Wondering what is currntly on your workbench or in your paint shop. I have three N scale locomotives I am currently working on a Kaslo Shops SD50F from their kit that I painted in BNSF colors and is currently being decaled. A Kato AC400CW that is in the paint shop receiving BNSF paint. An Atlas GP30 that is being converted into a GP39-3. It will be painted BNSF and placed into the 2600 series to avoid being mixed with the Santa Fe GP35's that are numbered in the 2500 series. I also have two Atlas GP35 and two Atlas GP40 shells that are waiting their turn to be converted into GP39-3's.
Currently, there is a Grandt Line warehouse kit and four Accurail 36' boxcars awaiting light weathering. Now if you want to discuss the backlog on the shelves that is a totally different story. Y'all have a great Thanksgiving.
Currently kitbashing the Walthers Champion Packing Plant into a building flat, low relief building that will be the home to my casket stamping plant. Also, i have several cars in various stages of assembly and weathering.
A brass Santa Fe 2-8-0, not the ubiquitous PFM 1950 class, but a Sunset 789 class - beautiful small locomotive. Brasstrains had it on sale, discounted by 25%. A piece of the tender drawbar is missing and on order from American Scale Models.
Had several on the bench today, finished up a OMI Schnabbel car I painted for a friend(what a PITA, I will never paint another one of those!), then I had to remount the trucks on a Hallmark GP40 high hood that I retrucked with Challenger(Samhongsa) trucks a few years ago for another friend that dropped it. Then I have been messing with my basket case PFM Climax that was missing the worm gear. Found one that works and fitted it with the Canon EN22 motor that was already on the list to put in this model. Cheers Mike the Aspie
Silly NT's, I have Asperger's Syndrome
Looking nice Mel. I know you been working hard on that for a long time and it shows.
I hope I am not mistaking but I seem to remember you did a mock-up when you started that scratch built model, it does look familiar to me.
Regardless, looking real good.
Track Fiddler
Track fiddler Looking nice Mel. I know you been working hard on that for a long time and it shows. I hope I am not mistaking but I seem to remember you did a mock-up when you started that scratch built model, it does look familiar to me. Regardless, looking real good. Track Fiddler
Thanks
RR_MelI'm working on an animated girl dancing around in the second floor bedroom.
Well that sounds interesting.
My work bench is a revolving project list, installing decoders, locomotive projects, detailing the transloading yard, getting back to my station build, adding more figures, finishing freight car projects from spine cars to tank cars, etc., etc., etc.
Mike.
My You Tube
Most of my workbenches (I have 2) are a big mess, but I am making progress. Just finished a Sylvan Scale Studebaker convertible with driver, passenger and dog figures. Making progress on an N scale Quality Craft warehouse kit that someone started, abandoned and donated to Boothbay Railway Villlage, and a Plastruct sanding tower - same story, except this one has the instructions. These 2 kits will be going to the Springfield show as part of our fund raising sales.
George In Midcoast Maine, 'bout halfway up the Rockland branch
I just received three RailPro LM-3 decoders. Will be installing them in three Atlas Trainmaster engines.
Mine is my forth Bridge of my eight. I am dissecting a Kato unitrack truss Bridge to create a Pratt truss Bridge. It is very important to me to include a pratt truss bridge on my layout.
This is the center bridge in a series of three to make the crossing.
This bridge is definitely one of my more difficult ones. I was thinking I would be saving time by not scratch building it to avoid making all the gusset plates like I did on the previous scratch built bridge.
I decided to kitbash it, (maybe bridgebash it would be a more realistic term)? I'm starting to wonder about this now. It's too late to turn back. I'm already too far into it. I will continue and finish this bridge. At that point I will be halfway there and be able to move on to my fifth bridge.
Perseverance The patience I work on everyday
Mike, the house is impressive, as is your work with the Arduinos.
My workbench is absolutely buried in crap right now. There is no space left to work and I haven't got anyplace else to store stuff. I'm going to have to put up some shelves in the garage or something. The mess has really killed my modelling. I haven't worked on anything of my own for a few months. Mind you I have been spending a ton of time working on the new club layout and other club business.
Dave
I'm just a dude with a bad back having a lot of fun with model trains, and finally building a layout!
I ALWAYS have about two-dozen on-going projects. That's just "how I roll" as they say. Sometimes I feel like an air traffic controller trying to juggle all the incoming and, sometimes, outgoing projects.
At the moment I'm finishing up the lighting, interior and lettering of a Pullman 3-2 observation car. The windows are still masked because it needs another shot of gloss coat over the decal.
IMG_0359_fix by Edmund, on Flickr
I was held up for a while on this one because of wanting to consolidate several printing jobs on the computer. I printed that Pullman carpeting, now things can move forward again. I installed marker lamps on it, too.
IMG_0357_fix by Edmund, on Flickr
You will also see one of the gantries for the Hulett unloaders. I got those painted this week and after the Pullman is done I'll get to installing some LEDs on those. At the same time I'm laying out the ore-dock scene and maybe a dozen other odds-and-ends.
Just to prove that my bench doesn't always look like a disaster zone here's a photo from about a year ago:
IMG_7287_fix by Edmund, on Flickr
Model Railroading IS Fun!
Thank You,
Regards, Ed
Forgot to mention the wooden trestle that I am building for my layout. It will be 20 inches long and 5 inches high.
Keep the projects coming this is fanincating stuff.
My latest is a gondola car for my museum train (itself an answer to the question "Now that I bought this 45 tonner that can only pull four cars up the grade, what the heck am I going to do with it?").
I stumbled upon a prototype on a road trip a couple of years ago -- a gondola car with a door cut in the side and homemade benches. Built this from a $3 Athearn gondola.
It's a pretty simple project, but it's the first time I've attempted something like this. Now it just needs more people.
As for the museum train: It'll be this, two Roundhouse/MDC 55-foot Overland passenger cars in bright yellow, and a shiny blue Conrail caboose -- about the max the little critter can get up the hill.
Right now it looks like I have a real mess going on, but I am completing projects pretty well.
.
-Kevin
Living the dream.
This is the first of my N scale GP39-3's that I have rebuilt from an Atlas GP30. Easy kitbash, jut take out the center fan and fill it in. I will be painting them in the BNSF paint scheme.
100_0408.JPG
Whats On Your Workbench Or In The Paint Shop 11/17/1017
Well, it's the 18th now, but nothing has really changed. I have six brass locomotives to repair (mostly minor cosmetic stuff - they all run superbly) and paint for a friend - I've already painted four of them, so they need only decal work to finish. I also have a TrueLine Trains CNR caboose to paint for him - basically a complete disassembly in order to remove all of the engineering plastic handrails so that they can be painted to match the colour of the caboose's orange body - as they come they're orange-ish bare plastic.I also have two brass locos of my own that need to be modified to match their prototypes, and they'll require paint and lettering, too, and almost finished is a modified Bachmann 2-8-0. I have another two brass locomotives and a brass snowplow to paint for another friend. Besides those, a couple of Branchline reefers to build and letter (both started, although one will need modifications to the roof and hatches. I also have a Bowser A-5 under construction for another friend - it's the version with all the superdetailing parts and a can motor....I'll also be putting a decoder in it, my first attempt, since I run DC. Another friend has given me a wooden boxcar that he needs painted - he prefers that it be airbrushed, so his timing is good with all the other painting going on at the moment. He's modified it with some plastic and metal detail parts, and it looks pretty nice. The paint is on it, with C-D-S lettering to be applied soon.I picked up a LifeLike Canada body shell for a CNR Fowler boxcar today. It'll get all of the plastic grabirons and sill steps removed and replaced with custom-bent wire ones, plus a scratchbuilt roofwalk (the one one the model is about 6" short on both ends). It'll also get a scratchbuilt floor and underframe.
G Paine...Just finished a Sylvan Scale Studebaker convertible with driver, passenger and dog figures...
I had a model of a Studebaker, too, but no passenger or dog, only the driver...
Wayne
Since paintshop is listed on the title of this thread I thought this would be an appropriate time to ask you guys a question that I am dumbfounded about. I need some advice on what to do here.
I have a scratch built through truss Bridge and working on another one. I will have to paint both these Bridges when I get to that point. I am very confused about the best way to go about painting these bridges, especially the inside of the enclosure as it is hard to get to.
Can somebody help me out here with advice on the best way to do this. This would be much appreciated.
Just arrived from Walthers. I intend to change out a structure in the near future.
Remember its your railroad
Allan
Track to the BRVRR Website: http://www.brvrr.com/
Track fiddler...I have a scratch built through truss Bridge and working on another one. I will have to paint both these Bridges when I get to that point. I am very confused about the best way to go about painting these bridges, especially the inside of the enclosure as it is hard to get to....
I had a number of large-ish bridges that needed to be painted, and none of them would fit inside my paint booth. I waited for a nice day, with not much wind, and did the painting outdoors, using my airbrush. I don't think that spray cans are a viable option for this type of painting: too little control over the amount of paint applied and almost no control over spray pattern, especially for the places inside the bridge structure that are painted by spraying through the spaces between the various bridge members.This allowed me to control both the amount of paint being applied, and equally important, the direction in which it was sprayed.I organised my painting so that all similar members were done at the same time, and from as many directions as was needed to get complete coverage.
For example, all of the uprights were done first, outside surfaces from both left and right and for both, spraying upwards and downwards. This allows the paint to get into open-sided members and also does the sides of those that cannot be sprayed directly - half of each side of each member will be done during the spraying from the outside, and the other half by spraying through, from between, the outside members on the opposite side of the bridge.I sprayed mine oxide red first, then re-did all of them with a brownish-black as the finish colour. This final colour wasn't meant to completely cover the first colour, but rather leave that which was less accessible to the spray as a subtle sign of rusting...I'm not sure, though, if it was worth the effort. It was a very time consuming process, but gives better results, I think, than pre-painting before assembly, then scraping paint from places that need to be glued, and touching up those places later.This method does get the entire bridge painted, but it helps to do the work in a very ordered manner, so as to not miss something that you'll notice only after installing the bridge on your layout.
Here are most of mine:
All of my bridges are removeable as one-piece entities.
Here's the bridge in the last photo, after I finally got around to adding some scenery...
The two in the first photo are still waiting for the trees to grow, probably connected to the fact that there's still no water in the Speed River.
Thanks Wayne
I got to tell you, advice from you is like gold in my hand. Your Bridges look really nice, not to mention your water effects done with DuraBond 90. I never get tired of looking at that and I've seen it many times. I've even come across images of this on the internet.
You told me a while back you just kind of got lucky with your mud knife. Well you're one lucky guy and it shows.
Anyway.......I must say I kind of figured I would most likely be painting these Bridges with an airbrush. It's amazing I've been a Craftsman in my trade my whole life and I don't even own one. So I'm green to this but have a background to catch on pretty quick.
I've been wanting to buy one and learn how to use it for a long time now. If you could recommend one I should buy and any key fundamental pointers you could give me using this new tool. This would be very much appreciated.
I do have a mini compressor, a moisture filter, and a fine precision PSI regulator.
Thank you Wayne
I've been putting plastic kit buildings together at work on my office desk. Stuff that requires painting or drilling or cutting holes would need to be done at home. Clean off a table, place a cutting mat on it and use a Paasch single-action airbrush. Found a British book on airbrushing. One of the plastic buildings requires a roof to be painted black with the window frames white or brown; leaving the building structure color as is. Plan to add lights to most of the buildings; some buildings are solid blocks of plastic and would be impossible to add lights.
Also plan to change 2 NYC steamers to Marinette Tomahawk & Western, Soo Line and and a Mikado to Chicago & Alton. Hard to find a Soo Line steamer in N-Scale. That's it for now.
Dennis
This just arrived, sitting the bench, and I've never seen anything like it before, so I just had to have it.
Going by the chassie and motor, I'm sure it's an Athearn. Using an optivisor, and magnifying glass, the window and door openings on the "cab" end appear to be cast in, and not cut out.
Nothing has come up on a search, and nothing in HOseeker.
This might jump up a few notches in my "projects" list.
Track fiddler.......I must say I kind of figured I would most likely be painting these Bridges with an airbrush. It's amazing I've been a Craftsman in my trade my whole life and I don't even own one. So I'm green to this but have a background to catch on pretty quick. I've been wanting to buy one and learn how to use it for a long time now. If you could recommend one I should buy and any key fundamental pointers you could give me using this new tool. This would be very much appreciated...
I hesitate to recommend an airbrush, as the only one I've ever used is a Paasche VL. It's a double action, internal mix type, which offers great control. Mine came with a booklet that included basic instructions, an exploded diagram of the parts and a list of part names and numbers. It also shows some available accessories.
Mine came with a glass bottle and siphon cap that fit perfectly on Floquil, Polly S, and Pollyscale bottles, although another ordered sometime later wasn't quite the same size. Because those three paints were the ones I used most, I saved the bottles as the paint was used-up, and have a good supply for mixing and storing custom colours.The set also included a booklet of 22 Airbrush Lessons for Beginners. I found the first four the most useful for modelling purposes, but it doesn't hurt to read them all.I got a few empty cardboard boxes from the supermarket, on which to practice. Cut them apart with a utility knife and the unlettered backs will provide lots of practice "canvases" which can go in the re-cycling bin after you're finished. Paint choice is up to you - I started with Floquil (easy to spray) Poly S (so-so for me - some colours didn't cover very well, whether sprayed or brushed and more suited to brushwork. Pollyscale was the over-all best, in my opinion, but all three of those brands are discontinued.I'm now using Scalecoat I - not bad, and I'll probably stick with it, at least until my $200.00 worth-of-it is used-up. I bought it when Weaver discontinued production, although it's now available from Minuteman Scale Models.
While many airbrush users (especially those with single action brushes) use the colour cup for painting, I use it only when cleaning the airbrush: some lacquer thinner in the colour cup, sprayed through the airbrush before dis-assembly, then the tip, aircap, and aircap body dumped into the remaining thinner in the colour cup, as it sits on the workbench while you finish cleaning the rest of the airbrush. If you buy acrylic paints (water based), don't waste money on the manufacturer's thinner...a gallon jug of distilled water from the supermarket is cheaper than the 1 or 2oz. bottle of proprietary "thinner" from the manufacturer. If you can avoid doing so, don't buy ready-to-spray (pre-thinned) paint - see the previous suggestion for my reasoning on that (it's also useless for brush-painting - I don't know of anyone who uses an airbrush to paint figures - the masking alone would get me a free ride to the looney bin).Whatever paint you chose, lacquer thinner is a good choice for clean-up, even with water-based paints. Buy a gallon of it at a hardware store or Walmart, then decant it into smaller containers appropriate to the planned use. It's good for cleaning brushes, too.Do clean your airbrush completely when the painting session is over. That means a complete dis-assembly, and is the excuse given most often when people are loath to learn airbrushing. In truth, it takes only a few minutes. Care for your airbrush properly, and it will give you good service - mine's been in use, including some commercial painting, for almost 40 years.
A spray booth is a good idea, but not a necessity. If you're using lacquer-based paints, wear a two-stage respirator - I wear one regardless of the paint type, as I find alcohol-based thinners, and some others disagreeable, too. For water-based paints, a dusk mask will probably be sufficient.
That's about all I can think of at the moment - send me a PM if you have any particular questions. Oh, and thank you very much for your kind words.
mbinsewi...Going by the chassie and motor, I'm sure it's an Athearn. Using an optivisor, and magnifying glass, the window and door openings on the "cab" end appear to be cast in, and not cut out....
I'd agree with your guess of it being Athearn, probably a B-unit. The front end also appears to be from Athearn - looks like a spliced-on end from their RDC.
Kinda thinking the same, Wayne, but, there are no signs of any splicing or seams on the inside of the shell. If it was all added, who ever did it, did a great job.
Thanks.
Have nothing on the workbench related to trains as I had to clear way to do homework for graduate school - less than a month until graduation (16th) and one month until all assignments and thesis is due (22nd). Then... let the fun begin.
I have purchased a few building kits in the last few weeks - Walthers Truck Dump, Pikestuff Enginge House, and a Pikestuff Loading Dock. All will hopefully be put together and ready for painting in the spring if they need it. I have a bunch of kits that I'd like to get together, too. Highest on the priority list, though, is purchasing and learning how to use/run an NCE system, getting needed track, and finally setting up my 2'x8' switching layout.
Until December 23rd, though, it's all grad school with only some time each day for the trains. Still enjoy reading the forums or books/magazines before bed or watching a video here and there.
In my case it's not what's on the work bench but what's above it.
While working on another project, I was looking for something and saw this little box hanging from the peg board. It turned out to be a NOCH laser cut mini model.
After finishing the other kit I checked out the NOCH mini. I have no idea when, where or why I ever bought it. The wording on the box is in both German and English but the assembly instructions are in German and a series of pictures for us English folks. Ulrich, if you happen to read this and would like it P M your address and I will gladly mail it to you in time for Christmas Bob
After finishing the other kit I checked out the NOCH mini. I have no idea when, where or why I ever bought it. The wording on the box is in both German and English but the assembly instructions are in German and a series of pictures for us English folks.
Ulrich, if you happen to read this and would like it P M your address and I will gladly mail it to you in time for Christmas
Bob
Don't Ever Give Up