Kit-Mingled 2-8-0 - Cab Screws

Recently Marty McGuirk over at his Central Vermont Railway blog wrote about removing a switch to get around a derailment issue.  This quote grabbed me:

 "...I fretted over this for a few weeks, but the fix didn't take more than a couple of evenings."

How often has that been the case for me?  Oh the hours I've wasted wondering what to do - or rather, not wondering, but simply avoiding the issue!  Too many times I have worried about the problem instead of thoughtfully pursuing a solution.

Yesterday I fretted over screws.  I was hunting for #00-80 (or 0-80 depending on where you look) 3/16" flat head screws.  I need two to attach the rear of the cab to the frame extension for the 2-8-0 kit-mingle I'm currently working on.  Remember the old days, when you could walk into a hobby shop and buy a little baggie of Hob Bits or Walthers screws for a couple bucks?  You'd get no more than a dozen usually and that's all a person typically needs.

You can still get those little baggies but now they're five bucks plus another five to ship it.  Alternatively you can get an assortment of 75 screws of varying lengths, all brass, flat head, 00-80, (with 25 nuts!) for $20.  While the assortment is a better deal on a per-screw cost, what am I going to do with the other 73 screws?  Sure, they come in a nice case but now I have to store it.  And I'm not going to pay $10 for 5 or 6 screws.

I trolled eBay for screws for far too long and this is after I had cogitated (fretted) for a few days prior to looking.  What saved me was that old ad slogan for the Yellow Pages - I let my fingers do the walking.  Setting aside political differences, I called my local Ace Hardware.  Yep.  They've got 0-80s.  So this morning I purchased four screws for the princely sum of $1.29.  Behold - the source of my worry, now solved:

P.S. - After checking the main boiler screw from the Athearn frame, I realized I now need a 5/8" 2-56.  Back I go to Ace...

Kit-Mingled 2-8-0 - Boiler Swap

Oh my poor Shifter.  This little 0-4-0 has been put off for over 12 years now through moves and shifting locales and all sorts of reasons.  I had claimed in my end-of-year goals that this time would be different and for sure I'd finish it by Christmas, but alas, it may not be so.  One thing I've learned about how I approach my hobby during lockdown is to follow the muse and pursue the passion even at the cost of delaying a project yet again.  Momentum is precious when the anchor of settled inertia takes so much effort to weigh.  Best to change tack and sail with the wind.

No, I'm not building a ship - lest the nautical references mislead you.  I'm swapping a boiler and cab to create a unique locomotive.  John Allen, of Gorre & Daphetid fame, was fond of heavily modifying locomotives to make them different from everyone else's.  I have always felt the same way.  The 2-6-0 I modified last year got a shortened tender and a high headlight; for fitting on a short turntable and to give the engine a 'family' appearance, respectively.  This time I'm applying a boiler and cab from an AristoCraft/New One 2-8-0 to the smooth running mechanism of an Athearn (nee MDC/Roundhouse) 2-8-0.  

The donor boiler is slightly longer than the original but offers a few features that make the conversion worth it for me.  Not visible in this image are the open cab doors on the front of the cab - a thing often seen in real life but rarely on the model, something I've always wanted to include on a model engine.  Like the 2-6-0, (and the Shifter) this engine has an auxiliary dome just in front of the cab and a side-mounted whistle (family likeness, again).  I also like the brass detailing already built-in and will be featuring that in the finished model.  

I'll be borrowing the backhead detail from the original boiler using Oyumaru thermoplastic and superfine Miliput to make a copy.  The great thing about this thermoplastic material is that the mold can be remade if it doesn't turn out well on the first try.  I was fortunate and got it right first time.  Here you can see two castings in Miliput.  I'll use the top one but it will need a little more Miliput to fill a couple imperfections.  It smooths easily with water.  The little side tabs will be cut away before it is installed.

I'll have to make a boiler segment for inside the cab along with a rudimentary floor and of course a place for a skinny engineer to sit.  The fireman may end up living on the deck behind the cab.  We'll see.  Brass for the bits to attach the new boiler to the old frame (or is that the other way around?) has already been cut and shaped, and I have all the detail parts I'll want to use.

More on this project as I hit new milestones.

Four Flats - Finished!

 Feels fine to finish these four flats.  Forgoing alliteration, finally, the fotos:

This has been a great project, though I'm not in a hurry to begin another with so many cars in one fell swoop.  The next one like it will be the Purina (former freezers) ventilated box cars and that's only three cars but they will require more work to refurbish.  Look for that in 2022 when I will hopefully build the corresponding feed mill and delivery truck.  The Milk & Mail series continues and I've once again pushed aside the Shifter in favor of a different locomotive kitbash/detailing project.  More on that in upcoming posts.

As always, open the images in a new tab for a closer look, and feel free to click on the Four Flats tag in the Labels list for all the posts related to this project.  Thanks for following along!

Four Flats - Decals

After a few days waiting for the mail (and working on the Fruit Car in the mean time) I set to the task of applying decals to the flat cars.  Here's my setup:

And here's a closeup of the right-side data.  Note the decaling casualty, the vertical brake staff:

I've gotten pickier since I lettered box car 1603 a few years ago.  That's why I had to order new data sheets to go on these flats.  Research is wonderful and terrible, especially as a freelancer.  For these flats I came across a car builder's catalog with similarly sized and constructed truss rod flats that showed a capacity of 80,000 lbs, and a light weight of around 28,000 lbs.  The data sets I had from Rail Graphics (unfortunately out of production) didn't include a light weight anywhere close.  I would have had to chop up tiny little numbers and rearrange them - not fun.  Decaling already stresses me out a little.  I didn't want to complicate it any further.

Sure, some modelers would have said, "So what?  Just use any number, nobody's going to look that close, and once weathered it won't be that legible."  But, just like detailing building interiors, I would know it's there.  In fact, looking closely at box car 1603, I may go back and re-weigh that car.  Right now I've got it a little too heavy for its age and construction.  Wouldn't take long, especially since I've got all the tools and parts out and handy...

Milk & Mail - Fruit Car Underframe

After describing the project overview, I decided to begin working on the Fruit Car first.  No particular reason, just the whim of the muse.  I began by deciding how much detail I wanted to add to the underside.  Here's where I landed:

This amount of detail seems sufficient to indicate brake gear.  I'm always hesitant to add the connecting rods that extend from the levers out toward the trucks for fear that it will interfere with the wheels.  This time I just left the rods off altogether.  

I want to upgrade the car beyond its original kit parts using materials and methods that would have been available to the original builder, as much as possible.  But these days I'm feeling more of a pull to just get things done and move on to the next project sooner than later.  Maybe it's my age, or perhaps it is the circumstances of our world driving this feeling.  Regardless, I press on.

Up next I will turn my attention to the fascia boards and sides.  Though, at the time of this writing, I have received the data decals for the Four Flats...so as soon as I commit to a lettering arrangement, I may return to them.  We'll see.

The Morning Milk & Mail - A First Look

A few days ago in my post, End-of-Year Goals, I described the projects I hope to complete by the end of 2021.  One of those is the set of cars that will become the "Morning Milk & Mail", an all-stops passenger train that leaves early in the morning, handles the mail and picks up the milk on the Pine Branch.  I also have a set of Selley short passenger cars that will become the limited express hot-shot which will make no stops, but I decided to start on these Binkley cars, and the Red Ball (Binkley?) Fruit Car that will run with them. **

Originally I had planned to use a Selley Combine on this train, but then I found the elusive P-35 Binkley "Shorty Combine Caboose" that was marketed as a companion car for their "Oldie" Baggage.  These weren't "Sierra" cars*, or "Overton" cars; at least they weren't marketed that way that I've seen.  Interestingly, if you take the Binkley 1870 Baggage-Mail car and chop it in half right down the middle, you'll get the Shorty Baggage and the Shorty Combine.  Is that what they did?  I can only guess, but I think I'm on to something.  It would explain why the baggage door isn't centered, and why the small baggage door on the combine is so close to the windows.  Hmmm...

What I'm starting with are three cars in varying degrees of completion.  The Fruit Car I purchased used.  It was missing one truck and had some damage.  Close examination reveals it may have taken a tumble to the floor at some point.  I will be replacing the damaged parts and making a few upgrades.

The Baggage is a complete kit - but with incorrect parts.  Instead of the two-part end sills per the instructions, it has a nice set of end sill castings from Binkley made for their Business Car et al.  I will be building it as instructed, making few changes or upgrades.

Finally, the Combine is a real challenge.  Somebody built it years ago and it has seen better days.  Fortunately it only needs a new baggage door and some cleaning.  I will do as little as possible to repair this car with the aim of bringing it up to a better standard of construction.

So many rolling stock 'orphans' I see were built with good intentions, probably by someone just starting out in the hobby making the kind of mistakes we all might make, even being careful.  But these cars aren't the Athearn or Roundhouse plastic shake-the-box kits of my youth, or even some of the more complex plastic kits.  These were kits that summoned the craftsman in the builder, using terms in the instructions like 'measure', 'shape' and 'cut'.  Simple words, but they are qualitatively different from 'assemble' or 'insert'.  They require the builder to think differently, to assess the work and make decisions based on the state of construction and desired outcome.

*Binkley did market a set of Sierra cars, but these were the cast metal bodies from the same molds as the Laconia Sierra cars, later sold by Ulrich and Walthers.  I have a pair of these, have built one, and the other is awaiting construction.  They're narrow enough (for me at least) to be HOn3 cars if riding on suitable trucks...

**At the time I'm writing this I'm waiting on decals for the Four Flats project.  Turns out I didn't have the ones I wanted to use, but thankfully I located some on eBay.  Hated to lose the momentum I had going on that project, but glad to put my energy into this one!

Four Flats - Decks Weathered, Sides Painted and Ready for Decals

 

A quick update to show the decks fully painted and weathered.  The first application of color was a thin coat of Mudstone over the gray primer with a few boards picked out in a lighter tan to show replacement work by the shop.  Next was an all-over wash with Burnt Umber acrylic ink, thinned with Matte Medium and water.  After that dried I applied a black oil wash, cleaning select boards with a pointy cotton bud for variation of the effect.  The black wash seeps into the cracks, defining the boards as well as all the gouges and distressing I had applied earlier.

The sides were brush painted with Brown Iron Oxide.  Brush painting took me about as long as it would have if I had taped off the decks and undersides, strained and thinned the paint, and applied it with an airbrush.  I noticed this time around that my brush work has improved; at least I'm more comfortable with it, thanks to the miniature painting I've been doing lately.  That, and using the Matte Medium and water mix to thin the paint.  This mix makes the paint flow well and settle down without losing coverage or showing brush strokes.  The craft paint I use is too thick straight out of the bottle and benefits from a proper thinning.

Once the sides had dried I gave them a coat of gloss varnish from a rattle can and have allowed that to dry/cure for over 24 hours.  I gauge the time to let it dry based on how well I can still smell the odor.  Not scientific, but it hasn't failed me yet.  Today I spent some time laying out the spacing for the decals and selecting what I will use from the Rail Graphics freight car lettering sets.  Funny thing - they didn't make a Flat Car set for the 1900-1920 period, so I'll have to cobble together the relevant data from other types of rolling stock.  I also spent some time looking at historic shots of other prototype flat cars to get ideas for what to include and how it might look.

Thanks for reading, if you made it this far, and check back soon for the next Four Flats installment or click on the tag in the list on the right to read any of the previous posts.  As usual, open the pictures in another window or tab to see them larger.