Weathering Projects

I wrapped up a few random weathering projects. The first two are ballast hoppers for my White Pine layout. I used these two prototype photos by Dan Mackey for reference.

This covered hopper was a project for my friend Harz. He photographed the prototype years ago and found the main decal for me to use on the model.

This boxcar was just a fun weather practices project. 

Pueblo Union Station

I enjoy building things for friend’s layouts. They go through all the work of building a layout for us to come and enjoy for ops sessions, I feel it’s the least I can do to contribute in some small way. I have done a couple of small projects for my friend Rob’s DRGW Tennessee Pass layout. The latest was building a station for his Pueblo yard. I tried keeping it as close to scale as possible. I’m also added some interior scenes as well as lighting. The whole complex measured 34” end to end. Not bad for N scale!

A view of the whole complex on my workbench

The previous work I did for Rob was making the bridge supports for his Canyon Scene

BN Projects

I line up projects so I can spray a lot of the same color at the same time. I knocked out some BN projects for a friend’s layout and one just to see if it could be done. 

BN 631020 was the first done. BN had two of these 8 axle flats, so I figured it would fit in well in Havre Yard.

While looking through Havre pics, I found a shot of this signal maintainers truck. It was pretty easy to make using Showcase Miniatures parts and a scratch built box.

The next truck I found brand new in a hobby shop in California for $1.50. I weathered it and added some details. 

Lastly was the snow dozer. This was a Baldylox kit that heavily upgraded with brass details. I added grab irons, chains, and the front window guards. I painted and lightly weathered it. I think I’ll do a couple more in other paint schemes.

WC/SOO Boxcars

On the White Pine Sub old SOO 40’ boxcars were repurposed to be braking cars to help assist some of the heavier trains on the steep grades. I built 4 to incorporate into ops on the layout. I started with MicroTrains cars, removed the roof walks, patches those holes, swapped doors, painted, decaled, and weathered them to match prototype photos I found. It took a mix of K4 and MicroScale decals. Matching the prototype font mix was fun!

Modutrak at TrainFest

I had a fun run to Milwaukee to hang out with my Modutrak friends. I came in straight from San Diego, so I was lent a variety of trains to run.

Jordan at Rapido Trains lent me their Turbo Liner. What a dream! It ran flawlessly for hours and looked beautiful doing it!

Mike Skibbe lent me a monster freight, the 4 IM F-Units pulled it no problem. It is nice having broad curves to glide around. At a reasonable speed this train took an hour to navigate the layout. Here you can see it passing between the CNW and MILW tunnels at Tunnel City, WI. I built these modules before the St. Louis RPM and drove them 2300 miles for the show!

I also got to run some Southern Alberta Rail units. These are Grant Eastman creations owned by Mike.

BC Rail Cars

I have been wanting to increase the volume of BC Rail cars in White Pine. I added a mix of brands this week to bulk up the fleet. These cars hauled copper anodes from the Flin Flon mine in Manitoba to the White Pine Refinery for refining into copper cathodes. I made sure the cars all had metal wheels, were weighted correctly, and were weathered before they hit the layout.

The Kaslo kits I built and painted:

Athearn:

PWRS:

PWRS WC car… this was an absolute mess from the factory. Underweight, and it had fingerprints in the factory paint… I’m still waiting for PWRS to fix this.

More MOW

Okay… I got on a bit of a kick. I ended up building not one, but two N Scale tie gangs. One will stay with me, and the other will head to a beautiful Afton Canyon layout.

Some pics of my progress:

Tie Cranes

Spikers

Spike Pullers

OTM Retriever

TRIPP

TR1 Tie Inserter

Ballast Regulator