Yard Building

With the pandemic still in full lockdown mode, I finally got the time to build a small yard and retire a small temporary yard I had built years ago.  The new yard is 10 feet long and sits on two modules which are joined together.

As I was planning my new yard, which was to be situated at the end of the layout, I wanted to include some sort of yard office, as well as a freight shed that had been removed from a different part of the layout. Looking at some photos, I realized that I had enough room to make a fairly complete scene by using the Mechanical Building at Englehart as an example. The other side of the track would house my freight shed.

Drone view courtesy Mike Robin

South side of Bldg; scale house in right foreground

South side of Bldg

North and east walls of the Bldg

The build started with a general Pikestuff building kit, with a few extra side panels added and cut down in height to make a lower roofline. Unfortunately I only had photos of 3 sides of the building, and the pandemic cancelled two trips I had planned to get the info. So the west wall is a complete guess.

One detail that I noticed going back through several years of photos was that the roof and building sides have two different shades of blue, as well as downspout configurations. Perhaps due to a building expansion? Matching the weathering condition and color was a real challenge and although not a true match, the result is pleasing to my eye. Maybe I'll try to alter it at some later date.

One of the challenges was to match the various windows and their position on the wall without any true measurements.  Cutting the doors and windows would turn out to be fairly time consuming, as the Pikestuff panels are fairly thick plastic and required a steady hand and many knife blades to cut them all.

The challenge now is to complete the scene in the background by adding all of the details that you see in the upper photo.  I just finished building the small building directly behind the main structure, as well as removed the trucks from an old Athearn 40 foot ONR boxcar which has been parked in the weeds.

The gravel type pavement was created by pouring tile grout to the consistency of a slushy and then drawing it relatively flat and level across the area.   I plan to weather some of the gravel area with pan pastels to give it more of a well worn look.  Now I just have to find or build the suitable ONR service vehicle(s) to park outside of the building.

 

Preventative Maintenance

How many of us actually have and implement a preventative maintenance program for our railroad?  I know I have one, as my using the Easy Model Railroading software reminds me that I have entered some dates periodically.  But have I really implemented a PM system?  For those who know me, I work in the chemicals business, where PM systems are taking very seriously as part of maintaining equipment operational and ultimately quality control.

So one of my winter projects was to drag out all of my tank cars, and start performing PM activities on them.  Of course this morphed into adding some weathering efforts and deciding what to do with several of those pesky duplicate tank cars. With a trip to several hobby stores and swap meets in the plans, I ended up with enough new decal sets that I was able to repaint and re-letter all of my duplicates.  So I know have six brand new tank cars available for operations.

What about the weathering?  Well that work will take a little bit more effort, but I have been weathering wheels, trucks and axles as I can.  To date, approximately 1/3 of my 32 available tank cars have had weathering applied this month and I really will try to get the remaining done in the weeks to come.

At the same as I complete the weathering efforts, I have inspected all of the fittings, wheels, trucks, etc and made repair efforts.  Again I anticipate having all of these efforts completed in the next 3-4 weeks.  Not a bad start, but then I look at all of the remaining 120+ pieces of rolling stock and realize that I really need to start a more periodic and routine PM program.  

Adding Wood Chip Gondolas to the Roster

New Additions to the Layout

Woodchips are generated by lumber mills and separate purpose built woodchip mills in many areas of the U.S. and Canada. Most are used in paper or cardboard manufacture. While I have a paper mill on my layout, I chose not to model the wood chip portion due o space constraints.  Currently wood chips are received at the mill in the Yard and the loads removed after a set number of days before being returned to the yard as empty's.  Wood chips are received from either an off-site source, or from the Muskoka saw mill (on the layout).  As I discussed in another blog entry, I currently have four wood chip car resin kits manufactured by Alpine Railway Shops of Kettleby, Ontario, which were marketed as being representative of rolling stock used by CN and BCR for saw mills and paper mills. I have several additional car kits which are modeled after the BNSF cars to also handle chips.

A common variation of CP’s woodchip gondolas rebuilt from a 52′ gondola with extended sides.  Bill Grandin photo.

I recently found myself with three 52' gondola kits which I have tried to sell at several railroad shows, but unfortunately no takers. So rather then seeing them sit for months until the next show, I decided to try my hand at kitbashing these kits to resemble a photo I had seen of a CP rebuilt gondola that was placed into wood chip service. These would become lettered in the ONR, although to the best of my knowledge the ONR never had any cars that even approached this configuration.

From what I have been able to research, in the 1970's, CP Rail began to convert some randomly selected old boxcars to woodchip cars; this was done through the early 1980s.  These cars were made by cutting away the old roof and adding an extension. Later cars did not receive the extensions to the sides.  They also took an unknown number of 52' gondolas and extended the sides.

The story for my cars is that CP rebuilt these wood chip gondolas with extended sides from a standard gondola.  After some years of use in the north, CP parked them on a siding for lack of use.  The ONR then purchased them and repainted them to a woodchip only service marks that you see.

Proto 2000 Gondolas getting ready for conversion

Adding bracing for wall extensions. I didn't like the looks of this so the other two cars were done by adding bar stock

No matter how carefully you cut, there are always gaps. Next step some sanding followed by painting

Finished product in chevron scheme

Finished gon in the progressive paint scheme and added Wood Chip Service Only. Note I carried all of the ribs forward on this car after realizing that the gon looked odd with only alternating ribs. Still need to make a load for this unit

Ltd Edition Rolling Stock

My current collection of rolling stock does not have much in the way of special club cars or limited edition cars.  I will state upfront that I don't have much interest in collecting specialty or club cars, rather, I like to have fairly prototypical cars that I can put directly into operation.  But I do have a soft spot for certain uniquely branded cars, especially if I can justify that they might be found in northern Ontario or northern US service.  And yes, I do even have one NMRA car that I purchased in a moment of weakness while attending my first NMRA National Convention (Toronto, 2003).  Come to think of it, I'm not sure I even assembled that car.

Several years ago I was searching on-line for rolling stock which might have been associated with paper mills in the northeast US or eastern Canada.  I was already familiar with the Spruce Falls Power  & Paper boxcar, and wondered if any other mills might have specialty cars.  In my search, I came across a fellow from the Eastern Maine Model Railroad club who was selling some special run cars which had been produced by their club.  While several of the cars produced as the Fraser Paper trailer and boxcar, none of those cars were available.  However, a 50 ft boxcar lettered for the Belfast & Moosehead Lake Railroad caught my eye due to its unique name for a railroad. So a little research was in order after I received the two boxcars.

According to Bruce Cooper's website (A SURVIVING SHORTLINE CONTEMPORARY OF THE CENTRAL PACIFIC RAILROAD: THE BELFAST & MOOSEHEAD LAKE RAILROAD), the railroad was located entirely within the boundaries of rural Waldo County, Maine, and the B&ML’s “last spike” was driven a mere sixteen months after the Pacific railroad's “Golden Spike” at Promontory Summit, Utah Territory, on May 10, 1869.  While there was a whole lot more history to the B&ML, I thought the purchase of two boxcars would make a great addition to my CN, CP, ONR and other boxcars that were servicing the paper mill.

The club produced the car in only number, so my first task was to re-letter the two cars I purchased by adding another digit with the decals provided. After all, the prototype didn't actually have these cars so a little artistic license was not a problem.

Next step was off to the weathering station. With the exception of wheels and trucks, I have settled on a mixture of using oils and pan pastel chalks for my weathering efforts.  I still like to use spray paint or a small brush to apply a dark color to the wheels, bearing box, etc, and then build up the rust and dirt colors from there.

Once the wheels are done, it's time for the shell.  First step is a quick spray of dull coat to the entire car. Once this is dry, I begin to add pan pastels to the body, starting with the vertical ribs. Using a fine brush, a small amount of dark color such as black or brown is added to either side of the rib and then a wider brush is used to blend this is to the area between individual ribs.  Unfortunately no prototype photo to base the weathering efforts on, so I dug into my photo collection and found a general boxcar roof and used that as my guide.  Car 360 got a much heavier application of color than 361, mostly because I wanted to skip ahead to the sides.  361 will be revisited and the weathering effort intensified.

Weathering the roof on 360

Very small amount of roof weathering on 361

The sides will be done next using a combination of oil paints and panpastel chalks. I'll cover that in the next blog