New Skally Power!

First off, I want to thank Mark Lynn (MRL) for letting me post a couple of his pics. I am 1300 miles from Rush City right now, so I'm glad he was there. Subscribe to his Flickr channel to see a ton of great photos: Flickr mlynn72130

ILSX SD40M-2 #1326 was sent to the WSOR paint shop in Horicon, WI. It emerged as SCXY #1326. I got to see it right after some wheel work at NTW in Minneapolis, but I couldn't get a decent shot. Luckily it was interchanged quickly to the Skally Line and is now in service with the SCXY GP8 and GP9. The SCXY reporting marks will be coming off and it will be getting some NP style "Radio Equipped" stickers.

This beautiful SD45 body unit should make pulling the heavy sand trains a breeze. I was always a fan of the NP SD45s, even though I never got to see one in person. I will point out the framing behind the engine is the new Rush City Engine house. That will be good for getting these engines started on the cold MN mornings. 

The best part of the story is that there will be a second SD45 bodied engine coming to match this one. The Skally just keeps getting better and better. I've already got one SD45 on the bench to strip down and get repainted. I can't wait to get back and get some photos of the new engine! Thanks again to Mark for letting me post some of his awesome shots!

I'm going Loco!

Work has been very busy lately, I'm hoping to be able to share some prototype Skally updates with you soon. I won't be able to get up to photograph the line until Memorial weekend, so I'm hoping to post some shots from a photographer who has been to Rush City lately.

On my workbench I did make progress on the TCWR CF7. The prepaint details are done, paint is done, decaling is mostly done. Here is a little update shot. Sorry for the bad photographs, these were taken on the fly with my iPhone.

I purchased an Kato SD45 for my collection. I'll announce the road in an upcoming post.

I also picked up a couple of resin shells to start work on. I will be doing a bunch of Canadian engines next. The SD40-2F in the foreground will become CP 9007 and the SD60F will become CN 5560. These kits came from SAR. They look great, I'm looking forward to getting them prepped for detailing.

A Little Progress

When I was home last I made a little progress on the TCWR CF7. I had no idea how time consuming this engine would be. I got all of the etched metal steps on and modified a Kato antenna stand for the roof. I used one of Sandro's Sinclair antenna on top of it.

I also dragged out a SD40-2W I was working on. This engine is going to be done in unison with a pair of full body engines I have kits ordered for. I went to Southern Alberta Rail and ordered one of their SD40-2Fs and an SD60-2F. The 40-2 will be a CP unit (most likely CP 9007) and the 60-2 will be a CN unit to go with the 40-2W. I still have a long way to go on the 40-2W, but at least it is back on the right side of the bench.

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.