “Cornell Red” since we could not find it at the hobby store the day we went to purchase paint.

When we started, I told Graham that I would use the “crazy glue” and that he could watch as I glued the pieces together. Decided to show him that you can stick your fingers together very easily. Thankfully, my finger were together a short few seconds and I got them apart. Graham was impressed and said, you use that stuff, I’ll have all my fingers stuck together.

Let Graham paint the individual superstructure and hull parts as well as the detail parts. I showed him how to mix the paint, clean the brushes, and take his time painting. See this photo for the results. We have progressed past this point and we will be taking some more photos this week as we add more detail. Looks like adding the tires and their ropes will be the tough part! Graham has really enjoyed himself to date and constantly asks, “can we work on the ship”.

Another interesting blog: The Delaware Lackawanna in Proto 48

No, have not fallen off the face of the earth. The full-time job has been keeping me busy of late. Did have a chance to sit down at the computer last night and catch up on a few friends’ blogs. While visiting Trevor Marshall’s blog, I notice a link to another P48 modeler, so I “surfed” over to Jim Lincoln’s The Delaware Lackawanna in Proto 48 .

I especially liked his “leaf” experiment. Jim points out a missing ingredient on Fall/Winter layouts, the leaves that get blown into the drainage ditches and along the right of way in various places. If you get a chance, go read about Jim’s solution.

 

Another interesting Blog: Morpeth in O scale

While reading my friend Trevor Marshall’s Port Rowan in 1:64 scale blog recently, came across an interesting link to another Trevor, Trevor Hodges in Australia. He has just started a blog about his P48 layout, Morpeth in O scale (7mm). An excellent job, but must admit I am partial to exhibition style layouts. Check out Trevor Hodges blog to see photos of his exhibition layout and other interesting projects. Be sure to read his “Queens Wharf: Planning Considerations”, Trevor discusses some very interesting thoughts about O scale.

Do you have an engine crew for your motive power?

Had several engines and railbuses out for my On2 and Sn2 projects a few days back. So while they were out being measured for length, decided to place a crew in them and on them. Earlier this year, Graham and I attended Howard Zane’s train show in Timonium Maryland. While there, we  had the opportunity to pick up several suitable O and S scale Arttista figures for my Forney crews. I have been having trouble with the “larger” gentleman, they need to go on a diet to fit into the cabs of the Forneys, but they may work well in the railbuses.

How big is Sn2 compared to On2

Recently had two models of the Sandy River and Rangeley Lakes Railbus #4 out to take a picture of crew members and their “machine”. Was discussing the various crew members for various motive power with several friends. The Wiscasset and Quebec has the On2 version, and the Maryland Central has the Sn2 version. What better opportunity to have a scale comparison of a similar model. To give you an idea of the size of On2, behind the W&Q #4 is an On3 D&RGW 3000 series boxcar. and the rear of a K-28 tender.

A very interesting site and a puzzling question?

While reading some of my daily Yahoo group e-mails today, I came across a link to a great model railroad project. Currently, Phil Lord, the site owner has a very interesting question concerning the coal elevator. If you can help Phil answer his question please contact him.

S Scale SIG

Read about the S Scale SIG over the weekend. Interesting to see that S scale has come so far since I “abandoned” my HOn3 for Sn3. At that time, Sn3 seemed to be in the realm of the scratchbuilder with only  P-B-L providing superb ready to operate (RTO) motive power. Sure, there were some other brass importers, but PBL had excellent running, and nice looking engines. However, one problem was that the motive power was very limited to several well-known western narrow gauge railroads. Now I like all things narrow gauge, but to not have any eastern narrow gauge steam motive power was an issue. Along came Railmaster Export and Bills’ Train Shop (B.T.S.) with kits that could build some of the eastern narrow gauge motive power.

Why did I chose Sn3? Had a chance to meet the PBL folks and operate some of their engines at a local train show many years ago. The heft of the engines, level of detail, and running qualities convinced me that S scale is the perfect scale for modeling 3 foot narrow gauge lines. Larger than HOn3, but much smaller than On3 scale, S scale is 3/16″=1ft, and makes a nice scale with ability to perform some of the slow speed switching that makes operating fun.  Locomotives, rolling stock, and buildings can have high level of detail that you would expect in O scale and  the larger scales.

Since moving to Sn3, I have seen the introduction of more building kits, RTO rolling stock, excellent hybrid engines from PBL and a wealth of new detail parts from vendors such as  Wiseman Model Services. PBL has recently started to produce limited runs of RTO stock cars, high side gons, and boxcars to help the narrow gauge fan get a start on their layout with some exceptionally detailed freight cars that operate very well. So even if you are not that comfortable building kits, you can put together your own “train set” and start to operate an Sn3 model railroad as you improve your various talents.

If you are new to model railroading, do yourself a favor and join the S scale SIG to discover what S scale has to offer. You will be presently surprised! If you want to model 3 foot narrow gauge, also join the Sn3 Yahoo group to learn more about this great scale!

A brand new old work desk

I have been working on my model railroad shop area in my limited spare time. My wife found a wonderful old desk for me right before Christmas on Freecycle. Picked it up the day after Christmas and moved it into the basement. Nice desk, made by a local company,Lucas Brothers, in Baltimore, Maryland back in the 1960s. Has dovetail drawers, and the drawers are very deep. Moved it in to the unfinished “sheet rock” corner and filled it up with all sorts of my model building supplies. Nice big surface, which is now occupied by several of my O scale and Graham’s N scale projects.

New Desk- Lucas Brothers label

The inside of the desk, with a blurry image of the “builder’s plate”.

New Desk-inside view of drawer with wooden drawer dividers

The new paint and stain drawer.

New Desk the top

The projects

Jefferson through the years on the Appalachian Midland

It has been a while since my last post. During the past few  days, been looking through some of my recently discovered materials, including a small sketch book.

One section in the sketch book was devoted to series of track plans based on the town of “Jefferson”. “Jefferson”, according to my notes, was the first town out of staging on my fictional Appalachian Midland. Originally, the AM was to be built in HOn3, primarily as a coal hauler. However, “Jefferson” was planned to be the beginning of a branch, which apparently was an independent railroad in the late 1800s, as well as having a tie and lumber loading area. “Jefferson’s” track plan is loosely based on the East Broad Top’s Saltillo station, at least that is what my notes say. I have several line drawings of Satillo’s mill building, basic track arrangement and some other notes on separate pages that were not scanned. “Jefferson” would probably make a good beginning for a On30 layout, even built as a set of modules.

Reading further about my imagineered Appalachian Midland, discovered several other scenes that are nice for small layouts, including a small mining area based on the town Joller on the East Broad Top. Together, the various scenes would make a nice layout if one would have space to connect several if not all of them. Several drawings in a follow-up section in the sketch book have the AM running through a pass (“Jefferson”) and up a valley to several mining towns with company towns. Looks like the branch line just went to another staging yard. There are no notes on how to connect the various scenes though and time has erased what the plan would have been or how much space was planned to build the railroad. I can tell from dates in the book though that this was a project started after my “Maryland and West Virginia” HOn3 coal hauler was destroyed in a freak accident that covered my layout with soot in my parents’ barn many years ago. Soon after this, my interest in Maine 2 foot railroads picked up and my HOn3 was sold off. Probably why my notes on the AM stopped and switched to other wild ideas! As my notes and various sketches of the Appalachian Midland are deciphered, and darkened a little more they will show up in future posts.

 

 

Memories from days gone by….

Recently shared some remembrances of switching gondolas back in my ‘teens with several friends. Terry Smith, a fellow Maine two foot modeler, suggested putting the story on the blog and had to agree with him. Thanks for the idea Terry!

I remember working with my Dad back in the early ’80s when he used to have his railroad scrap business. We had a 25 ton Plymouth locomotive that he rebuilt (kitbashed in modeling terms) and added a Prentice crane with a stretched boom on it to pick up sectional rail and load into gons. We also had an electromagnet to pick up the “OTM” (on track misc, i.e. spikes, plates, bars). He and I would switch gons, MPTY and loads. Just like “the real railroaders”, we planned our moves to minimize our work as to not waste “downtime”.  We even set MPTYs at various locations so they would be easy to retrieve. Typically we had our run of the railroad for 4/5 weekdays during major welded rail relay jobs and worked behind the welded rail crews by a few miles. Our 2 -3 man burning crew would burn the bolts/nuts off the bars on both sides of the ROW. They knocked the bars free so the ends of the rail would be disconnected. We also knocked off every rail anchor with a maul. I know, spent many a summer day walking ROWs back and forth knocking rail anchors and bars myself. Started out doing this when I was 14 or 15, great summer exercise for when I wrestled in high school. The rail base had to be clean to load the rail into the gons properly.

Anyway, we used to switch gons into facing sidings as a last resort. Of course, no railroad employee would do this, but passing sidings are not everywhere like on model railroads. So, we actually chained the engine to a gon so that the engine went past the points and before the gon made it to the points I would throw the switch and the gon would roll into the trailing siding. Sometimes we would have to use the crane to help push the gon along the siding to clear the fouling area of the switch. This process always took a fair amount of time vs switching trailing siding since we could use both the main and siding to switch cars. One day on the DELMARVA peninsula (Delaware, Maryland and Virginia eastern shore side of the Chesapeake Bay) we received a very rough cut of cars from CONRAIL when we did their DELMARVA main. We had either a Reading or EL gon that had no floor for about 2/3rds of the car. Could not believe they sent us a car in such poor shape. One of the journal boxs had an issue as well but over time I cannot recall what was wrong. Second car had a brake issue. To get the two cars out of the way, get to the gons we could use and put the 2 bad orders back took awhile. For one person to operate the engine and another to couple, uncouple, set brakes and throw the switch adds time up in a hurry.

Our little Plymouth had no train air, just its own engine brakes. I used to climb from gon to gon and partially set brakes  when we went down hills and run back and release them when we went up hills. Sitting here today sounds like fun, but it was nerve-racking moving from gon to gon even at 10 miles per hour. I can not imagine doing the job on a boxcar roof at night in the rain and wind (or somewhere in Colorado on RGS/C&S/D&RGW) going down a hill and around curves. I used an extra maul handle to help tighten up the brakes when we set a car off on a siding. Even put a wood shim across the rail head wedged against a wheel on the lead axle. If you look you will sometimes see that still done, especially on cars where the handbrake just doesn’t seem to really tighten up the brakes very well. A little thing to do, but it all adds up.

Even when I used to drop off the engine at a switch and signal all clear to stop, throw the switch and get on the end gon or wait for the engine takes time. Most modelers don’t realize that the engine does not race to do this task. Can’t wait to get DCC to have those nice little steps in acceleration. Funny story…One day, after throwing the switch back for the main and getting ready to go on down the main to load more rail, I slipped off a bent gon rung and fell onto the road bed (on last car of the cut). Jumped up and ran to the shoulder of the ballast and started running and waving my hands yelling “wait wait”. Bet it made a funny sight for a passer-by!

And the rail in the gons what happened to it? Believe it or not I would say a far amount would go to a big mill in the Williamsport PA area that made (and I think still makes) bed rails for you to set your box-spring and mattresses. They used to cut the head,web, and base apart and re-roll into the bedframe. Very little rail, due to its age and wear was sold to other railroads. Most went on to some other use.

Enjoy your switching everyone.