I recently picked up the above Kodachrome image on eBay and had it digitized. Not much information was given other than it’s “somewhere in LA”. It wasn’t dated. A post on the SoCal forum seemed to place the vicinity near the LA River, where everything comes together. The first thing that stood out to me, and the reason I bought it, was that it’s what you’d expect to see when you’re out in the field. This is what the rail environment looks like. In no particular order there a few things to take note of:
-Notice the absolutely dead flat sheen on everything.
-Note the subdued color tones, the lack of saturation.
-In the early decades of our modeling career, we tend to work in monotones and singular textures. To advance, we need to become more nuanced and work with numerous color layers and textures. The lot in the center would NOT be easy to model. I’d probably start with a grout mix as the base and then overlay a slightly darker tone for the tire tracks. But…only after spending a few hours dialing things in on samples.
-Note the darker and larger-grained gravel piles. I’d handle those with Arizona Rock and Mineral ballast. I believe they sell sample packs.
-Note the multi-tone, weathered 55 gallon drums. They’d be a project in their own right.
-Note the joint bars. They aren’t a single color. I’d start with Model Master “Dark Earth” and then overlay Bragdon “Weathered Brown” powder.
-For the foreground weeds I’d start with 4mm Woodland Scenics but give it a soaking first in India ink.
The beauty of a scene like this is that A) it would be very inexpensive to model, B) it would be very challenging to pull off, and C) if you did pull it off, you’d have advanced your skills and created an understated but great scene.
It’s been another successful week or two in my effort to slow myself down, get out of mission mode, and enjoy the ride.
On one of the SoCal forums, a retired rail mentioned that one of the industries on the LAJ typically took only UP boxcars. I thought modeling that would make for an interesting look. For the past month or so, I’ve been detailing and weathering three Walthers “Proto 2000” 50-foot UP boxcars. These are very nice models that can be purchased for virtually nothing on eBay.
I finished modeling the street in front of the track and installed it. I consider streets and grade crossings to be “structures” and difficult ones to model at that.
I’ve been puttering with the foreground structure mockup and upgraded it with a version with better photo laminates. The question becomes, do I settle for photos from Streetview or wait until I can fly to LA and get better images?
I did a solo session on the module, swapping loads for empties. Relaxing, fun, and ran for about twenty-five minutes.
Recently, blog reader John Moenius recommended Railroad Man by LA-based Santa Fe switchman, Richard Paseman. Meant to be a series of entertaining short stories about life on the rails, the book goes into a level of detail about switching operations that I’ve never come across before. Employing these practices stretches the length of an op. session in a plausible way. It also makes your sessions more interesting because you understand the backstory of why things were done a certain way.
Here are some samples from the five page chapter on “The Patch”, a switching district several blocks north of the LAJ.
“The other helper and I went out the back door of the locker room to where the galloper (aka the switcher) sat idling on Passenger 7. We rattled to the bottom of the yard. A few passes in and out of Track 6 and we had our spot cars lined up.”
Railroaders name everything. Passenger 7 and Passenger 6 are yard tracks in Santa Fe’s First Street Yard. He’s explaining that a) the yard job put its own train together and b) they put the train in car-spot-order before leaving the yard. They don’t sort out a mess of cars out on the road.
“We left our spot cars on Jesse Street and went light into The Patch. On the left was a trucking warehouse. They always needed a switch. I walked with the foreman as he compared his list with the empty cars on spot.”
Jesse Street is pretty easy to find on a map.
“The grocery warehouse was our big switch. There was the towering “old house” and several tracks over the one-story “new house.” We left the galloper in the shade and walked inside. The dock foreman was in his office, marking the list of cars to pull and the doors where he wanted inbound cars spotted. We got some soda from a vending machine and stood around shooting the breeze. Gotta give ’em time to break down, meaning the workers had to finish loading and unloading freight and remove the ramps between the building and boxcars.”
There’s a lot to unpack in those few sentences. First off, note the slow pace of their “op. session” as they wait for the customer to carry out their steps in the process. Note the interaction between the customer and the rail crew. Note that the customer dictated where he wanted the cars spotted.
“At the doors alongside the warehouse, a few of the cars were only partly unloaded. We called them baby loads” and gave a sign with our hands like rocking a baby to let our engineer know to go slow and be gentle on the throttle. A loaded car was indicated by moving your hand from mid-chest to waist level, suggesting a “fully loaded belly.” For an empty car, you crossed arms to make an “X.”
Reading between the lines, he’s saying that cars that weren’t completely unloaded needed to be pulled and re-spotted.
Here’s a quick sketch showing where some of the key locations are.
Some shocking, but great news out of Miami. Yesterday, Tolga Erbora informed me that track for a new industry is being laid a few hundred yards north of where The Downtown Spur splits from the main. For decades, there was a trash recycling business across the main from Hialeah Market Station. At one time there was a single track spur serving it but the rusted rails have been sinking into the weeds as long as I’ve been following the line. Apparently, the old track was removed and three new ones installed.
Here’s the location of the new industry. My understanding is that it will be some form of trash recycling concern.
This was what the location had looked like since I started following things in 2006. You’re looking north. In the foreground is the platform for Hialeah Market Station.
When I upgrade a freight car, I split the work into two groups and prioritize accordingly. The first (and most important) group consists of upgrades that contribute the most to visual impact. I start with these. They are the things you notice when you first walk into the room and view the cars from five or six feet away. The nice thing with these steps is that they are “low-hanging fruit”, very simple steps that make an enormous difference. The second group, I call “just for fun” detailing. These aren’t as noticeable, but I find them simple, fun, and relaxing to add.
Visual Impact
When working with a plain Jane car of the forties, fifties, or sixties, the one step that takes priority, the one that creates the most impact by far, is dulling the car surface and adding a super subtle “haze” to tone down the white lettering. Painting the trucks and cutting the coupler trip pins off are also major priorities, second and third in line.
As you look at this typical UP car notice:
-The flat finish
-The subtle haze. It’s typically some form of burnt umber, burnt sienna, or muddy gray, and barely noticeable. However, modeling it is a real difference maker, primarily as it relates to dialing back the intensity of the white lettering.
-The thin, dark, vertical contrast at the rivet lines.
Let’s start with the low-hanging fruit, the twenty percent effort, eighty percent impact steps. First up, the dulling ultradilute wash. If you want to delve into the hobby beyond being a casual recreationalist, and it’s a personal choice, you need to get comfortable with using an airbrush. If you don’t, you’ll be forever handcuffed, forever limited in how far you can take things. If you can use an electric toothbrush, you can use an airbrush.
The haze is applied as a very, very thin wash with an airbrush. Fill the paint cup about two-thirds full with Tamiya X-20 thinner. In this case, I’m going for a muddy gray tone (alternatives being burnt umber or burnt sienna). Dip a small paint brush handle in a bottle of Tamiya XF-84 Dark Iron (a totally disgusting and highly useful hue) to pick up a thin layer of paint and swirl it around in the thinner a bit until most of the paint you picked up is washed into the paint cup. Do this three times. With the wash now mixed in the cup, airbrush a white card to make sure the wash is barely noticeable. If it’s too thick, pour a bit out of the cup and add more thinner. Once you have the right consistency, coat the car in two or three light passes. Remember if the wash is too thin, no problem. You can bring the color up on future passes. If you make it too dark, sorry, you’re pretty much screwed. The bottom of the car, doors, and car ends are a bit darker. I made a darker wash of five drops of paint for these areas.
That’s it. This simple step will contribute a good eighty percent of the overall visual impact.
The trucks are easier. After masking off the treads, I apply several coats of Rustoleum Dark Gray Primer (rattle can). When that’s dry, give it a light puff or two with Rustoleum Earth Brown camo. Finally, I take a small, ratty brush and grind in Bragdon Enterprises’ “Weathered Brown” weathering powder.
The third and final “big ticket” step is cutting those hideous trip pins off of the couplers. They look awful, are very distracting, and serve no purpose. Although not super noticeable, I like to swap in Kadee #158 scale couplers (after cutting off the trip pin). On the Walthers Proto car in this example, it’s a very simple swap.
Good enough, let’s roll? Hit the brakes and putter?
Picking the right pace of progress is a critical part of the hobby that doesn’t get talked about enough. How fast you move will be dictated by how large your layout is, how far along you are with it, and what activities you enjoy. If your layout is medium to large, it makes sense to employ Tony Koester’s pragmatic “good enough” approach and declare the car “finished”. If your layout is smaller or almost done, going too quickly will essentially put you in the position of working yourself out of a job. In these situations, it makes sense to hit the brakes, enjoy the ride, and smell the roses. Move on to adding less noticeable details, not out of any drive to be hyper prototypical, but simply because doing so is fun.
Details
The details I’ll go over next are far less noticeable. Nonetheless, I like to sit down with a cold beer after work and putter away. For me, they are less about rivet counting and more about relaxing. All of my layouts are done, or mostly done, so I’m looking for ways to extend modeling time, not speed it up.
In no particular order, I added:
-Cut bars
-Air hoses
-A thinner brake wheel
-Painted the tack board and added dry transfer scraps to represent old waybills
-Added a few chalk mark details
These are the purchased detail parts I used. I’m not sure the actual brand is that crucial.
A) Kadee brake wheel. This is much thinner than the one on the model. B) Scale couplers. It’s crucial from an appearance standpoint that you trim the stock trip pin off. C) Cut bars D) Air hoses. Note that it’s important that you introduce a slight bend or droop to them. Many aftermarket hoses are totally straight, which is not a good look. E) Painted trucks. The stock trucks are very free rolling, which I like. Some modelers like to swap in trucks with a thinner/more prototypical tread. I may do that later.
A) I dry-brushed a medium gray on the tack boards and then rubbed some scraps of white dry transfer lettering on for the waybills.
B) Random chalk mark decals from Microscale
C) Notice in the prototype photo the contrast lines on the rivet rows. Representing them adds value. Take a razor-sharp black artist’s pencil, and using a straight edge, very, very lightly drag the pencil across the rivet heads. If you go too dark in this step its impossible to reverse.
D) The haze on these cars is subtly darker on the bottom of the cars. I made a slightly darker wash and made a few more airbrush passes to darken things up.
From time to time, it makes sense to take inventory of your situation and interests and prioritize accordingly. Larger layout or just getting started? Grab the low-hanging fruit and move on. Small layout? You need to look for things to slow you down, so don’t get done too soon. It’s not either/or. You can always do a blend that works for you. The point is to have a basic strategy, to work from a place of purposeful intent.
