WHAT’S ON THE WORKBENCH AT THE MOMENT

@gunrunnerjohn posted:

Well, it's a wrap!  Here's the coal turbine in full flight!  BOY, is it a noisy set, and it's only at half-volume!  That has to be one of the ugliest upgrade jobs I've tripped over, but that's all behind me now.

" ONE OF THE UGLIEST UPGRADE JOBS I'VE TRIPPED OVER "

(Beauty is in the eyeof the beholder ) 

Maybe a few resistors in the speaker wiring and some heavier weight oil John.    Looks impressive though .

@Dallas Joseph posted:

" ONE OF THE UGLIEST UPGRADE JOBS I'VE TRIPPED OVER "

(Beauty is in the eyeof the beholder )

Maybe a few resistors in the speaker wiring and some heavier weight oil John.    Looks impressive though .

Well, it looks fine now, but for the lead unit, I had to start from scratch and rebuild everything with a new wiring harness.  I salvaged the wiring harness for the middle unit, but I had to do a lot of work on it.

John, your wiring harness reminds me of making wiring harnesses for a job I had back in the late '70s.  The company I worked for made devices for the automotive industry.  We made 8 prototype fuel injection and idle speed controllers for British Leyland for their MGs.  I was the engineer's assistant, so I had to load 8 double sided circuit boards and make wiring harnesses to connect all the sensors to the controller that we sat on the passenger seat.  It was kind of cool, but another company got the contract, and a bunch of us were canned.  Now, 45 years later, if I could scale down from 1:1 to 1:48, maybe I could be in business.

@gunrunnerjohn posted:

Well, it looks fine now, but for the lead unit, I had to start from scratch and rebuild everything with a new wiring harness.  I salvaged the wiring harness for the middle unit, but I had to do a lot of work on it.

This looks like the times I've opened up a problem child to see if I could find an issue with shorting.........the engine usually ends up being assigned to my boneyard in frustration.    If only a fraction of your knowledge was available to me .....but alas.                                                                                                I don't think you'll have this on the workbench too long John.

( if I could just plug my buzzing non functioning ps3 board into your little finger.............🤔 I could keep another loco on the DCS rails )

@Mark Boyce posted:

John, your wiring harness reminds me of making wiring harnesses for a job I had back in the late '70s.    It was kind of cool, but another company got the contract, and a bunch of us were canned.  Now, 45 years later, if I could scale down from 1:1 to 1:48, maybe I could be in business.

No doubt in my mind Mark.

@Dallas Joseph posted:

I don't think you'll have this on the workbench too long John.

You're right, as you can see above in a previous post, it's off the bench and on the rails.  I had a last minute little alignment issue with the smoke funnel I fabricated, it didn't line up exactly with the smoke unit.  I had to move the smoke unit about .2" to get them working, my calibrated eyeball was out of cal.  I also had to swap the smoke unit for one with slightly longer posts!  Who knew that the diesel smoke units come with about four different length posts, only varying by a couple of mm, just enough to leak smoke like crazy!

I bought a MTH Consolidated engine. In it’s stock form it’s close to scale from what I’ve read and not a bad engine. It’s got PS2 features and runs well. But it still felt a little starter set like.
So I made a few modifications.
- I painted the dials and knobs

- Removed the front trucks and made it an 0-8-0  I read that did occur  

- I painted the side rods “Weathered Steel” from the Rust-Oleum aged metallic line. The inside of the side rods were sanded clean.
- Added glass to the front windows.
- I mixed some brown and yellow acrylics and touched up the bottom half of the engine and tender trucks.
- I then used  water down gray for level 1 weathering (meh results)

- On top of that used school white chalk shaved into a powder. Brush on with a makeup brush.

- Finally dull coated with Krylon flat clear. This ate up most of the white chalk but can be classified as lightly weathered.

Final results aren’t bad for a first time weathering a steam locomotive. Still need to add the engineer figure.

Its not an engine but Ive been cutting the legs off of HO sitting people and last night I populated my Lionel Ferris Wheel. Did a mix of single, double, and triple cars and true to life left a couple cars empty. Happy with the results. O scale people looked goofy sitting in the cars as their heads touched the car roof so HO was the next best option I could find.

Paul, The Ferris wheel riders look happy to be there!!

Steve, the engine looks great with the extra detail painting and weathering.

@Mark Boyce posted:

John, your wiring harness reminds me of making wiring harnesses for a job I had back in the late '70s.  The company I worked for made devices for the automotive industry.  We made 8 prototype fuel injection and idle speed controllers for British Leyland for their MGs.  I was the engineer's assistant, so I had to load 8 double sided circuit boards and make wiring harnesses to connect all the sensors to the controller that we sat on the passenger seat.  It was kind of cool, but another company got the contract, and a bunch of us were canned.  Now, 45 years later, if I could scale down from 1:1 to 1:48, maybe I could be in business.

@Dallas Joseph posted:

No doubt in my mind Mark.

Thank you for the confidence in my skill, Dallas!! 

Afterward our most recent visit to Strasburg, my grandson asked if I thought MTH, Lionel, or someone else made or would make open air cars like Strasburg's. I posted about it, and some good suggestions came back.

I found 3 MTH Pennsy Woodsides, complete, less trucks, on line, and not exact, but passable Premier trucks, and we went to work.

Strasburg has two versions, one with nine openings,the Hello Dolly rebuild, the other with 5 openings.

Still early in the process, here's a sneak peek at the first project

Albertstrains I love your work bench.

Almost done with this little critter. Stripped it down and repainted, replaced e-unit with a Bluenami decoder so it has full sounds now, upgraded lighting to LED's. Did the lettering with a P-touch and my USCG decals that just came in. The road number and the name are from the first Cutter I served on, it was brand new and I am a plankowner of the ship!

Semper Paratus !!!!!  love the coastie switcher

Nicely done Jim M! I am relettering a few MTH woodsides for Strasburg as well. Still waiting on some decals. Stay tuned.

This is a Labelle car.

Pete

@Norton - Thats beautiful. Where do you get your decals from?

@pault posted:

@Norton - Thats beautiful. Where do you get your decals from?

Thanks Paul. Highball Graphics makes most of them. They have them for 89, 90, and most of what you need for at least ten of the passenger cars. I added a few from a Microscale PRR set.

You have to contact them as the O scale ones are special order. HO are catalog items.

Pete

I'm putting seats and passengers in my Rio Grande Zephyr cars. For some reason, Lionel put tables and chairs in these domes. I replaced them with seating from Precision Scale and then used the old dome seats in the lower level. I'm also spraying Testor's transparent green on the windows.

Terry

Too big for my workbench but working on my 8.5 ft bridge. Lots of dowels from HD have been harmed in this process.

@Norton posted:

Thanks Paul. Highball Graphics makes most of them. They have them for 89, 90, and most of what you need for at least ten of the passenger cars. I added a few from a Microscale PRR set.

You have to contact them as the O scale ones are special order. HO are catalog items.

Pete

I use Highball Graphics for both stock and custom decals made from my own artwork.

In addition to a quality product that is easy to apply to models, I find Highball Graphics responsive, fast and affordable. Below are photos of one of my many work-in-progress projects, repainted MTH O-27, Pennsylvania-Reading Seashore Lines (PRSL) passenger coaches being repainted and decaled with custom decals from Highball Graphics using my artwork. The decals are the lettering, road numbers and PRSL logos. The window striping is yellow graphic tape.

Randy that’s an exceptional job and thanks for the insights. My efforts are directed towards Reading equipment and PRSL when I can find them. Thank you.

Jay