Prior to every operating session, I go around the layout and do a general cleaning. I also straighten things up and make sure that uncoupling tools are in place, pencils are sharpened, and there are enough track warrants on the clipboards hanging from the fascia at various locations. Before the last operating session, as I was cleaning up the area around west end of Big Chimney, I came across something curious. There was a small blob of what appeared to be grey plastic next to the stream bed. Upon closer observation, it appeared to be a small campfire. Curious, I picked up the small piece and examined it. Sure enough, it was a campfire. If you look carefully in the photo below, you can see it through the bridge.
Now I am absolutely certain that I never placed this piece of plastic here. I can remember just about everything that I've ever done on the layout, and I can assure you that this is not my work. So who, then, could be responsible for this? Just prior to the operating session back in August, two of the more shady members of the crew were back in this area of the layout looking very intently over the bridge in the picture above. They didn't know that I had come around the corner at the opposite end of the aisle and had observed them. Given their reputations, I came back after the session to see what mischief they have may have created. A quick scan of the area showed nothing amiss, so I almost felt guilty about having assumed they were up to no good. Almost. Now it's clear that I was correct. And we know who is responsible for the mysterious campfire. I'm not one to go around pointing fingers or naming names, but let's just say that one of the miscreants is known to abscond with freight cars at every available opportunity and the other is known to refer to railroad executives traveling on special movements as the "circus train." The good news is that, given their advanced years, I'm sure they have both long forgotten about this little incident.
A friend of mine gave me a box full of GP parts, including a complete G18, for use in some kitbashes in the future. Looking through the box reminded of the times when I would spend hours adding super detailing parts to old Athearn Blue Box engines. It was lot fun, but it was also a lot of work. Looking through the box also reminded me of the first kitbash I ever did- an SD 40. Below is a shot of 3004 at SJ cabin.
The unit was kitbashed using an old Athearn SDP40 and a GP35 shell. I used a how-to article in RMC from the late 1970's- early 1980's as a guide. At the time, there were no commercial models of SD40's or SD40-2's available. I planned to have a large number of these units on the railroad, and this project seemed to be a good solution. Numerous Details West and Detail Associates parts were added, and new handrails were formed from .015 brass wire. I believe the article described how to make a powered unit, but this one is a dummy. This was also the first diesel to receive the "new" paint scheme that was introduced in 1966 with the large "CWE" herald on the side and "Central Belt" on the nose. Note that the CWE herald is smaller than on all subsequent units. It was done using Champ Block Gothic 3/8" decals, and I quickly decided after completing the unit that the CWE needed to be larger.
This unit was finished in 1982, and it took a lot longer than I thought it would. Fortunately, within a year or two of finishing this project, there were SD40-2's on the market with much better detail and accurately scaled hood widths. While this project was fun, kitbashing a fleet of these would have been a real challenge!
Just before the start of the last operating session, Bob Zoellner handed me a box and said "Merry Christmas." The box was labeled as an undecorated Kadee 50' PS-1 box car kit. I thanked Bob and started to take the kit back to my workshop. He said "Open it up." I took the lid off and found what you see in the picture below.
Bob made numerous modifications to the car. The roofwalks were removed, the holes filled in, and roofwalk brackets were added. The car was then painted and lettered as SOU 43029. The subtle weathering is beautifully done, and the working cushion underframe is amazing! It will make a great addition to the fleet and will be in service for the next session.
Bob is a FRA licensed engineer who works weekends on the Lebanon Mason Monroe Railroad just north of Cincinnati. He has also become the regular dispatcher on the Chesapeake, Wheeling & Erie. His knowledge of railroading has brought a new level of realism to the operating sessions and it's been a real treat to listen to him get trains over the road. He was also responsible for getting me a cab ride on the LM&M- the first one ever- in one of the original NKP GP30's that's been repainted into its original paint scheme by Bob. Here's a link to photos of the engine: http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/locopicture.aspx?id=161478. Thanks again for the nice gift, Bob.
Sometime last spring, I made my first attempt at hand carving rocks. There was an area around the spur to Dry Creek Coal #2 at Summit Springs where I wanted a rock face, in part because of how steep the hillside is here. I also wanted to experiment here before attempting to carve the rocks around the tunnel portal at the entrance to Brocks Gap Tunnel. This is a large area, and I'd like it to be a signature scene on the layout. Therefore, practicing a little before attempting this project seemed to make sense, especially since I've never done this before. I've collected numerous photos of rock outcroppings and rock faces over the years, so I had a good idea of what I wanted. I had also accumulated all of the materials that Joe Fugate recommends in his Ten Mile Creek video series for hand carving rocks (see this link for the videos: http://model-trains-video.com/index.php). So after reviewing the video one last time, I was ready to go. The picture below shows the end results.
This is one of only two shots I have of this area, largely because I was never happy with the way it turned out. The color was wrong, the texture was wrong, and the shape was wrong. Other than that, it turned out great! I used too much Portland cement in the plaster mix which resulted in the texture being too coarse. I used some craft paints to weather the rock surfaces. The paints were fine- I just used some of the wrong colors. I got more of a tan/brown appearance rather than the grey/white I was after. And most importantly, I didn't use those photographs I mentioned previously when carving the plaster. The resulting rocks looked it- too much of the same shape and not enough variations. Finally, the overall square shape of the entire rock face just looked wrong. So I knew I would have to redo this at some point.
Well. that some point occurred over the last several weeks. In addition to re-working the original rock face, I carved the rocks around the entrance to Brocks Gap Tunnel. The picture below shows the new rock face.
Some new plaster was added to the left hand side of the old rocks in order to get a more natural look to the overall face. The existing rocks were re-shaped by chipping away at the old plaster. During this process, most of the original surface was removed. This left the light grey of the original plaster along with the darker grey that was used as the base coat. This was exactly the color combination that I had been after originally. So armed with a little success in re-shaping the rock face, I set about to carve the rocks around the portal to Brocks Gap Tunnel. The picture below shows the end results.
This time, I used several photos when carving the rocks. The shot below of a tunnel portal somewhere on the Clinchfield shows what I was trying to capture. I'd give credit for this photo where due, but I found it somewhere on the Internet.
A lot of the shape of the rocks along the right hand side was the result of the original application of plaster. Nothing like a little luck to help a project along! The rest of the shapes were carved over a week period. I'd carve a little, step back and look, and carve some more. Then I left the project for a period of time. When I came back, I'd find little things that I wanted to change. By the end of the week, the final shape was in place. Here's a couple of close-ups.
The plaster was painted with a medium grey craft paint as the base coat followed by a wash of brownish black craft paint. Once this dried thoroughly, I went back and added highlights with several lighter shades of grey craft paint. A light application of some weathering powders completed the process. With the exception of ground throws for the turnouts, all of the scenery in this area is now complete. Here's the view looking from Laurel Ridge Coal toward the west end of Summit Springs.
And last up, a short video of DE 9 headed westbound.
Railroads and railroaders have a tendency to name everything, and with good reason. It's important to be able to report exactly where a train is at anytime, and named references that are understood by everyone allow this to happen quickly and efficiently. It's also helpful in providing instructions to crews such as which track in the yard to spot a cut of cars or the location where two trains are to meet. When I first drew up my track plan many years ago, I named the various streams in addition to all of the towns and stations. I recently found one of the stream names laying on the HN Cabin panel at North Pierce where it had been placed when I removed it to re-do the scenery in this area. It is a piece of .060 styrene that had been painted the same green color as the fascia and then lettered using Letraset dry transfers. A quick coat of flat finish sealed the lettering. This is the same lettering method that I used for all of the panels on the layout. It's time consuming to say the least, and dry transfer lettering is becoming difficult to find. As I was getting ready to remount the stream sign, it occurred to me that I could print these up in Word by matching the font and the background color as closely as possible to the few signs that were already finished. Once printed, I could get them laminated at Staples, cut them out, and glue them to the fascia. It would take a fraction of the time that the previous signs took to complete and would hopefully look just as good. So here are the results. First up is the sign for the tunnel at Logan, WV and the Logan town sign.
The stream at Big Chimney and the tunnel to the east needed names, so signs were made for these as well.
Signs were also needed for Big Chimney along with the creek under the trestle leading to the Sand Fork Branch.
Of course, now that all of these are finished and attached to the fascia, I'm beginning to wonder if a different background color might look better. Perhaps a black background with a thin white border around the lettering would look better and help distinguish the place names from the panels. Thankfully, making those changes only requires few minutes on the computer and a trip to Staples.
When I first decided on modeling an Appalachian coal hauler, I knew I was going to need a lot of hopper cars. It didn't seem like a big deal at the time, and certainly not something that would deter me in any way. So I started building a few here and there, along with other rolling stock projects. The first two were Athearn 55-ton ribbed side cars that were lettered without any real thought as to how the car numbers would fit into the overall scheme of the railroad's numbering series. As I got more serious about developing the history of the Chesapeake, Wheeling & Erie, and after reading Allen McClelland's book The V&O Story, I developed a numbering series for the locomotives and rolling stock. About the time I developed the numbering series, McKean announced their 12 panel 100-ton hopper car kit. I knew this was going to be the standard hopper car for the railroad, so I began painting and lettering them for the home road. I was using Champ Block Gothic decals for the large CWE herald, Champ Railroad Roman for the Central Belt logo, and Letraset dry transfers for the numbers and end lettering. Needless to say, lettering each car with individual decals and dry transfers was incredibly tedious and time consuming. Once Champ modified the style of their Railroad Roman decals in the mid-1990's, I finally bit the bullet and got custom decals from Ron Roberts at Rail Graphics. This really helped speed up hopper car production, and I finally began to make some progress in developing the fleet. Feeling pretty good about the number of cars I had built, I figured out how many coal cars would be needed for the layout. Including the five branch lines and the on-line mines, the number is 140-150 cars (loads and empties). This is in addition to trains of loads and empties that would traverse the layout from one staging yard to another. A quick tally of how many cars were already built, and... sigh... it was going to be a long time until I had that many cars ready for operation. The layout wasn't anywhere near being ready to operate at this point, so I decided to keep plodding along and not worry about how many cars would eventually be needed one day.
For the next ten years or so, I tried to keep at least 2 hopper cars in some state of production at all times. Sometimes this worked better than others. At various time I had 3 cars in production. I also started keeping a running tally of both loads and empties that had been completed and noted the date when the latest additions were made to the fleet. Checking the dates periodically revealed that it would be at least another 40-50 years before before I had enough cars to properly operate the railroad, at least at the rate I was going. Fast forward to 2012. The layout is finally being operated on a fairly regular basis and I'm lucky enough to have just about enough cars to pull this off. We're still not working the Dry Creek loader at Summit Springs and the Elkwater Branch Roustabout and Dry Creek Turn, both of which come on the layout from staging, have a limited number of coal cars. We're pulling loads and empties at Allison Coal Company in North Pierce. But the Purgittsville Turn (another train from staging) isn't even in service yet and we're using N&W cars for the mine at Nelsonville. It's clear that the pace of hopper car construction needs to pick up, and pick up quickly, if we're ever going to have enough cars to fully operate the layout as it was originally intended. So here's the latest plan. I'll have ten cars under construction at any point in time- 2 each in one of the five following categories: 1) Construction (assemble the kit if necessary, add Kadee #5's and cut levers, check wheel gauge and coupler height, etc.) 2) Paint and Glosscote 3) Decal and Dullcote 4) Paint fade and grime and Dullcoate 5) Weathering
Each week I'll complete the five steps above for two cars. The photo below shows the box that contains the eight cars in the first 4 stages.
The two cars on the right need to have the interiors painted with Sophisticated Finishes iron paint prior to weathering. Applying the rust solution to the iron paint will be part of the weathering step. And the two cars that are ready to be weathered are in another box. As the above photo shows, the system seems to be working- at least so far. Granted, we're only into the second week. But it's been surprising how little effort is required to complete each step. And I have a whole week to do it. So stay tuned- this little plan just might work.
... a long, long time. The first two, actually. I just finished two Details West 50' double plug door boxcars lettered for the home road and it occurred to me that I hadn't done a CWE boxcar in a long time. In fact, I believe the last one I did was a 60' auto parts car that I finished while we still lived in Dayton, Ohio. And we moved from Dayton to Cincinnati in 1992. Once I started on the layout here in Cincinnati, there were too many other priorities. But now that the layout is operating, I finally got around to building these cars.
The first step with these kits was to remove the top of the coupler box from the bottom of the car. For whatever reason, Details West cast this onto the end of the bottom which would make it impossible to replace the coupler once the frame, which includes the coupler box, was glued to the bottom piece. I held the top of the coupler box in place over the coupler box and tapped it for a 2-56 screw. I then added Kadee #5's and screwed the top to the coupler box. I also tapped the truck bolsters for 2-56 screws.
Added details include A-Line stirrup steps, Details West etched brass cut levers, and Kadee metal wheel sets. I also added some additional weight to each car. The cars were painted Floquil Pullman Green which is the same color as the diesels on the CWE. The underbody of the car and the trucks were painted with Rust-Oleums' camouflage brown which is plastic compatible and dries completely flat.
Once the cars were painted, I weathered them with washes of artist's tube acrylics thinned with Windex. These cars went into service in 1971, so I gave them a moderate amount of weathering. Number 22160 is headed to the K&LE this coming Monday where it will begin regular revenue service. However, something is apparently wrong with this scenario. Freight cars are supposed to leave John Miller's layout and re-appear on mine- not vice versa...
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