Your Proudest Accomplishment.

[IVRW]

Ive been sitting on this question for a long time, and I think my Proudest Accomplishment has to be solving the electrical problems Ive been having.

[onequiknova]

Wow, that looks great..... and massive!

 

 John

[indiana rr]

CSX_road_slug

My 'proudest' accomplishment in scratchbuilding would have to be my brass ore bridge (a type of traveling overhead crane used at steel mills).  It took me 8 months of evenings and weekends to finish it.

 

 

Wow!  That's a model?  Fantastic!

[CSX_road_slug]

My 'proudest' accomplishment in scratchbuilding would have to be my brass ore bridge (a type of traveling overhead crane used at steel mills).  It took me 8 months of evenings and weekends to finish it.

 

[tbdanny]

My proudest accomplishment would have to be the paint job on the following loco:

It started as an unpainted Walthers RS-2, which I scooped up from their bargain basement clearance.  The striping and lettering took me 6 weeks to do, and I had to redo the front and rear pilots 2 or 3 times to get it perfect.  I've yet to weather it.  This loco took out the 'Best Improved Kit' category in my club's annual competition for 2009.  Given that I'm not much of a sportsman, this is the first time I've really won a trophy, so I'm proud of it.

[shayfan84325]

I love pictures of outstanding model work.  Thanks to everyone for sharing.

It's too hard to pick just one, so I'll put up three:

My concentric curved trestles (they are actually part of a helix):

 

My turntable (the bridge was a craftsman kit, but the rest is from scratch):

 

And my handmade ground throws (smaller and stronger than commercial products):

 

 

[chatanuga]

For me, my proudest accomplishment so far on my current layout is the 6-cab wiring I did.  On my previous layout, it was wired for just two cabs.  This is also the first layout where I've done any kind of soldering, which is a good skill to learn.  In addition to going from 2 cabs to 6 and soldering connections, I also designed the layout to be sectional, which meant putting electrical connections between the layout sections.

Here's the biggest control panel on the layout when it was on the workbench after the connections had all been soldered.

 

Here it is again after being mounted on the layout.

 

Since this picture was taken, I've shortened the shafts on the rotary switches as well as added numbered positions for the 6 cabs.

Also, all wiring is labeled which, when hooking everything up, ensured that I got it all right the first time.

Kevin

[RailfanS]

For me I'd have to say going from this: 

To this: 

Note that both pictures are taken facing the same corner of the same room, with about 2-3 years difference.

Jamie

[PASMITH]

My saw mill. It took two years to build including research and hand drafted plans. The structure was built from scratch with each board individually detailed with four different stains. The gang saw was the most difficult piece of interior machinery to build. The major interior equipment such as the band saw was from Keystone. The jack chain and all log handling equipment up to the band-saw was scratch built. The power house and mill engine was scratch built as was the boiler house, flammable liquid shed, sawdust shed and burner, dry pipe sprinkler valves and valve houses, emergency boiler feed water tank and mill office. Sound effects are piped in from recordings I took at one of the last steam operated line shaft saw mill in Mississippi. The burner has smoke and flame simulation. Peter Smith, Memphis

[Mike in Kingsville]

 Probably my blast furnace. It was late 1989 or so and we had three small children at the time- budgets required creativity. The blast furnace was the first thing I ever built from scratch. I'd been in and out of trains a while and 15 months ago got started on the most recent layout which includes 14' of steel mill- the original blast furnace is included almost as-built except for some re-gluing of old bonds. Most of the mill is now built from scratch except the electric furnace portion.

My site has more pictures and explanations that I won't bore you with here... Anyway, here is a night shot of the mill with the blast furnace at the far right. Thanks for making me think of it!!!

I did PhotoShop in the clouds, but that's it.

[Packer]

Nearly screwed up the entire paint job on the unit and broke off many of the details. This is after fixing it back up.

Matt, your GP30 looks pretty good. Reminds me of my first detailing projects, a pair of P2K GP30s with the details west kit for GN/BN GP30s. Unforunately I forgot to check the number on the units, and they ended up being ex-CB&Q units and I sold them as a result. Really wishing I wouldn't have sold them, since they weren't really that far off and I could have re-numbered them...

[wm3798]

Any questions?

Lee

[twhite]

Okay, not my 'proudest' accomplishment (that's my benchwork in another post), but one I'm pretty darned proud of. 

Rebuilding a 'junker' Akane Yellowstone I picked up at a MR show here in Roseville a couple of years back.  It was in pieces, about the only thing that was somewhat intact was the drive train.   I literally had to re-build it as a brass 'kit', re-articulate the drive train, re-set the drivers (they'd been set on the wrong side of the loco for pickup), order a whole bunch of new castings from PSC for it, and rummage around my scrapbox for some new piping.  Ended up having to use a 'plug' system to connect it to the tender (which was also in parts) for pickup.  After about a month of rebuilding, it ran smooth as silk and hauled the paint off of the walls (still does). 

Here's a shot of the rebuilt baby before painting:

 

I substituted a PSC Elesco FWH for the Worthington that came on the model (or was supposed to--it was gone and there was just a big hole in the boiler top right in front of the stack), and since this baby is part of my 'never was' Rio Grande 3900 series 2-8-8-4's, I gave her a Pyle headlight, new pumps and a whole bunch of other goodies. 

Here she is, after painting:

And earning her keep on the Yuba River Sub:

Needless to say, I like this lady a lot.

Tom

 

[Sailormatlac]

You do it because it drives you crazy, but drives you crazier not to.

 

 Well said!!!

 The big step for me was to complete my first superdetailled diesel locomotive when I was a teenager. At the time, for me, somebody who could do this in a magazine was a kind of super hero. Then, I got an old HO Lionel GP-30 shell and started adding details, modifiying fans and custom painting it. When everything was done, I was so proud it looked like the real prototype. It was a proof that I could do what I saw in magazine... From that time, I started to extensively custom my engines and scratchbuild or kitbash structures. The GP-30 is far to be my best work, but it opened the way to develop my modeling skills. Now, I'm kitbashing steam locos and nothing compare to see them run on the layout, it has a soul in some way.

 Matt

[twhite]

onequiknova

Since I don't have a layout at this time, most of my modeling right now is focused on building custom locomotives. Although I'm proud of quite a few of my engines, like the one in my avitar for instance, but I'd have to say my proudest accomplishment would be my first scratchbuilt steam engine. I had very little experience with soldering or brass working before I started this project, so there was a huge learning curve during this build. The boiler, domes, cab, tender and various details were fabricated from brass sheet, wire and tubeing, while comercial casting were used for many of the other details. I modified the chassis from another brass basket case I had on hand.

   Of coarse my next "proudest accomplishment" will probably be my current scratchbuilding project, a CB&Q 2-6-6-2, which taking the leasons learned from my first build, is coming out a lot nicer.

That is indeed something to be proud of--a beautiful job.    There's something about a Burlington Mike that just makes them uniquely attractive to me.  You sure captured it!

And from what I remember, the pictures you posted some time ago on the 'in progress' 2-6-6-2 are DEFINITELY not too shabby, either, LOL! 

Hope you'll post more photos of the current project soon.

Tom

[Texas Zepher]

BATMAN

How about sharing your proudest accomplishment

Well that would be the thank you note I got from Grandpa Coyote for helping him come up with a layout plan here on trains.com layout planning forum.
http://cs.trains.com/trccs/forums/t/40786.aspx

Of course that was before he had to move the layout to another room.

What was your Eureka moment learning how to kitbash or scratch build?

Or how about just model building in general.  My first windows and liquid styrene cement.  When I watched the glue suck up around the edges (capillary action) with no slop and getting glue on the window ledges, I suddenly knew much better how to glue other joints were I could not see the results.

[onequiknova]

Since I don't have a layout at this time, most of my modeling right now is focused on building custom locomotives. Although I'm proud of quite a few of my engines, like the one in my avitar for instance, but I'd have to say my proudest accomplishment would be my first scratchbuilt steam engine. I had very little experience with soldering or brass working before I started this project, so there was a huge learning curve during this build. The boiler, domes, cab, tender and various details were fabricated from brass sheet, wire and tubeing, while comercial casting were used for many of the other details. I modified the chassis from another brass basket case I had on hand.

   Of coarse my next "proudest accomplishment" will probably be my current scratchbuilding project, a CB&Q 2-6-6-2, which taking the leasons learned from my first build, is coming out a lot nicer.

[fwright]

Even though my accomplishments are minor in comparison to some posters, to date my proudest accomplishments are

1) laying my first 2 handlaid turnouts and seeing that they actually worked, no matter what I ran over them.  And they even looked better than the Atlas Custom Line turnouts I was familiar with.

2) building my handheld DC throttle.  I redesigned the circuit to use a 4 wire, coiled telephone handset cord for the tether.  On my own, I thought of using a relay to get the wire count down and avoid voltage drop to track power in the tether.  Plenty of other folks have come up with the same idea before and since, but I didn't know about it at the time.

And as has been pointed out, it's very nice to see one's skills improving over time.  I imagine that if/when I complete these projects, they will take over as my proudest accomplishments:

1) building the Keystone Shay in HOn3.

2) remotoring and detailing an FED 2-6-0 in HOn3

3) hand laying a dual gauge turnout and/or 3 way stub turnout

Fred W

[MisterBeasley]

I'd have to give the nod to my subways.  When I started, I had been out of the hobby for 40 years, so I had a lot of learning to do.  My first "Wow, I can really do stuff like that?" moment was casting Hydrocal.  I just bulled ahead and made my own latex molds for the platforms and walls, and slowly it came together:

My subways are mostly underground (as they should be) and most of the track can't be seen from above.  My wife couldn't figure out why I spent so much time detailing the tunnels, only to cover them over and build another railroad on top of them.  But, I'd always planned on having the motorman's point of view, using this spy-cam inside the lead car:

It all comes together in the video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQ5OvZtI-QU

 

[selector]

Robby, I know what you mean.  Sometimes even deciding to take that next step is a huge accomplishment.  And that begets yet more big accomplishments.  Such a developmental hobby.

As an addendum to my post earlier, I forgot about my water under the comgination girder on the diagonal bridge.  I had a clear and shiny planar surface made of epoxy.  It was pretty, but not very realistic.  So, I thought of what I think must be a unique solution (I have never seen it mentioned anywhere).  I mixed a little plaster of Paris and some Huader Medium Green from Wally's into a vial with another batch of the epoxy and covered the clear layers that existed.  When that dried, I stippled on a thin layer of gel gloss medium.  It turned out better than I had hoped...at least in photos.  It is too dark and green when standing over it, but I know that the process works and can lighten the mix next time.

-Crandell

[Robby P.]

 I will say my "proudest accomplishment" is...............going form a 4x8 to a 12x13. 

 

 

[Arjay1969]

tin can

Running a train with two CF7's over Robert's Canyon Diablo bridge....

Oh, wait, that would be one of my most meanest moments....

 

I lust looked in the other direction.

Of course, I seem to recall certain CF-7's having difficulties making it around the layout.  Or maybe that was wishful thinking.

[Arjay1969]

selector

Excellent, Robert!  It is a most impressive structure, and once you have it all done up, weathering and all, it will be a first class showpiece that should appear in MR!  At least, I'd look forward to seeing it published there.

-Crandell

 

Thank you, Crandell!

Yeah, I still have work to do on the beastie yet...I still want to install all the internal bracing, but I didn't want to do that until I knew that the bridge would actually hold trains in continuous use.  I also need to install one of the BLMA signal bridges on the module.

[mononguy63]

It's an interesting and thought-provoking question, and I've spent an entirely disproportionate amount of time pondering it since it was first posted. Here's what I've concluded -

My proudest accomplishment thus far is the fact that, at least in my own eyes, each project I undertake (scenery, painting/decaling, buildings, what have you) seems to come out better than the previous one. So in other words, I'm most proud of my own modeling skills improvement, particularly in the last couple of years. Perhaps some day I can eventually claim to actually be pretty good at some particular facet of the hobby.

Jim

[hminky]

That scene, discovering new techniques and documenting it on my old website.

http://www.pacificcoastairlinerr.com/4x8/

 Which lead to articles in RMC.

Harold

[tin can]

Running a train with two CF7's over Robert's Canyon Diablo bridge....

Oh, wait, that would be one of my most meanest moments....

[Grampys Trains]

 My proudest accomplishment was being fortunate enough to have a photo published in the July, 2009 issue of Model Railroader Magazine and 3 published in the 2010 Walther's catalog. DJ.

[dale8chevyss]

 I think my proudest accomplishments is my scenery in general.  I'm working on a tunnel/mountain and that is turning out well; ballast, trees, water, etc I can actually see as convincing when I look at it.  I never thought I could pull off anything convincing when I started seriously modeling nature. 

[GRAMRR]

At this point in time, I have to say that my proudest accomplishment is finally getting off my dead end after 20-30 years of inactivity and starting to build models again.  I also have to say that most of the credit goes to you great folks on this forum that plant the seeds to get me going.  Thank you!