More P-44 work this week. I started with some detailing for the tender, removing the stock taillight and chiseling off the molded-on handrails, steps, and marker lights on the back. I put in a couple of DRGW tender steps and a spare brass headlight, drilling it out to receive a 3mm LED.
I only have cool white LEDs, but I do have bright orange and yellow transparent airbrush paints that aren't being used for anything else, so I've spent some time experimenting with them to get the right color for the light.
I ended up using more orange for the light itself and also painting the inside of the lens with the bright yellow. For now I'm satisfied with the end result.
I also shortened the link on the tender front so that it sits closer to the engine by making a U-bend in it. The loco probably won't go around an 18" radius curve anymore, but that's not a problem for me.
Elsewhere, I worked on all the handrails and piping for the loco. Yesterday, the long #26 Kadee for the pilot came in the mail, so I've been working on detailing the front end and almost everything is in place now. More to come soon.
P
Nearly ready for paint. The headlight still hasn't been hooked up, and I need to fix some of the strange rivet patterns on the tender before painting. After I snapped this last photo I also replaced the step beneath the smokebox because it didn't look right.
In the background you can see my Athearn passenger cars, which received a yellow layer by airbrush this week.
While the P-44 awaits rivets and paint I thought I'd return to my Consolidation this weekend.
I started removing details off the body to move them around. I swapped the single-cylinder pump for a double, swapped the positions of the bell and sand dome, and moved the side tanks forward. I also installed a new headlight, though I haven't wired it up yet-- I'm thinking I may run its leads (30 AWG magnet wire) down the body alongside the piping, because there's precious little room anyplace inside the body except for some corners of the cab.
Additionally, I was curious about the loco's extreme sensitivity to voltage last time I ran it, so I dug up the motor datasheet... turns out the operating range is 1-3V. D'oh! So I re-remotored it with another Mabuchi, a 130-SH which has better torque, lower rpm and a 12V operating range:
Then I did some bench testing for both steamers. Low voltage startup has DRAMATICALLY improved on the Consolidation-- and with tender pickup on the P-44, both engines really crawl now.
Sometime soon I'll open them up on some lengths of flex and try to get a sense of min/max operating speeds.
In other news, as the track plan has been modified I nixed the control panel entirely and have been rewiring the layout with rockers in the fascia to control sidings:
I think it's a much more elegant solution than the panel! Far fewer wires across sections as well as running beneath, plus the location is more intuitive than a single controller up front since I'm going to be at the site anyway to throw turnouts while operating. Now if I modify the tracks, I can simply add more rockers as needed or reassign them elsewhere.
Both locomotives are now painted and decaled. The P-44 awaits some weathering and the Consolidation still needs a couple of details (spark arrestor, cab curtains, and some minor pilot and rear details) but aside from these and some trim painting, the two are essentially complete.
For the P-44, DRGW #800, my Archer rivet decal strips arrived last week and I finally chiseled off the ugly stock horizontal lines on the tender, replacing with the right pattern. I then brushed a thin primer coat over the existing decals and anyplace where there wasn't already paint, and hit both loco and tender with the airbrush.
I used a glossy black for tender and cab, and mixed a slightly grimier, lighter shade for the loco body. It's a double-edged sword, in that the lighter color brings out the detailing in relief, but it also shows that the boiler body isn't as smooth as it could be-- you can see the scars from all the dome surgery. Oh well; perhaps when I weather it, that will alleviate the issue a bit. I used all acrylics except for the smokebox, where I used a metallic silver enamel and then went over it with a bit of powdered graphite, burnishing it in with a brush.
(cont'd)
For SLC #1, some modifications had to be made to the tender. First I scratchbuilt the doghouse, eyeballing it based on my photos of the prototype.
I played around a lot with placement, moving the back end of the coal bunker forward and backward until I got the proportions I wanted. I painted the two locos together in one session, using the same glossy black and silver enamel/graphite mixes for this one. SLC's crew took pride in caring for and cleaning their only steam engine, so I'm not really planning to weather it much.
Also, as with the 70-tonner #71, I couldn't find exactly the right font, so I went with something a bit similar-- SP Extended Roman. The doghouse is only temporarily affixed with some dots of white glue, since I'm waiting to place glass in its windows before permanently attaching it.
Looking good, PT, looking good. Thanks for showing your outstanding work!
This thread is one of my favorites. It's high quality modeling that never loses the element of fun. Just what a hobby ought to be.
Tom
P,
I'm loving it. Those locos look great, certainly close enough to build a layout around. It's a good lesson for those who say because something isn't made RTR, it's standing in the way of their dreams.
Mike Lehman
Urbana, IL
You gentlemen are too kind. Mike, that's quickly becoming my MO. Really, what drives me to try to use up what I have stems from being economical, but also from wanting to preserve some part of what I had when I was little, trying to re-purpose what still works well and turn it into something new-- and if that requires taking pieces from three locomotives to make a really good one that works well, so be it. That's the reason behind finding new shells for my pair of diesel frames over in the other forum instead of buying new locos outright, or for all the work behind the 4-6-2 instead of hunting down the Samhongsa import. I'm thinking about finding donors to construct a C-41, which was to my knowledge never imported, although Tom has given me a lot of great info for kitbashing a C-48 from fairly easy-to-find brass.
I switched gears for the week, from locos to passenger cars. Lots and lots of decal work with cutting up those stripes:
I have some American Ltd diaphragms to add to these, plus handrail work, but in general I don't feel inclined to be quite so fastidious on rolling stock as I was with the engines, so I may leave it at that.
Those cars look nice!
I've used some of the American Limited diaphragms before. They're a piece of cake. The tricky part is getting the distance between cars set right for them to work best. This kind of depends on your layout, so if you don't have a good test bed to run them on, might be best to hold off until you do.
Wish they, or anyone, would make a narrowgauge diaphragm. All the standard gauge ones I've looked at are just too physically big to work, so probably will roll my own eventually.
I've been focusing the past few weeks on more rolling stock-- to my mind, since I'm moving in two months there's not much point in working more on the layout sections until after the move, now that they're wired up correctly, all the power switches are installed, and the trackwork seems sound. The P-44 has a few derailment issues with the curves and turnouts, but the Consolidation and the 70-ton are doing fine everywhere, so I think that's a bug to be sorted out with the engine.
My folks sent the last box of train cars from their home and I spent an afternoon picking through the cars that populated my layout as a kid-- an assortment of old Mantua cars with metal frames and plastic bodies, Bachmann train-set quality plastic cars, a Tyco car or two, and a couple of Athearn BBs. I salvaged what I could, took all the trucks off, snipped off the truck coupler boxes, and put in Intermountain wheels. Then I took the bodies for re-purposing, primed them and put on a coat of black. Here are some photos:
Decals are a mix of Microscale, Champ and an ancient Walthers set that kept disintegrating as I was applying the dimensional data... Not using those again.
Modeler's license applies to the decaling-- I'm sure they're not prototypical but I like to use what I've got. Same applies to these big 4-bay coal hoppers:
I also took an old Athearn SP caboose, put Kadee trucks and couplers on it, styrened a few of the windows to get closer to the DRGW window arrangement, and painted and decaled. Some details have gone on, but my plan is to add handrails and the radio antennae after the move.
Your little slice of the Rio Grande is certainly coming together!
Here's an idea for the future. As you say, D&RGW generally used gons, rather than hoppers, for coal service. Your "D&RGW quad hopper" may not be quite prototypical, but it looks good & plausible, and nothing I say here should be taken as any kind of criticism. However, at some point in the future you may want to re-modify the car to be more prototypical. If you do, here's an idea.
Of all the roads that used A.R.A offset-side quads, the only one that connected with the D&RGW was the Missouri Pacific, at Pueblo. The car could be painted as a MoPac 55500-56499 series open quad hopper (1500 cars), and would look quite at home. MKT and MILW also had these cars (50 and 52 respectively), and Milwaukee's subsidiary Chicago Terre Haute & Southeastern also had 448 cars. Other owners were all east of Chicago, and the cars tended to stay near home rails: B&O, C&O, Erie, B&M and DL&W. The DL&W cars were ex B&M, first purchased in 1951.
In 1937-42, 212 of the MoPac cars were modified with roofs, renumbered 1700-1724 and 1770-1981, and given a new AAR classification of LO (covered hopper). I looked in the 1948 ORER to see whether these covered cars were assigned to any special service, but found no new info there.
These cars are well covered in Railway Prototype Cyclopedia No. 5, (RP CYC Publishing CO., P.O. Box 451, Chesterfield, MO 63006-0451). The text gives more details regarding the MoPac modifications, including some changes over the years. Photos of the relevant MoPac cars are on pages 88-89.
Love your work! Keep those pictures coming.
Thanks, Tom! Great info about the Missouri Pacific cars-- I have another quad hopper body and three 2-bays waiting for conversion as well, so maybe I'll invest in MoPac decals for those to add variety.
What are the two bay cars?
As in AAR codes? I believe one is HM and the other two are HMA-- I'm not positive, being new to distinguishing the types. Photos might clarify:
They look like Mantua cars, but I'm not sure. I don't know what RR's used those. Maybe somebody else does. HM's had hopper doors parallel to the ties; HMA's had hopper doors parallel to the rails, dumping between the rails. HMA's were often used as ballast cars.
More freight car progress. Tom, I took your advice on including some MoPac cars. Decals are still wet on the red quad-- I used a slightly newer paint scheme for it, not sure if that was around in 1950. But paired with the DRGW quads, which didn't exist anyway, it makes a nice contrast:
Also worked on some reefers-- I took a Mantua Swift wood reefer and repainted for ART:
Using Clover House dry transfers for the first time with this one-- waiting until the next free afternoon to seal between transfers.
An attempt at weathering on an Accurail reefer, using ink and paint washes:
Lastly, I made the decision to replace the bays on those Mantua hoppers to make them analogous to the other 2-bay. I just did one for now, scratching new bays out of styrene:
Testing coupler and bay height:
Lead shot weight is drying in place right now-- I'll add a few rivet strips and then it'll be ready for paint.
I've been out of town & away from the computer fior several days so I just saw the new stuff. It's true that you're making some compromises (don't we all?) but the roster is coming together as a cohesive group of cars that fit a geographical and economic theme. I've always believed that a model railroad that reflects a recognizable geographic area, even if it's a fictional setting, becomes more believable as a result. Keep at it!
I've been quite busy lately with non-MRR-related stuff and prepping for the move, so projects have been a little bit on the back burner. My pair of Mantua reefers are now painted and decaled for ART, though:
Weathering was done with ink/alcohol and a few sprays or PollyScale earth. Right now it's a little on the heavy side, but I'm hoping another shot of matte coat will tone them down.
This weekend I made progress on a new small project: San Luis Central stopped passenger traffic in the 1920s, but I decided that on my layout they'd keep their sole drovers caboose on to the end of steam, bringing passengers now and again from Center, coordinated to transfer onto Alamosa-bound passenger trains. My latest acquisition is a Mantua caboose for this purpose-- I didn't take a before picture, but here's an identical one from online:
I pulled the trucks off it and replaced with a couple of Mantua archbar trucks off of an old tender:
It was a tremendous pain trying to pry the wheels out of these-- I actually snapped one of them and had to very carefully epoxy it back together, but they roll freely now with IM wheels. The window pattern on the body isn't precise-- it's a bit short in general-- but I find it close enough for my purposes. Two-tone sprayed with the airbrush, a light green for the body and flat black on the roofs:
Added Kadee boxes and couplers, ladders (I only had a couple of straight ladders, all too short, so I created the top grabs out of thin paper clips) and wire grabs to the sides. I also got a starter set of Clover House glass slides and a scriber this week, so I placed real glass in all the windows for the first time. A couple of Microscale decals and some shots of earth with the airbrush later: