Model Railroad Blog

An Intermountain Upgrade

One advantage of the Intermountain freight cars is that they feature stand off details such as ladders and grabs.  The downside is that these details are grossly over-sized.  I spent the weekend puttering around to see what upgrades might improve the look.  I operate on the philosophy that no detail is better than a bad detail.  With that in mind I shaved the roofwalk grabs off and left it at that.  I didn’t want to spend a lot of time trying to fashion something thinner.  Blma makes some nice etched ladders and stirrups so I pried the stock ones off and replaced them with the etchings.  The IM trucks were replaced with much finer scaled products from BLMA.  Although not noticeable from this angle, a lot of the underbody rigging was oversize so I just cut those pieces out, pitched them, and left them off.  The side grab irons are .010″ phosphor bronze.

Re-cycling Structures

 

Photo laminate on a blank wall of a DPM structure.

When I took down the old Monon  layout, I kept all of the structures and carefully packed them away.  At the time I had no clue how handy it would be to have them for the Brooklyn layout.  Turn of the century brick architecture is as much of a fit for Brooklyn as it was for Bloomington, IN so they’re great candidates for recycling.   Most are DPM either un-modified or kitbashed.  When I originally built them,to save time, I only constructed the portions that would be visible from aisle, often just using a sheet of styrene for walls that wouldn’t be seen. Those styrene walls are turning out to to be a really nice blank canvas for photo wallpaper.  I wasn’t sure how the photo laminate technique would work in N scale but I think it’s an even better fit than the larger scales because you want even less relief.

Working the Freight House

The freight house scene at the end of 1st Avenue is now complete and ready for operations. The structure is based on the Bush Terminal’s old facility on 1st Avenue. I’m happy (and relieved) to see that the photo wallpaper technique scales down to N scale.

 

 

With the freight house scene now complete, I can have some enjoyable mini op. sessions through scenery.  I like to run a short solo session at least once a week.  These are simple affairs running less than hour.  I recently staged a simple scenario centered around working the freight house and was surprised to find it took about 45 minutes.  The plan was simple, take four cars from the freight house/team track area and return them to the yard.  In addition, four cars buried in the yard needed to be fished out, blocked so the one for the team track was on the end, and then take the entire cut to be spotted at the freight house.

 

I began by pulling the empties from the freight house and dumping them on the street trackage on 1st Avenue just to get them out of the way.  Digging the inbound cars out of the yard and grouping them, although simple in concept, was pretty time consuming. Once they were organized with the team track car on the end they were spotted.  The switcher then grabbed the empties on 1st Avenue and took them back to the yard.  It didn’t take much track to spin out an enjoyable, relaxing, 45 minute session.

N Scale Code 40

I just finished the first run of ballasted track work on the layout.  Micro Engineering code 40 was used as the basis.  Every fifteenth tie or so was removed and a pc tie soldered in place for stability.  Once this was done, I took a number 11 blade and shaved all of the spike heads off to improve appearance and flange clearance.  Ties were air brushed with light gray acrylics and then stained with burnt umber artist oils followed by an india ink wash.  The rail was air brushed with burnt umber.

The Freight House

The first structure for the N scale Brooklyn Terminal is now complete.  Specifically, a representation of the old Bush Terminal facility at 1st Avenue and 48th Street in Brooklyn.  As with previous layouts, the model consists of photographs of the prototype, manipulated with photo editing software and then affixed to a braced styrene core. Stand off details such as roof details, conduits, scuppers, and drain pipess were added to increase depth.  The platform consists of Northeastern Scale lumber siding glued to a piece of quarter inch MDF and stained with Model Master US Army Helo Drab and Burnt Umber.