SW1500 Project: Part One

August was the last time I posted...I believe this makes post number eight of the year.  Next year there will be improvements, that is a promise!

Onto yet another new project this time.  I figured it was high time that I started to get a feel for priming and decals with my small lineup of projects at various phases.  I picked up an Athearn SW1500 shell, Model Master grey primer, and CDS VIA dry transfer decals.  There really was no rhyme or reason as to why I purchased that particular shell or even the decals, other than the fact I paid $18 for the lot at Maritime Hobbies & Crafts.

SW1500 shell, Model Master grey primer, CDS VIA Rail decals.

The first step was to physically wash the shell in warm water and dish soap and then let it air dry.  After the washing and drying was completed, I used latex gloves from then on to handle the model.  Since I don't have an air compressor, nor a paint booth yet, I opted to brush the primer on.  It was a good learning experience, however I cannot wait to be able to prime with an airbrush. With anything, the main ingredient needed is time.  I found some in the past couple days, and the photos below show the progress.

Round one complete...

Round two complete...ready for paint!

Stay tuned for updates in the near future (realistic near future and not three months down the road)!

- Caleb

Workbench Wednesday

Having a couple days off from work, and picking up a few models at my parents place last night I still found time with the sunny weather to do some inside work this afternoon.  Living in an apartment has its challenges for modelling, but with a small piece of plywood, I can have a small mobile workbench of sorts thats easy to keep clean, and also keeps my wife happy content.

Apartment workbench.

I had picked up a Proto 2000 SD60M a few years back that didn't run well at all, but I got it used for a very good price, so I decided to hang onto it and see what I could do with it down the road...  Fast forward to a few days ago and I got thinking about the SD60M again, and figured it was time to try to get it working. My initial plan when I bought it was to use the chassis for a Kaslo SD60F shell in the future.

The previous owner had cemented the shell onto the chassis on one end which resulted in much frustration as I tried to pry the shell off.  By the time I had the couplers unscrewed and off, I was able to pull most of the shell off...with the plow details etc still cemented on nice and tight to the front of the chassis.  I noticed the fly wheels were stuck and rotated them a few times with my fingers, stuck the engine on my test track and after a couple hiccups she really purred.

Back up to my workbench I approached the daunting task of figuring out how to effectively remove the plow and steps.
With a lack of patience comes great frustration (or something like that). Upon attacking the plow, I absolutely destroyed it which I could care less about as I wanted a somewhat clean chassis for my future Kaslo shell.  It took some serious beating at with a screwdriver and an awl and finally my rail nips to get the cursed thing off, but alas, she's ready for a new shell!

Ready for a new shell.

That pile you see in front of the SD60M?  Thats the remains of the plow, steps, and other details that are now all in the garbage.  Alas, I was able to save the MU hoses, and some handrails off the front of the unit.

Detail debris.

You may have noticed my SD40 shell in pieces in the background on my "workbench".  Stay tuned for updates in the near future on that, as it is progressing along slowly but quite well.

SD40 project progress.

Two posts in one week...wow!

- Caleb

Operating on the WC Kimberley Sub

While in Winnipeg for my training with CN, it seemed only fitting that I visit a few local layouts if  time allowed.  Bill Brillinger extended an invitation to me to join himself and a few other locals in operating on Bob Menzies' home layout.  I delightfully accepted this offer, and Bill kindly offered to pick me up at the Best Western on the day of.

Saturday, April 22, 2017 was the day that worked best for everyone involved, and Bill picked me up at the hotel relatively early to allow us a good chunk of time to operate.

We arrived at Bob's around mid-morning and in short order I found myself in Bob's basement which isn't all that big, however Bob has wisely used all permissible space for his layout.  Currently Bob has a "plywood pacific" of sorts, but fully operational.

The day unfolded with three of us running trains, Bob overseeing everything, including giving guidance with regards to switching out various industries, and finally Ian Lisakowski performing duties as Neenah Yardmaster.  My train wasn't quite put together in Neenah Yard, so I snapped a quick photo of what would be my power for the day, as the trio rolled off the shop track.

SOO 415 (RS27), GBW 319 (C424), AC 1501 (GP7)

It wasn't long after I had taken a few photos that Ian had my train made up and all ready to go.  Bob runs a double shelf style layout, with the yard on top tucked away just behind the stairway, and a slow  descending grade to the bottom level.  I can't exactly recall, but my train was somewhere in the range of 35-45 cars long and with a couple short blasts on the horn, train FLO 97 began the descent down to switch out the various industries at International Papers and Thilmany Packaging.

The photo below shows the peninsula along with the short spur off to the right where a couple more customers are located, which I had to pull and spot cars at each customer.  It was quite the challenge, but having no one else in my way due to my location, I managed to get the work done as efficiently as an amateur operator can do ;)

Pickups for FLO 97 at International Paper.

At some point in the early afternoon Bob and his wife, Margaret offered me a Vernor's Ginger Ale, a specialty from Michigan if Im not mistaken.  I personally do not care much for pop anymore, but this stuff was incredible.  Needless to say, at the end of the day I had happily polished off a total of 4 cans.  I made sure to not take long breaks from switching and only sporadic sips though, as work had to be done!

Throughout the day, Bob came around snipping trip pins on MANY couplers, and even did some changing out of awful wheel sets and replaced them with beautiful IMRC wheel sets.  This helped improve the operations success by a huge margin.

My only real flaw was getting hung up on a couple of switches in and around the peninsula industries while operating FLO 97.  A few of the switches had Bob's specialty kitty litter ballast caught up in the points which resulted in multiple derailments, but with a little bit of patience all was well.  Just as I was drawing to a close on switching International Paper, a supper call was made by Margaret.

The weary crew, busy from working on various jobs all day, hurried excitedly upstairs to find a most impressive roast beef dinner awaiting us.  Lots of laughs and stories alike shared around the table with a beautiful banana cream pie to devour for dessert.  To say we as a crew were spoiled is an understatement.

With supper behind us, there were a few more hours left to operate before we would shut everything down for the evening.  I wasn't too long finishing up my work on FLO 97 and had the train back up in Neenah Yard.  Ian explained that he had a FLO 93 train built up also for the lower deck of the layout, and I coupled onto that and was off.

Pickups for FLO 93 at IMCO Pulp & M&I Drilling.

Very soon after, it all became very congested as Bill had FLO 91 and Ricoh had FLO 95 all working down in the same vicinity.  However, it provided real life scenarios with congestion in very close proximity with a lot of work to be done.

Sometime after supper, Margaret reappeared downstairs with a tray full of fresh chocolate chip cookies.  Of course this warranted a need to have another ginger ale with a few cookies!

FLO 93 preparing to head downgrade.

Needless to say, I got as much done as I could, and the night was drawing to a close all too quick.  I figured it would be better to get half of the work done and return to the yard, as opposed to getting 3/4 or so of the work done and leaving the power and all the cars down at the industries.

I will end this post with a shot of my train just moments after leaving the yard with train FLO 93, before I headed downgrade.

A huge thanks goes out to Bill for inviting me, and also to Bob and Margaret for being such welcoming hosts and providing a fun day of operating with some incredible food!

Last but not least a couple photos graciously supplied by Bill of some of us operating throughout the day, and an operating selfie! :)

Myself, Bob, and Ian (Pictured left to right): Bill Brillinger Photo 

Bill & Ricoh (Pictured left to right): Bill Brillinger  Photo

- Caleb

Three Months Later, an Update!

It has been over three months since my last blogpost...wow.

Life has been busy, and in case you (my readers), didn't know, I am now an employee for CN Rail, as of the end of March.

Between a new career, training in Winnipeg for a total of seven weeks, and moving from Lunenburg to the Halifax area, it has all been fairly hectic.  However, I still find time here and there to do what I enjoy as a model railroader.  So here's whats been happening or hasn't been happening in the model department :-)

The UMG module will be taking a break for a little while as wiring and soldering the module itself is the next stage.  My plans is to use that module as a diorama of sorts to take photos of my models on as they are completed, and also to use at local model railroad shows as time off allows me to attend.

I have purchased a few pieces of rolling stock and also an older SD40 Athearn blue box locomotive, which should be arriving in the mail any day now!

My personal modules will wait until my wife and I move into a house sometime in the future where I can plan something more permanent for my layout.  I have had multiple modellers suggest that I focus on weathering and detailing rolling stock and motive power until I have the space for a layout, and I have decided to do just that.

Back in late February, I spent an evening with local modeller Ryan Handrahan and with his careful guiding, I was able to successfully weather my first piece of rolling stock, a CNA Railbox boxcar.  I have included a photo below to show the lightly weathered results.  In fact this week, I will be back at Ryan's for a second take on weathering with pan pastels and oil paints!

First boxcar, weathered.

Well there you have it, the next post will be a brief synopsis of two operating sessions I was apart of during my stay in Winnipeg.  As always, thank you for taking the time to view my blog, and I hope to have lots more material for you all in the near future!

- Caleb

GTW SD40-3: Part One

Well I figure its time for another blog post, as its been a couple weeks since the last one.  This will be the first official update on my SD40 project.  Before I get into it, I have to admit, not very much has been done since I acquired the unit at the Truro show last fall.

The SD40 has been bathing in alcohol since November at my parent's house, and to be honest, aside from a couple visits of taking a toothbrush to it, nothing else has been done.  However, in the past few days, with the help of other modellers, I have begun doing research on what detail parts I will need in order to turn the soon to be undecorated SD40 into a GTW SD40-3.

Below, I have included some photos of the unit before and after.  Aside from that, theres not much to say...

The former SD40 shell fully painted (not by me).

The majority of the paint stripped off of the SD40.

The next post regarding the SD40 will hopefully show the entirety of the paint stripped off of it, with some detail parts added.

- Caleb

UMG Module: Part One

Its been just shy of two months since my last blog post...its time for a new one!

I have not given up my plans of building a layout, rather where I am unsure of exactly what I want to model, I figured I'd do the next best thing and get to work on a module for the UMG, (a local group made up of members from the maritime provinces and Quebec).

I was unsure of what to build and floated various ideas around in my head before finally coming up with what I wanted to model.  There is no rules which state that a member HAS to model an area 100% prototypically, as freelancing is allowed.  However, I wanted the challenge to model prototypically and decided upon the Suburban Propane facility located in Milford, New Hampshire which is no longer serviced by rail.

I have included a photo below of the general area which I will be modelling.  Clearly, the red/maroon line shows where the current tracks lie.

For those that don't know, this is classified as the Hillsboro Branch, currently owned by Pan Am Railways to Wilton, NH, and state owned from Wilton to Bennington.  The Milford-Bennington shortline runs on this trackage from the quarry in South Lyndeborough to Granite State Concrete, located approximately a mile to the right, or railway east of the above photo.  The Milford-Bennington Railway runs from late spring to early fall making two to three rounds trips each day.  Pan Am has only one customer this far up the line, Hendrix Wire, which receives plastic pellet hoppers once a week.  It should also be noted that track speed at best on the branch is 5-10 MPH, with some locations that have restrictions of 3 MPH.

Suburban Propane last received cars in 2006, and did not receive them all that long before then.  So here this spur sits empty now, having not seen any traffic since 2006...a whopping eleven years, but in the future,  they may receive cars again, no one knows for sure...

With the history of Suburban Propane, and a short snippet of the Hillsboro Branch, I will now include an early photo of what the module looked like having just received cork.

Since this photo was taken, there have been quite a few additions...which will be mentioned in another blog post, stay tuned!

Caleb

A Visit to Andrew Castle's Home Layout

On Monday, January 10, 2017, after many failed attempts, I finally was able to spend a few hours at Andrew Castle's house to take in his excellent models on his layout that is developing quite nicely!

Believe it or not, I did not take many photos, but rather took some notes the old school way with a paper and notepad!  For those of you that don't know, Andrew is an excellent modeller, and has just a couple locomotives on his roster that are factory painted.  The first photo that you can see below is of two excellent custom paint jobs featuring CN 4762, (GP38-2W) & CN 9410, (GP40-2W).

Custom painted CN 4762 in HO Scale.

Custom painted CN 9410 in HO Scale.

Andrew models a few different prototypical scenes, including Onslow to Brookfield, NS on the CN Bedford & Springhill Subdivisions, along with the Truro A-Yard and a portion of the CBNS Hopewell Subdivision.  Although not much scenery is done, the models that Andrew has taken the time to build, reconfigure, strip paint off of, repaint, etc look extremely sharp!  The scene below hosts covered hoppers that in time will be a recreation of CIL Fertilizer, more commonly known as Truro Agromart today, located in Onslow, NS.

Covered hoppers on the CIL Fertilizer spur.

Although the Truro-Yard does not usually host much if any road power, this yard currently hosts a smorgasbord of power, as these are currently "dead", waiting decoder replacements.  Andrew is in the process of changing over the decoders in his locomotives from Tsunami to LokSound.

CN Truro A-Yard, with locomotives awaiting new decoders.

CN 3541 sits next to the former yard office in Truro, NS.

The pride and joy of Andrew's Layout is his scene depicting Sproule Lumber located in Valley, NS, and served by the CBNS Railroad.  The entire scene below is either scratchbuilt or kit bashed pieces.  I was very impressed to see this in person, as there is just the right amount of detail to make this scene come to life!

Sproule Lumber located in Valley, NS.

Although we didn't run any trains, I was perfectly content to soak in all of the information that I could learn about priming and painting models with various methods.  Of course, being able to look at this layout as a whole was much appreciated too!  Thanks again to Andrew Castle for having me over and letting me see his work up close and personal, and again for being such a wealth of knowledge to me!  I cannot wait to return and hopefully operate on this well-built layout someday.

- Caleb