Model Railroad Blog

I wouldn’t classify myself as a “rolling stock guy”, at least not to the extent of my friends. It’s interesting to me, I know the difference between an X29 and PS-1, but I view the fleet essentially as rolling scenery. My focus is on plausibility not rivet by rivet accuracy. When I look at a photo of my layout I want to make sure the car types and colors, on a percentage basis, look believable.

To hit that target of plausibility I spend a lot of time studying the work of Jack Delano such as the shot shown above. You can see his full collection at the library of congress HERE. You’ll notice a sea of oxide red hues, along with highlights of yellow reefers and charcoal black tank cars. In the 1940’s outside braced cars were common.

N scale rolling stock generally comes from the manufacturer with truck mounted couplers. In order for the couplers to clear the bottom of the car, the entire car rides way too high. It’s a look that really grates on me as do the oversize couplers. I perform three mods to all cars 1) Body mount Z scale couplers (Micro Engineering #905, 2) Swap in Atlas (former BLMA) trucks #BLMA9045. These are specifically designed to “drop” the car back to its correct height (the wheels are also closer to the prototype width), and 3) add extra weight to the cars that need it. The 14 cars shown in the lead photo constitute the entire fleet for the Brooklyn layout but that’s more than enough to spin out a fairly long operating session.

Idler cars are used in car float operations as a “handle”. In other words it’s a way for the locomotive to grab cars from the float without actually going on to it. As I repaint and repurpose freight cars from my old N scale layout I came across the old gondola shown above. It was perfect for the job so I gave it a quick re-paint and detailed the floor of the car.

In watching this excellent video by NY/NJ Rail Videos showing the switcher working the old Bay Ridge yard I was struck by the grass, ballast, and other refuse in the car, an interesting detail to be sure.

Although it’s an exceptionally smooth runner, my Model Power switcher has been plagued by maddening stuttering and pick up problems. After literally years of head scratching the issue appears to be related to something in the axle needle point tip and cup it resides in. Piling lead weight on the tender improved performance tremendously. The problem is that the lead weights were large and unsightly. There is simply very little space inside the tender to add anything substantial. As a band aid for now I switched from lead to tungsten because it’s 1.7 times heaver. In other words you need much less Tungsten on a per volume basis to get the same gains. Weights come in a variety of shapes and I picked up some that were roughly eighth inch squares, painted them flat black, and placed them anywhere I could on the tender. It’s not perfect but not totally unsightly during normal running. When I want to do photography I’ll just remove the weights on top of the coal pile.

Armed with custom decals from Bill Brillinger, I painted and weathered a Kato NW2 in Brooklyn Terminal livery. Inspiration was taken from photos of NP and Detroit terminal switchers both of which showed a pretty heavy light sand colored weathering pattern. I took advantage of the fact that putting rubbing alcohol over Dullcote produces a faded frosting effect and used that on the roof, hood, and trucks.