Twelve Days Trail Drive!

Howdy Pardners!  Set a spell - this may take some time.

No, I've not gone Quarantine Crazy, I'm channeling my inner cowboy.  One of my earliest memories as a child was playing a card game with my mom called "Trail Drive".  The cards were pictures of cowboys, cattle, chuck wagons, rustlers and sheriffs.  The game was simple - designed for young children - but I remember the vividly colored characters, and getting frustrated losing.  Good times.  

Anyway, it's the concept of the game I'm referring to here.  To get a trail drive started you needed a chuck wagon and two cowboys in your hand.  After that you collected cattle, as many as you could - but watch out - a rustler could stop the drive and you'd be stuck until you were dealt a sheriff.  The concept of needing a few elements to get started before expanding is simple, but crucial to the game.

At the same time I've been reading through Model Railroader back-issues from the '40s.  It seems many model rails would write in describing their pikes and listing off their rolling stock and stable of locomotives.  There was a sense of early beginnings that was palpable in these letters.  Usually there was an indication that the budding magnate had plans to purchase a certain engine or set of passenger equipment, etc. to increase the fun, of course.  There were also mentions of seeking a land grant from the spouse to extend the road, but I want to focus on the equipment.

I view my current situation as a bit of a Trail Drive game.  Most of the trains from my modular club days are packed away because I've narrowed my focus and scope down to a relatively small railroad setting.  Physically I've limited myself to a 4'x6' pike with the 2' aisle space all around (see my post Garage Railroad Plan for more thoughts on this choice).

But the limitation is also applied to locomotives and rolling stock.  I purchased my 2-6-0 and began modifying it in order to have a unique, fine-running locomotive.  Likewise I had purchased long before the mogul a pair of cabeese with parts to customize them as well.  See where this is heading, pardner?  The rolling stock - even if they're not stock cars - are the cattle, so to speak, while the engine and hacks are the chuck wagon and cowboys (you decide which is which - I'll carry the analogy only so far).

Now I've been working on these cabeese and this locomotive for a while.  I started the caboose project back in Washington just over four years ago.  The engine has been running well but recently I decided to deal with the leaning cylinders that have been bothering me, as well as get a coal load in the tender...and tick the boxes on the remaining details like the bell and whistle cords.

Technically the twelve days of Christmas run from the 25th to Epiphany on the 6th of January.  But I'm looking at twelve days UNTIL Christmas and feeling like I might just be able to get a Trail Drive going with my Mogul, the Cabeese, and this here pair of freezers I've been building.  Can I do it?  With parts to add, paint to dry, decals, maybe some weathering...hmmm...as long as no rustlers show up I may just pull it off.

Surpise Inside

You never know what you're going to find when you purchase used rolling stock.  I bought this car for parts.  

Last night I was giving it a closer inspection when I noticed a distinct thunk coming from inside.  Old dried glue popped loose easily to reveal the source of the sound:

For my Comet cars I've used old tire weights for the additional weight and have tried Loctite "STIK'N SEAL" Indoor Adhesive.  It is "Solvent free, Non-toxic, Low odor, Water clean-up" and transparent, though that last one matters not for my purposes.  It is the sort of adhesive you apply to both parts, allow to go tacky, then press together.  It fully cures in 24 hours.  I wasn't sure it would stick when I first applied it as it comes out of the tube a little runny.  But boy howdy it sticks and has given me confidence to close up these cars.  Hopefully I won't be hearing thunks from within someday in the future - I seriously doubt it.

As for this Oscar Meyer car, I won't be reusing the sides as they are and the rest of the car will be re-kitted.  I was really after the fishbelly center sill as they can be pricey and this was a good deal.  The weight will be reused, held down firmly with a better adhesive.  But that's a project for another day.

Questions Answered - Model Railroad Research

I really enjoy model railroad research.  Note I didn't say prototype research - that's a related discipline that often overlaps, but it isn't quite the same.  Sometimes you can't find any prototype information, or the book that might contain that nugget you seek isn't in your library or is too darn expensive.  That's when turning to the previous versions of the model might help.  It is also fun to look into the history of the hobby.

When I was in seminary I learned about researching textual variants in ancient fragments of scripture.  Usually you went with the oldest known text, whether it was a papyrus fragment or potsherd inscription.  But often you'd find a greater weight of evidence in say, vellum copies.  Though the papyrus may be older, it may not carry the same authority because there are so many copies of the variant text.  Which do you choose as the basis for translation?

So too with model railroad freight cars.  When a manufacturer, long out of business, produced a freezer* ages ago and advertised they used the car builders diagrams, then that's a pretty good source.  But when another manufacturer makes a copy and varies the details, like using a different color scheme or using a different roof type, and they produce thousands of them, which then get copied by other manufacturers, what do you do?  With no actual prototype data available, which source do you trust to build your version of that freezer?

It is possible the second manufacturer chose to change the model based on their available dies for casting parts rather than incur the cost of making new ones.  Maybe they changed the color scheme to make it less gaudy in the hopes it might sell better.  Or maybe they didn't have much prototype data either!

Re-kitted freezer ready to rebuild.

For the two Comet freezers I'm building as of the writing of this post, I needed to know more before I could add better details.  What type of underframe?  Likely fishbelly.  Ladders or grabs?  Ladders. Et Cetera.  For the MDT car I had good prototype photos thanks to Eric Hansmann and other like-minded researchers.  But the Baby Ruth car?  Only one colorized image - the cover of Hendrickson's Billboard Refrigerator Cars book.  Ends, sides, ladders, underframe all visible in that image.  But what about the roof?  The hatches?

Here's where the kit helps out.  My car came to me already built - thankfully not too damaged and assembled well enough - but the original would have contained hints for the roof on the card from which you punched out the sides and ends (and hatches).  Enter eBay.  A quick search of previously sold items turned up an image that helped.

Read the fine print.  Use magnification if necessary.

Right there on the carrier sheet it says, "NO ROOF RIBS    RED SIDE LADDERS".  This note was obviously missed by many modelers who decided to put ribs up there anyway, as evinced by other eBay searches for this car, even the one I'm rebuilding.  But no matter.  In this great hobby we all get to make creative choices that suit our fancy and build models to our heart's content.

*I use the term freezer instead of the more common reefer for a couple reasons - for a while in the early days of this hobby it was the term de rigueur, like saying pike instead of layout.  But in my current NorCal context "reefer" also has a meaning that I don't care to reference.  I know, most readers of this blog know the difference; I just prefer "freezer", in the same way some men like to wear vests.

About That Chair...

 ...the one I mentioned in the previous post.  Here 'tis, in situ:

Printed Parts & Pals

Recently I needed some chairs.  Well, really just one chair right away but more on that later.  After trolling the 'bay and coming up empty I turned to Shapeways.  There I found this seller who offered chairs and desks.  I already have desks.  I need chairs.  Thankfully, the seller was kind enough to bundle the chairs together without the desks.  

In order to offset the shipping cost I took a look at what else he had to offer and was delighted to find amphibians!  I model Florida and that means gators.  I lived there and sure enough, hang around the water long enough and you see them.  I've canoed and even swam with them.  Good times.  But more often you see turtles and occasionally frogs and toads.  

As of this post I've painted the gator and the chair, but not the frogs and turtles.  The gator will likely show up from time to time as a sight gag.  The chair has already found a home behind the station master's desk in the Ocala Springs depot.  More on that in an upcoming post.  The frogs and turtles will make it into the creek scene, someday, on the Pine Branch Park railroad.

 

If you want to purchase amphibians of your own, or any number of other neat parts, check out David Yale's Shapeways shop: https://www.shapeways.com/shops/dcyale?li=pb

Playing with Paint

With the station project nearing completion, I needed to paint two figures before I could wrap it up for now.  But before I did that I decided to insert a mini-project I'd been putting off for a while.  I store my paint bottles in a tray down in a file box.  This works well but has one major flaw - I can't tell what color the paint is unless I lift out the bottle and look.  And even then it isn't accurate since the paint will dry a slightly different color than the way it looks through the semi-translucent bottle.  So a while back I asked my wife for some of these little round stickers and she happily shared them with me and there they sat, with the paints, for months.  Okay, maybe it has been a little longer.

 

The two figures for the station were not the sole impetus for this project, however.  There lays ahead a far greater painting task, one calling for paint that performs better than these craft paints, at least as they are straight out of the bottle.  And that's the subject of another post...

Diamond T Flatbed Update

(Gosh has it been a month already?  Where has the time gone?  Early in the lockdown the days felt like weeks, the weeks like months and the months, well, you get the idea.  Modeling has slowed but not stopped.  Plenty of material to share in the next few weeks, thankfully.  Hang in there...we're all in this together.)

These shots are a few weeks old, but were taken just after I had applied a first layer of black oil wash.  The mineral spirits I used were "green", (which is my preference, to be environmentally friendly), but in this case that meant they had a milky color and thick consistency, making it harder to apply as a pin wash.  I was also a bit uncertain as to the finished result until they dried and with oils that meant a few days.  I have since purchased the traditional non-eco-friendly mineral spirits for my next wash.

I went ahead and painted the pallets that came with this kit though I won't be using them in the scene for which this truck is destined.  Before applying the oil wash I gloss-coated the truck to allow the wash to better find and follow the cracks and crevices.  Also note the poles holding up the cab roof.  These are not included in the kit but nowhere could I find any evidence that they shouldn't be there; just the opposite in fact, so there they are.  A freely hanging cab roof is a thing, but not on Diamond T trucks as far as I could tell.

Oh, and the color?  Just personal preference.  Since these images I have finished assembly.  Weathering still to come.