WELL... Got a little modeling done this last week. We took our camper down to Hocking Hills for the week and I took some projects to work on while we were there. I managed to finish up 'FRED'S Last Chance Gas' and the following pictures will show you how it turned out. I'm pretty pleased with the way it looks.
I also worked on some rolling stock this week. As I mentioned in an earlier post. I have a couple of jigs that help me form the frames. Then I build up the cars from there, adding truss rods, brake and compressor detail to the frame once I have a floor glued down. This first car is a stock car. I wasn't sure that this was going to work out because I didn't know if I could get the side pieces to come together. But it actually worked out pretty slick and didn't take near as much time as I had dreaded it might. Because of a lack of wood, I had to make the floor out of styrene. You can see that I have only fastened on a small portion of the roofing material so far. I need to paint and weather the interior of this car before I go any further, but I wanted to be able to mount the brake wheel. My cows are already checking out their new ride.
Next up is this box car. I already have two of these built, painted and weathered (see my first post). This is started the same way - frame, flooring and then the sides. Actually, I do a thicker inner wall on the box cars for the ends and the siding is then mounted onto that. It's just a lot easier. The plastic doors and other details are parts from Grandt Line (which I think is no longer in business). The grab handles are a preformed wire. You just drill holes in the siding and insert them.
Next up is a Refrigerator car. This was actually going to be another box car, but when I got to the detailing stage I realized I was out of those nice boxcar doors. I decided it was time to improvise and went for a reefer car instead. The doors are card stock with card stock hinges and a styrene rod hinge. It is probably a little crude as far as refrigerator cars go, but I think it will look pretty good once painted.
Next we have a flat car, which also had a styrene floor. I left some openings in the floor because I wanted to make it look really beat up once it is painted and weathered. The tractor will be tied down for a load (also weighting the car in the process).
These two little "shorties" are part of a MOW (maintenance of way) group that I want to model. The car on the right will be a water car and the one on the left is a tool car. The styrene pole sticking up on the tool car will be a hoist eventually, still have some stuff to do to it. The cars are essentially started the same way with a wood frame, flooring, truss rod, brake and compressor detail underneath. The tank cars started with a tank made from a piece of PVC piping, wrapped in scale wood strip. The little house on the tool car was built up out of strip wood. There are white metal detail castings on both cars as well as a fair amount of styrene strip and rod. These two cars are essentially ready for painting and couplers.
I also have a storage car partially built and two more frames ready for additional MOW cars (though at the moment I have no idea what I want to build). Well, that was my week in modeling. Now that I am back home, I will spend this next week working on the "Honey-Do" List. - PM out!