Heart of the Midlands Exhibition

Not done too much updating as a lot of time been spent getting our exhibition layout "Padden Flatts" ready for upcoming appearance at the exhibition "Heart of the Midlands" in Loughborough and run by Soar Valley Model Railway Club.

I will post some photos over the weekend but in the meantime here is the flyer:

Come along and don't forget to say hello!

DT&I 12298

Last one for today, another Bowser kit, sadly this one had previously been in the hands of Stevie Wonder. I try not to buy items built by others for exactly this reason but being it's my only DT&I car I persevered. One of the coupler spigots was broken off, one of the bogie mounts had a stripped tread and the body mounting tabs had all been cut off... The coupler spigot got replaced with styrene and I sleeved the stripped threaded bolster. There was a lot of dried glue around the chassis from previous attempts following the broken mounting tabs, I cleaned as much off to get a good fit again. I replaced the metal floor weight with a thicker one that brought it up to NMRA recommendations and then fixed the chassis into the body.

Intermountain metal wheels, Kadee# 158s, train line hoses and hand bent cutlever bars were all added before weathering accordingly.

Won't be as long until the next post.

Happy Railroading

SL-SF 17691

Now for a car from a little further afield. In order to add to the variety of my roster, not only do I have cars from neighbouring roads but from distant roads too. This is one of those said cars, a factory painted Kadee PS-1 40' boxcar. These are quality cars with lots of details and separately applied parts, coming from the factory with metal wheels and scale couplers. A quick snip and grind of the trip pin, adding 7g of weight and it's ready for service following weathering.

NKP 16103

This Nickel Plate Road 40' Boxcar is a Branchline Yardmaster kit, now sold under the Atlas marque, like the Bowser kit it is a good robust model. I like these kits having built a few over time and they first turned me on to hardware for weighting purposes, they come with two M12 hexnuts to use as weights! An ingenious use of a readily available and cheap resource.

The builder has the option of modeling the doors as working or fixed shut. The ends and roof a separate parts so it makes for easier modeling of cars with different end or roof colours based on prototype. It was common in the 40s/50s for the ends and/or roofs to be black while the car sides boxcar brown. This batch of NKP cars had black roofs and ends and Branchline painted them accordingly. The only thing I had to correct was the brake wheel colour as that was brown in the kit and should be black to match the prototype.

Even the Yardmaster line of Branchline car kits came with RP25 metal wheels so no need to substitute. I drilled out the pins on the coupler covers in order to replace them with threaded screws and then fitted Kadee #158s. Again I fitted Kadee trainline hoses and Detail Associates cut lever bars. This time painted black and then weathered the whole car for 1953-56.

VGN 62023

Another Virginian Car, this time a 50' Automobile Boxcar.

Bowser factory painted kit. One of the coupler mount spigots was deformed so I ended up drilling it out and replacing with a piece of styrene tube drilled out to accept the factory screw. This was an unbuilt kit so I got to build it up entirely from start to finish. Nice kit, basic but well thought through, I do see the coupler spigots as a weak point, needing a sheath to accept Kadee couplers.

I replaced the plastic wheels that came with the kit with some 33" smoothback Intermountain wheels, fitted Kadee #158 scale couplers.

I added Kadee Train line hoses and Detail Associates cut lever bars. Painted with Tru-Color freight car brown, not exact but once weathered blends right in.

VGN 303 & VGN 305

First up is a pair of Cabooses for Virginian Ry

Both of these a factory painted Atlas cars, lettered to represent VGN class C-10 cars. They are not 100% accurate but pretty close for out of the box models. For all they are hard to get hold of, I've been on the hunt for over 5 years, they aren't as hard or expensive as brass cars so a decent stand in for now.

I like Atlas cars as they always run well with metal wheels and they are a good robust quality.

My standard is Kadee scale couplers so these are fitted with #158 and have had the trip pins cut.

The cars were a touch under NMRA weight guidelines so a little bit of added weight and all comes into line.

Being Trainman models they don't have huge amounts of detail and separate detail parts, the end grabs are molded on but a little yellow paint highlights them enough. The minimum detail level I try to attain is train line hoses and cut lever bars as most cars lack the end detail but these are quite obviously missing from side-on viewing to me.

Back Again

Well I've neglected this for a long time, arguably too busy and when I finally got around to do some modelling it been more for myself. It does mean I have plenty projects to update on.

I'm going to restart with some freight cars I completed the other week.