New eyes needed

Hi Everybody,

I came to realize during the week, that if I'm going to do all this fine detail work that I'm going to need new eye glass prescription. I sat down at the bench to start spiking the rails to the bridge deck and even wearing my opti-visor I couldn't focus on the tip of the pliers and the spikes to put them into the pliers and put the spike into the hole in the tie plate.  So yesterday I made an appointment for next week end for an eye exam. But that doesn't mean every thing will come to a screeching halt either. There is a lot to do that doesn't need 20/20 vision. The lighting still needs to be installed. There's more bench work to be built.

During the week I discovered where the CV van is located. It is now at the Connecticut Eastern Railroad Museum in Willimantic, CT. So I'll be sending off an email asking for permission to get up close to it for photos and take some measurements.

I bought a Weaver B&O Wagon-top box car yesterday. I started out to buy the Rails Unlimited's Wagon-top boxcar kit. Ted wrote back saying that he has discontinued the car and said the Weaver car was better than his kit. I also read in the new O Scale Trains the review of the car. So a car with a new paint date of 1956 in a new red color rather than the original brown is on it's way. The car is also equipped with a Youngtowns door.

I am going threw all the rolling stock and pulling out cars that were built after Oct 1959. There are some Atlas cabooses, Quality Craft Thrall Door boxcar kits, A "State of Maine"  PS-1 50ft boxcar by Atlas that has to go. Its from the first run of these cars. Plus some other cars, it's all going up on e-bay.

OK that's all there is to report for now.

See ya next time.

It's the little things

Hi Everybody,

Well, I certainly didn't mean to be away for a month, but I was. But I did do some projects during this time. First was gathering all my code 100 switch part together and get them ready to go on the railroad.

The first part to be worked on was the frog. I have decided to not power my frogs. One less thing to do. And with 8-wheel pick up on my locomotives I'm not concerned about dead spots. And more prototype operation to boot. When was the last time you saw a switch crew stop their locomotive beyond the frog and make the brakeman walk that far?

So, the frog is by Red Cliffs Miniatures. It's a #6 and it comes with joint bars on both rails on the wing rail end which is very nice. But they cause a problem when it comes to track power. So I cut the joint bars off, squared up all four ends, glued .010 styrene to the ends. When dry I carved the excess styrene off leaving the shape of the rail cross section. I then glued on plastic joint bars to the rails. Now when the four rails are slipped into the joint bars the frog will be insulated.

I've also started cleaning up the points and the head bars. I'm still playing with how to make them to operate from a wire coming up threw the roadbed from the switch motor. And I've got to find a clevis big enough to fit over the end of the head bar to reach the switch stand which will be made to change the target position when the points move.

What next. While watching the staining dry I noticed that the head blocks really weren't long enough. I had used 12 foot ties and when looking along the ties I realized they needed to be longer. I removed the two 12 ft head ties and glued in two 16 foot ties. Now with all that tie sticking out into open space, you know they're going to get broken. So I added a block of wood and homasote under them.

Now I don't have to worry about them.

Last week my friend Phil Opielowski and I went digging cinders. Yes, Real cinders from real steam locomotives. You see, the Ware River branch in the steam days used cinders for ballast on the branch.

That's about 5 gal. of cinders right there. Now I've got to reduce all that into scale ballast. Boy it's nice when you have friends in high places. The MassCentral general manager is a personal friend of both Phil and myself and he gave us permission to go on railroad property. Even showed up and BS'd with us for a while.

One of the other projects I've been working on is the new decking for the 3 deck girder bridge that will be down at the other end of the Barre section. The basic bridge was built by Phil and it is a compressed version of the deck bridge north of Gilberville on the Ware River branch.

Here it is drying after some staining. N-B-W's still to go on along with the rails. Will be spiking the rails onto the deck this week. I will be doing this spiking at the work bench.

I have found the caboose for the railroad. The Central Vermont Ry had three U.S.R.A wood, center copula, 4-window cabooses. These where sold to the St J & L C as their #80, 81, and I think 82 but I'm not sure. And why this caboose you ask?

You did ask, right?

I've always liked center copula cabooses, so naturally I was drawn to it. It is a very simple design without a lot of garnishing. As far as I know and can remember this car hasn't been produced in O Scale. And I like having something no one else has. So the search went out for a set of plans. The good people on the Proto48 group helped in finding a drawing by Chuck Yungkurth in the Jan. 1979 issue of Model Railroader. I was able to find a copy at "Railpub" on the net. When it arrived I took the drawing into work where I was able to blow up it in 1/48 scale. From that I am now drawing the caboose in CAD to which the construction drawings will be made from.

Looking at the car and figuring out how I want to build it, it became apparent that it would make a great candidate to be cut out on a laser cutter. There is a cutter at work which is used to cut plastic blanks for printing on. I've got to find out it's perimeters so I can design accordingly

Now the only thing I'm missing for the caboose is what the frame looked like. The Yungkurth drawing doesn't show very much. There's a trolley museum down in Conn. that used to own one of the CV vans, but don't know if they still do.

"Road Trip!"

See ya next time.

Getting started.....Again

Hi Everybody,

Sorry about being away so long. But with the joys of owning a basement covered by living quarters means you have to spend time away from the railroad. But I decided last weekend that I was going to spend this weekend working on the railroad. And so I did.

I began by detailing the ties(for no better word). I was a little worried about using the fine tooth saw on the ties. I was worried that a big group of ties are going to all have the same grain pattern(is this considered rivet counting?), so instead of using the whole length of the saw blade, 6 inches long, I found that by using only an inch or two, I would have better control over how the ties, even ones side by side, would be different.

What do you think? I didn't find myself trying not to do the same thing on each tie. I found it quite fast doing the gouging and adding checks. With the ties in their natural wood the results can't be seen as well as when they are colored

This is the "Early American" minwax stain I decided on. I thinned down the stain with mineral spirits to make more of a wash than a stain.  I then started coloring in different patterns to see how they would look. In the end, the coloring all came out the same.

I also used a black wash I made as well as a light gray and a earth wash. After doing all the ties differently and as you can see in the above photo, they basically all the same coloring. So I decided on the following,

First coat is a coat of the black wash. One or two coats.

Second coat is the brown stain. The amounts vary from tie to tie.

Third and Fourth are washes of the gray and earth. Don't forget to do the sides and ends of the ties too.

I let it dry for a while here. When I came back there was too much gray so I kind of dry brushed some brown stain on to cut down the gray. By kind of dry brush, is after dipping the tips of the brush into the stain and squeezed out most of the stain on the jar lip. And to mash it all together with a wash of black.

I am using the light from the same light that will be used to light the railroad. Right now I only have one bulb, one of the compact fluorescent lamps. The lighting should go up soon too.

Now these tracks are going to be buried under dirt and ballast so I was able to practice on these ties before going out on to the rest of the railroad.

Another piece of news. The track will be ballasted with cinders. My friend Phil Opielowski, the builder of the mill, told me where real cinders can be gotten. We're going to try and get to the location this week, which happens to be Templeton, MA. The Ware River branch past threw town and the station area is still covered with cinders as well as the roadbed. As the Hopedale has past the change over from steam, the roadbed and ballast is still cinder.

See ya next time.

What's new

Hi everybody,

Well, funny thing happened on the way to the mill sidings. Lou Cross(a great guy) of Right-O-Way, had sent me code 83 instead of code 100. I was able to call him yesterday. Lou said he'd get the code 100 out asap.

I haven't started the detailing of the ties yet. I need to make a sanding block and give the ties a good sanding before doing anything to the ties. I was at the "Depot" last Saturday and found another shade of brown Minwax. It's call Early American. From the colored sample, it products a grayish brown. Maybe what I'm looking for.

I also have been thinking about the roadbed and track and how it should look. With the HC, I was going to go the beginnings of signs of neglect route. But now that I've back dated to 1959, I think a better kept track work would be better. More like what the StJ&LC trackage was like. Well kept but not class 1 mainline.

See ya next time.

Gandy Dancers have begun

Hi Everybody,

Today I laid the ties for the mill sidings. I first glue the foam board down. Yesterday I glued wooden supports to the backside of the sub-roadbed, which I also used as a gluing spot.

For the color of the ties, my ties will be on the brown side. I picked three different shades of Minwax. One is on the light side with one coating. The second is medium brown which I think I can make a wash out of it using lacquer thinner. I'll try that out doors in the back yard in case it explodes or something.

There is a railroad I have always had a liking to. Today it is operated by the Mass Central. The railroad is the ex-B&A/NYC Ware River Branch. At it's longest it was 49 miles long. It runs northeast out of Palmer MA. Today it only goes as far as So. Barre MA, 25 miles from Palmer. The railroad used to continue north to Baldwinsville MA were it crossed the Boston & Maine's Fitchburg mainlines. From there the railroad continued north to Winchendon MA where it connected with the B&M's Chesire Mainline.

Back in the 80's I worked as a volunteer on a tourist train which was operating on the Ware River and I got to photograph the whole 25 miles from the train as well as on foot. Anyway, the roadbed on the railroad is what I like. Good ballast in places, good ballast with grasses encroaching into the main line, many places where the ties are buried by the ballast. Most of the mainline north of Ware MA is country running. I will have to pick out some of the photos and scan them so I can share them with you.

Tomorrow I get to start detailing the ties and get them ready for coloring.

See ya next time.

The 1950's

Hi Everybody,

As I have mention, I am back dating the railroad to an earlier time period. I decided to set the time period as the fall of 1960. This was chosen mainly because I have a copy of the Jan. 1962 Railway Register. I chose 1960 because it was the beginning of a new decade, of a time that would become completely different that it was in the 1950's. But as I searched, 1959 looked a whole lot better. So 1959 it is.

As I began my search I started with all the information I had acquired over my life time. Some of it wouldn't be of any help as a good third is devoted to narrow gauge railroading. But the rest all covers the time between the 40's and earlier to the present.

My search began with two magazines called "Modeling of the 1950s Railroads" and the other one called "How to model Railroads of the 1950s". Both are put out by Model Railroader magazine. Even though both are directed toward the HO world, they still contain plenty of information. There is much that can be done to convey a time period. The architecture of buildings and the different model of automobiles are good markers of the time period you wish to convey. The HO people have it made when it comes to vehicles. Just about any year can be modeled just by the car you choose. But we people who have decided to live in our world of 1:48, have to put up with over and under scale vehicles. I haven't found many vehicles in 1:48 never mind the late 50's. 1:50 has a large selection of contruction equipment but the selection of automobles is almost zero. And none of those are American autos. And 1:43 is so large you can't place any 1:43 scale vehicles next to any rolling stock or buildings so it isn't even worth looking at. I'm still searching the internet hoping to find the jackpot, but it doesn't look very promising.

See ya next time.

I just had to see

Hi Everybody,

What do ya think? Looks pretty good if I say so myself. I just had to see what it was going to look like. I put in the ground filler between the backdrop and the sub roadbed. Looking threw the risers you can see some vertical pieces of wood. These are the uprights I cut to support the mill structures. There is another piece that lies on top of the uprights that the extruded foam lies on. Used my "Hot Wire" to do the cutting of the foam. In the days, months & years ahead, it'll be used quite a bit.

I have been doing a bit of research into the late 50's and early 60's. Even though I grew up in those years, I didn't get to do any train chasing. My train watching was limited to the open field at the end of the street I grew up on which over looked the "Springfield Hill" of the Boston and Albany. It is located on the east side of Springfield and begins right after leaving the station. It was great back then, you could hear the Alco FA's and FB's, RS-2's and 3's opening up to hit the grade. There wasn't as much noise as there is today. At night in the summer I could listen to the switchers going about their business in the station and the freight house yard. And I lived a good 5 miles as the crow flies from the station.

Well, just a couple of small things to still do and then Track laying begins.

See ya next time.