Skally Vehicles

I've been working on some vehicles to make the Skally Line look a little more inhabited. You may have noticed a few of them in earlier posts. I want to thank Showcase Miniatures for really stepping up in the N Scale market to bring us some cool kits.
The one I have completely done is this BNSF "I" Type MOW truck. This one makes Hinckley look like BNSF is keeping an eye on the trackage of the Subdivision.

I modified another of the "I" Type trucks to be used my the BNSF mechanical department. I built a traction motor for the back, so it looks like they just swapped an idler axle under a locomotive.

The cab-over semi is used in grain hauling service in Rush City. I'd like to decal it for the Peterson Mill at some point. The trailer is a modified kit I cast myself in resin. The axles, landing gear and mudflaps are from Trainworx.

Another vehicle is in the works for Hinckley. It will be a BNSF signal maintainers truck. The box is from Shapeways. It still needs paint and details, but it is a start.

Just like so many of my other projects, these are started, but not done. They will work as fill-ins until I get a little more time to blast out the detail items.

A Little Weathering

While I was home last I added a little weathering to my MNN hopper. I think this makes it look a little more realistic. I will be making a second MNN hopper to go along with it, but the next one will use a MicroTrains car, so I can do a little painting on the roof hatches. Once I do my next round of washes, I will probably hit this car with a very light wash of undercoat grey to tone the green down just a fuzz.

I'm still not sure if I'll add the white x's by the discharge chutes... something to try I guess.

Shapeways

I finally placed an order through Shapeways. I figured I would start with some small pieces and see what I thought of the quality. My only experience so far with their products was a Trackmobile my friend BH got me for helping to build his Ore Dock benchwork. I picked four parts to try out: a signal maintainers pickup box, 2 different styles of ditch light housings and some GP exhaust stacks. I was tired of robbing shells to get these exhaust stacks and my previous experiments in resin casting didn't yield the results I was comfortable with. These come from David Cutting whose Shapeways store can be seen HERE.  At first look the product appeared good. I soaked them for about 2 hours in Bestine to remove and residual from the production process. Here they are after the soaking:

I cut some away and sanded the bottoms with 350 grit paper, and glued them down. Here are the new stacks installed on the project CF7.

Looking at the close up, the stacks look good, better than I could do out of styrene. They are very uniform and there is even bolt head detail on them.

David has also designed a taller Paducah stack that I will be picking up for some other projects. I understand he is designing a non-dynamic housing that we will be able to use on our Kato Mid-Pro SD40-2 shells to make our GTW units. Keep and eye on his shop, there are some good products there. I'll show off the rest of my Shapeways buys after I get them installed on something, so far so good!

MNN 424053

Locomotive progress is almost non-existent right now. That will change in the coming month as I transition locomotive building operations to Nevada. What I did get done this weekend was a stripping and re-decaling of a BNSF covered hopper. The hopper started out as an Intermountain large logo BNSF ACF 4650 3 Bay hopper. I had to remove the reporting marks and the large shield logo. I replaced them with the small shield logo, stripes style reporting marks and a MNN patch. I let my daughter pick the graffiti for this one, she has a funny sense of humor.

For the patched I used HO Scale black number boards. The ends were N scale. The letters and numbers came from a MicroScale stencil set and the shield was from a MicroScale BNSF hopper set.

Here is a shot I took in Crookston of the prototype. I still need to weather mine, but I'm happy with the start of mine.

Rush City Redo, again?

After running the current version of Rush City a few times in large shows, so I can really see how the traffic flows work, I have come to the conclusion that it is close, but just not right. Later this summer I will start another module building spree. I will be taking the current Rush City modules and cleaning them off. They will become some new scenes to compliment the Skally Line. A new Rush City will be build, using the offset module style I used for Tiller. This will allow me to get a more accurate track plan, having all of the trackage at the Horizon Mill. I will temporarily lose the Federated Co-op siding, but it will be back eventually. Here are some of the new modules I have planned:

Rush City will be 12'-6" long (my standard for 2 modules). The Rock Creek underpass will sit North of Rush City, extending the yard track out and giving a little scenic relief (yes I know I am omitting Harris, MN. I can live with that). I will be adding another module north of that, probably showing the rather bland area around Beroun, MN. Then the tracks will then pass under Hwy 61 at the end of the extended Hinckley siding.
I will also be adding some corners, I may wait a little bit and see what I have for trackage rights by the end of the summer. I may be able to go a bit bigger by them.

Random MN Railranning Pics

This month will be a little quiet on the modeling side. I just finished a work trip that had me going from Minneapolis to Vegas to L.A. to Portland to Atlanta and back to Minneapolis, and that was the easier half of the month. So I don't go too long without a post, I thought I would share some random shots I took last time I was home.
Independent Locomotive Service in Bethel is getting a new office, er... should I say depot? It looks like construction was well underway so hopefully the office staff can stretch their wings a little in this new building.

Down on the Minnesota Commercial the late January snow slowed down the Hugo Line a little. Here, some gondolas bound for Hugo are left on the run around track at Structural Wood Products in White Bear Lake. A crew would run them North another day. The three leased high-side gondolas are a nice change from the usual low side MNNR gons.

Up in Cambridge on Feb 3rd, congestion at Northtown Yard had sidings plugged all over the Twin Cities Division as trains couldn't be processed over the NTW hump fast enough. Here we can see the SB CP manifest passing an idle BNSF SUPNTW. CP SD30C-ECO #5017 passes INDR (CEFX) SD60 #6011.

Back down in Saint Paul, a BNSF Z Train just backed out of Midway Yard onto the main. A very clean BNSF ES44C4 #7183 and BNSF C44-9W #5468 prepare to depart for Chicago.

At the same time the Z train was getting ready a nice 3 pack of MNNR power was getting ready to take the cars for BNSF interchange from the MNNR "A" Yard over to NTW. MNNR SF30B #42, MNNR B39-8E #84 and MNNR B23-7 #43 were all looking great in their new colors.

200th Post: Unfinished Projects!

February will be a slow month for the blog. Work has me covering a lot of ground during the shortest of months. I did want to show some progress shots on a couple "non-traditional" projects I'm working on.
The CF7 is for a friend in the MN FreemoN group. It will be an early TCWR unit. The resin parts were made by Randgust. I am modifying them heavily to match the TCWR unit. I used an Atlas GP7 long hood, the number boards are from a GP38, and the detail parts are from the normal sources. It has a ways to go yet. I'll update as I get it done.

The other long term project I've resurrected is CN Track Inspection Budd Car #1501. I filled the windows a while ago, but I finally finished adding the MbE lights and the Sandro Sinclair antennas. I made my own cut levers for this one. This one also has a long way yet to go. I need to build the pilot plates, add GPS domes, wiper boxes and more. A big boost to this project was the fact I have the decals in my possession now. Let the progress commence!