John, you have talked me into buying some Preiser unpainted people and save them for when I have time to paint them.
Ottawa Marc, I’m glad you found your name and a new password!! Thank you for your contributions!!!
Over the last few days I put together this Red Caboose, pre-decorated kit, which I chose to 2 rail with trucks and couplers I had on hand.
Another Red Caboose flatcar kit desperately needed a load. It had sat awaiting attention for some time until the idea for a unique load suddenly dawned.
A wooden frame was constructed that would accommodate 40 sheets of thin glass, formerly from slide film holders. The story behind the unusual glass load is that the 9' X 9' panes of 2" glass needed to be shipped vertically to keep from cracking. The B&Z glass manufacturer built the special padded cradle directly onto the flatcar. Once loaded, more strengthening bracing was added to allow for the entire load to be tied down.
A light weathering to both cradle and car then tie downs were strung. Who needs 2" reinforced glass? The Brewster Limousine Co. of NY uses it in the manufacture of bullet proof vehicles. They custom cut to suit each special order, cheaper than having B&Z custom make each unique piece.
All bundled and snug, ready for delivery to Brewster.
Bruce
The Chooch rubber stone for the mill spillway floated in, and l started on the spillway. While glue dries, l went back to the grain elevator and made a lot of progress on the unloading bay and its ramps. Decided on two shades (not fifty) of gray as colors for elevator. Mill is dark red with a little white trim. Did some dark gray painting of attachments for elevator. Close to doing overall painting of elevator in light gray.
you guys are amazing! I've been spending way too much time on the CTT Forum. I am a O Gauge guy all the way so I am in the right place. Glad to find you and to join your marvelous crowd tonite. Your ideas for topics have been interesting to me from the beginning today.
Began late tonite, for HS football began tonight in East KY.
John
brwebster posted:Over the last few days I put together this Red Caboose, pre-decorated kit, which I chose to 2 rail with trucks and couplers I had on hand.
Another Red Caboose flatcar kit desperately needed a load. It had sat awaiting attention for some time until the idea for a unique load suddenly dawned.
A wooden frame was constructed that would accommodate 40 sheets of thin glass, formerly from slide film holders. The story behind the unusual glass load is that the 9' X 9' panes of 2" glass needed to be shipped vertically to keep from cracking. The B&Z glass manufacturer built the special padded cradle directly onto the flatcar. Once loaded, more strengthening bracing was added to allow for the entire load to be tied down.
A light weathering to both cradle and car then tie downs were strung. Who needs 2" reinforced glass? The Brewster Limousine Co. of NY uses it in the manufacture of bullet proof vehicles. They custom cut to suit each special order, cheaper than having B&Z custom make each unique piece.
All bundled and snug, ready for delivery to Brewster.
Bruce
what an original idea. I have seen many trucks on the interstate with all sorts of glass riding to their separate destinations. So this is the way glass was shipped way back when!
Welcome John Sewell! High school football in East Kentucky already!!! Wow! Where does the time go?
I’ll be glad to see what you post in the future!
beardog posted:love the convenient beer fridge
its actually our wine fridge that just stopped working (wedding present). Beer fridge is on the porch. Christmas present a few years ago. Gotta be prepared!
Ok guys, I know I am a day late here but here I go!
Pete, some very nice words about our hobby and how it touches all of us in one way or another! I wish I had the ability to have words so nice flow, but I don't so I will just fumble with them till they sound good! LOL
Dennis I sure hope your taking more then Memories of your layout with you! I wish you luck in what ever comes your way and hope you always think of playing trains!
Elliot, wonderful job on the container concealment! What a great idea, I have a feeling your not going to teave them forever, so what your plan for next object? I do have to agree with you that you have a group of beauties there all dressed up in there GREEN BN finest!
John, your work on the people are great and surpass anything you might buy off the shelf! But I do have a question, How many people do you have? & How many do you need?
Bruce, the tank car turned out looking very nice. But man what a way to think out of the box! Your imagination for the glass load is just wonderful! Great work!
Mike,
Your question is "How many people (Preiser 65602) do I need? Right now I have painted over 3,000, and purchased several (over 35) factory-painted Preiser packs three years ago when the blanks were out-of-stock.
The answer is based upon the one-hundred and thirty passenger cars I have detailed. The Atlas O California Zephyr (DRGW) and (WP) twelve car sets, along with the Amtrak Zephyr set take many people because of the upper dome seating. I also added six previous run cars. (By the way, ALL of the 10-6 Sleeper interiors are wrong: three stateroom walls show in the windows of the car.) Rather than correct the molded floor half for the last run, Atlas merely covered up the rooms with window blinds. (I have done a post showing how to cut and modify the car floor to align the floor to the windows properly on OGR Forum two years ago.) I also purchased Atlas replacement window kits for new window shades. I have correct all of my 10-6 sleepers and can see the people in those staterooms.
I have two seven-car sets of C&O and two of NYC Empire State, plus one Wabash from the first run of these 21" cars. I was seeing the delivery date for the UP, SP, PC, and Broadway Limited constantly being pushed back, so a bought the Wabash and second C&O. I sold the duplicate steam engine from my second NYC set.
My eye sight is deteriorating, blurred vision in my left eye due to a cholesterol blood pool. I am fortunate that when I take my driving glasses off, I have excellent near vision... still. I use a battery headlamp to brightly illuminate my work. I use new batteries each day.
So, like Ronald Reagan, I have not only told you "what time it is", but also how the watch was made. Too much information.
Have a wonderful weekend. Summer is slipping away quickly.
Sincerely, John Rowlen
To see my cars, search the web: "Preiser 65602", then click on the "pictures of" tab. I posted these to OGR Forum, and others have moved them to the "Preiser 65602" heading.
John, I see the photographs on Preiser 65602. Excellent work! I'm sure none of us realized you have populated that many cars! Fantastic! Well if you can do them with your eyes, I should, as long as I can brace my unsteady hand! 
I only have 13 passenger cars total, and intend to only buy 2 more when the Frostburg Maryland Model Railroad club makes their next custom run of Western Maryland cars.
Mike, Once again, I am glad you asked the question! Thank you!
3000 hand painted people..... and I thought I had patience.
Weathered my first of many Atlas O H21a Hoppers..... at this point just did the trucks/wheels and a wash of craft paints 40/60 paint to water.....
We made our first Sage Brush kit tree .... takes a really long time to master this as the super tree branches are so fragile and difficult to adhere to the wooden branches...
Trying to finish the end of the mine run road where it will run into the next room.... so I need for the road to end in a "blind tunnel"....
Thought I'd take a stab at shooting low light dusk photos with this new camera to see how the building lighting appears....
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John, all I can say is amazing! Sometimes I build one model and I am spent! I hope I can get some of your and others skills set on this forum!
Chris, the car looks nice, but your photo's are great! Very nice and relaxing views of the end of day work! Keep up the great work! Oh and the tree looks wonderful, but sure sounds like a lot of work! LOL
Thank you, Mike. These are the type of projects I should be leaving until the layout is finished. Problem is, when it comes to discipline in this hobby, I find it sucks a lot of joy out of the accomplishments. Above all, I'd rather be running trains and keeping the enthusiasm alive instead of constantly tackling monumental goals.. That type of drudgery stifles imagination. My style of free form building is in no way logically planned but it allows for roughing in small sections of layout or tearing out sections for major changes. I hope I'm past all the major changes needed but a large amount of work remains on scenery and wiring.
Right now, I'm listening to shortwave radio while I decal a few Madison's that were repainted months ago. Haven't touched the layout in a week and don't feel guilty in the least.
Bruce
I know what you mean Bruce, I haven't touched my train room in weeks cause I have building the wife her she Shed. But its just about done. If everything goes right my work should be done today!
Ottawa_Marc posted:3000 hand painted people..... and I thought I had patience.
John has the patience of Job!!!
Chris, The trucks always show up better weathered! I always like sagebrush trees, and yours are no exception! I agree with Mike, the photographs look great with that new camera!!!
chris a posted:Weathered my first of many Atlas O H21a Hoppers..... at this point just did the trucks/wheels and a wash of craft paints 40/60 paint to water.....
We made our first Sage Brush kit tree .... takes a really long time to master this as the super tree branches are so fragile and difficult to adhere to the wooden branches...
Trying to finish the end of the mine run road where it will run into the next room.... so I need for the road to end in a "blind tunnel"....
Thought I'd take a stab at shooting low light dusk photos with this new camera to see how the building lighting appears....
Chris, I took a string of amber colored mini Christmas light and strung them behind the scenery. It
gives a very quiet illusion dawn or dusk to the scene....
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John, I thought I had perseverance, but 3,000 hand painted people !!!!! I am getting slightly burned out weathering freight cars, and I have only done about 7 in the past week, around 120 to go..... I started a PRR N6b woodside caboose today for "change of pace"....
Of course I have way too much time on my hands as my shoulder heals... My daughter told me it was a "good thing" I hurt my shoulder so I'd have time to do all the detail work.... I told her I looked at it from a different perspective, thank god I have a model RR hobby or I'd be going stir crazy looking for ways to pass the time...
Mike : Glad to hear you're wrapping up the She Shed.... It looks great, now all those impressive expertly honed carpentry skills can be put to work on the benchwork !!
GANDYDANCER: Yes, I did something similar with a 32 foot of the multicolored LED light kits. Mounted some 3/4" x 1" stock to the backdrop below the horizon level and attached the LED string facing up the backdrop.... It's pretty cool, while it will produce a couple of hundred colors, I frequently use orange, light green, or light blue to create that glow in the sky....
My son took this photo some time back for me, ironically with the same camera he just gave me for my birthday...... I 'll have to see if I can find the camera settings he used to get this shot to get me in the ballpark.... I know the shutter was open for a long time .... like 10 to 15 seconds....
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Chris, Yes indeed! Another commentary on how valuable our hobby is. There is always something we can do if laid up! Even if it is only look at the OGR Forum!! Heal quickly!!
mike g. posted:I know what you mean Bruce, I haven't touched my train room in weeks cause I have building the wife her she Shed. But its just about done. If everything goes right my work should be done today!
Projects like that are best never avoided and must take priority. Glad you're nearing completion. Having home improvement shows deleted from your cable package does wonders in freeing up time for your own, more important projects.
,
Bruce
brwebster posted:mike g. posted:I know what you mean Bruce, I haven't touched my train room in weeks cause I have building the wife her she Shed. But its just about done. If everything goes right my work should be done today!
Projects like that are best never avoided and must take priority. Glad you're nearing completion. Having home improvement shows deleted from your cable package does wonders in freeing up time for your own, more important projects.
Bruce
Bruce, That is an excellent observation!!!!
brwebster posted:Mark Boyce posted:trestleking posted:Bought a new (to us) dry basement - with a decent house over it, in PA. Yes, it passed their 16 inches-of-rain-test with flying colors !
I am excited to get loose ends in OK cleaned up and get moved to PA for the winter layout building season. My wife said I should take the largest, nicest room in the basement for the trains, wow, is she a keeper ! I now have motivation to take down my old "test" layout ! Probably need to buy more trains, lol.
Dry basements are a very good thing!! We have one also here in Pennsylvania. Where in Pennsylvania is this new to you basement with a house over it? We are in Butler, about 40 miles north of Pittsburgh.
Don't know why, but I imagined you as living in eastern PA, Mark. It makes sense now why visiting all the neat train venues in the east isn't just a couple of hours travel time. Been the length and breadth of your fine state and most trips ate up a lot of time. If driving as the crow flies were possible we would only be about 3 hours apart.
Bruce
Bruce, so I finally took a moment to look at your profile to see where you live. Yes indeed It would only be 3 hours as the crow flies. Wow, the highway has to zig zag around two of the great lakes to get to you. 
As it is, Barney Google tells me by highway it is a 5-hour drive, 325 miles! 
I was up your way once, back around 1980 to 81. The company I worked for sent two of us up to a customer location by plane. The only trip I have taken out of the USA. There wasn't a cloud in the sky going up from Pittsburgh, and I could see both lakes for a while just like looking at Google Earth now. On the return trip, we left in a snowstorm, and when I got to my car in the airport parking lot, it was just a white mound with a foot of snow on it. I saw a little bit of the gold color on the sides, and that is what clued me in that it was mine. How many gold cars are there? 
Well, after 40 years, it may be a refrigerator and washing machine by now!
Chris, I like the trackside detailing. I get the feeling of "imagined reality." The eye just wants to scan for more details.
I guess it does not matter on the size of a train layout, but rather on the details placed within the available area. I am occupying my layout a few feet at a time. Boxes of Grand Central Gem Lodgepole pines and Redwoods are calling me to detail my layout. Getting up on the layout table gets harder to do. I may need to do a serious modification to my switch yard to get me space to poke myself up to reach areas I use to climb to.
We need to remember when designing our layouts, when we get older, we cannot get into places we use to reach so easily.
Sincerely, John Rowlen
GANDYDANCER, That is a great idea with the Amber Xmas lights!
Chris, your son sure does have talent with the camera! As for your progress, 7 out of 127 isn't bad! Slow and easy as you go!
Bruce, she doesn't need the TV, she finds everything right on her phone! LOL
SO some good news from my side of the world, the she shed is DONE! Now I can focus on more train stuff like bench work! She gets to do all the painting! Lucky me!
OOPS, I still have 2 trim boards to put up and will get them Monday!
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Mike, The she shed looks great! I’m sure she loves it!!! You do great work!
Hey Mark,
Re: home improvement shows.
Wouldn't surprise me if it was the major cause in the breakups of otherwise great relationships.
Re: lakes in the way.
As if dodging one lake isn't bad enough, eh? How can something that once provided the best form of long distance conveyance be such a hindrance today? Even old Vanderbilt needed to lease rails laid in Canada just to avoid one.
I haven't spent much time in western PA but have done the north/south central route 15 every 2 or 3 years since the 1980's. Passed the Rockville Bridge many times before I finally learned its significance. Maybe that explains my love of things PRR. Earliest, best memories of PA were getting to personally see the trains that filled the pages of MR and MRC back in the PennCentral days. Frequent trips to the fall Hershey meet fostered a collector passion, what with all the York vendors there a week ahead of the TCA meet. So began the slow progression towards O gauge, starting off with standard gauge. The $10,000 State sets totally blew my mind back then. Lots of good times are associated with The Keystone State.
Bruce
Yes, so it’s a good thing we never do any home improvements, just maintenance.
Yes I’m familiar with Rt 15, up around Wellsville. I saw the Rockville Bridge for the only time 3 years ago. Still impressive after all this time! I haven’t been over to Hershey. We spent most of our travel time in the Allegheny National Forest.
WTG, Mike! Looking awesome.
Bruce
Thanks Mark and John, she does love it and yes John I did get some points with this one! LOL
Plus the cool think about building it is when I was at my local lumber store they have tons of 2" X 3" that they get from loads that are banded together. Well come to find out they just throw them away, so I talked to the asst. Manager and he is going to pull the nice one's out for me so I can use them for my angle bench support! He is all excited about me building a Train Layout that he wants to stop in now and then just to see how things are going! Its so cool to have a local lumber store and not have to deal with the big box stores!
Mark - Thanks, images just get stuck in my mind after seeing them in the real world. Helps even more to take a picture. That berm wasn't there when I took my pictures years ago.
This is Shoreham in the real world.
Regarding the toe, it has blood flow, because the soft tissue is healing. The problem is all those antibiotics I was getting, never really made it into the bone where they were most needed. Let it go long enough, and I'll be walking around on a "Chicken McNugget". 
Don't worry, I won't let it go that far.
Marc - Thanks. Yeah it's a big layout. The room is 1900 square feet, and the layout is full double deck, with staging under much of it on a third lower level.
Mike - Those containers are there forever. I just need to do a chain link fence and some static grass to complete the scene. Knew you'd like them green cabeese.
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As advertised, Patrick was here today. We worked on four projects, and two of them were the last of their kind!
We started where we left off last time, working on the garden tracks around the turntable.
If I have a satisfied look on my face, it's because ALL THE TRACK ON THE ENTIRE LAYOUT IS DONE!!!
Next up, the Milwaukee Road Short Line Bridge scene. This is the first thing visitors see when they enter the train room.
We started by filling in the plywood base, out to the fascia.
Then we filled in the seams and screw heads.
Then I added the foam river bank on the right side and painted everything my basic brown.
After that I dug out my 40+ year old acrylic paints. Some were still good after all those years. I threw out the bad ones, then proceeded to paint the backdrop with fall colors. I only used three colors to achieve this effect, a bright red, a bright yellow, and a yellow ochre.
It looks better in person. I then planted a few of my old Woodland Scenics fall trees. This should make a pretty good first impression for convention visitors, even without the the actual bridge.
While I was doing all that, Patrick hung the rest of the lights in the big hidden yard (sorry, no pics of that). Then he went around the entire layout and painted and touched up the fascia with semi-gloss black.
He even got all the way back in the corner above Red Wing.
Aisle one is now ready for me to apply lettering, which I hope to do tomorrow.
Get these last couple projects done, and It's all about cleaning up. Coming into the home stretch.
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brwebster posted:WTG, Mike! Looking awesome.
Bruce
Thanks Bruce! I try to do my best, but as long as the wife is happy I am happy!
Big_Boy_4005 posted:Mark - Thanks, images just get stuck in my mind after seeing them in the real world. Helps even more to take a picture. That berm wasn't there when I took my pictures years ago.
This is Shoreham in the real world.
If I have a satisfied look on my face, it's because ALL THE TRACK ON THE ENTIRE LAYOUT IS DONE!!!
After that I dug out my 40+ year old acrylic paints. Some were still good after all those years. I threw out the bad ones, then proceeded to paint the backdrop with fall colors. I only used three colors to achieve this effect, a bright red, a bright yellow, and a yellow ochre.
It looks better in person. I then planted a few of my old Woodland Scenics fall trees. This should make a pretty good first impression for convention visitors, even without the the actual bridge.
Get these last couple projects done, and It's all about cleaning up. Coming into the home stretch.
I just showed what I want to comment on Elliot!
Shoreham from the air has a strange resemblance to a couple of junk yards "used auto parts facilities" I can place around here.
That big smile does say it all about the track being done!! Congratulations!
That bridge over the valley will look good when done!
My dad and I hit Edison greenbergs today but been working on this area for most the week too
Ran trains. Added smoke fluid. Ran trains. Had fun!!
Worked mostly on elevator, and will probably finish it, putting "glass" in windows, and painting and applying "tin" roofs, although l was almost done with mill. Its spillway will take a lot of work.
I did nothing on my layout today, instead I chased this locomotive down.
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Elliot I am happy for you that all the track is down! Has to be a great feeling! For some reason I think your just throwing in the BN Rolling stock to tease me! But that's ok I do like to see them on a layout! Things are looking really nice and the bridge area with the river below it is going to be fantastic when done! Great Job!
Mike, congrats on finishing the she shed. Now it is time for the train shed. Elliot, you hit the important milestone.....all trackwork done. From the pics you have some pretty good scenes going. That cur edvbridge scene will look great as a fall scene.......Paul
P
