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!