New Tool and a Box Car

 My wife gave me a Cricut Maker 3 for birthday back in February.   I have been playing around with it and I think it is a great addition to my tool kit.  I have started with a basic project, the replacement fright house in Plainfield CT.

This photo is actually in the Penn Central era, but would never know it.
This s the only photo I have of the structure, so the other two sides are a guess.  

Here is the Cricut

Tis is my first test cut using copy paper.
The ends with the angled wall are too long, may math was off.

I also received two of the new Rapido Penn Central 72A box cars that I had pre ordered.  They are really worth the wait. 

The Springfield Show

The 2022 show was this past weekend and there was a lot of things going against it.  The never ending Covid kept a number of groups from displaying and attending and a literal blizzard hit the New England on Saturday. Hopefully the organizers were able to cover costs.  It was nice to see people I have not seen in a couple of years.

There were a number of modular layouts.

There is a dinosaur show coming in a week or two.

The new GP-30 in HO coming from Scale Trains

B&M Diner from Bethlehem Car Works.  I Picked up the New Haven version of it.

B&M Baggage rebuilt from a Pullman Heavyweight Sleeper also from BCW.

Here are the RS-3's from Bowser.  The look fantastic.  They have lots a versions coming along in the future, including rebuilt and chopped nose units.

Here is an N scale Stone's trailer from Eastern Coast Models.  We need to convince them to make them in HO scale.

Here is ECM State of Maine in HO.  The car looks fantastic. 

 Here are a few things that came home with me

Here is the NH Diner Kit, the sides and many of the details are 3D printed, making it possible to make a very accurate kit.

This is the New decal sheet from the Penn Central historical Association.  It is for trailers and vehicles  and is huge.  You can get it from there web site.

This is the N-7 caboose from Tangent.  It is a beautiful caboose.

I also picked up a Tangent combination door PS-1.  I love how the paint the roofs.

I also found a very nice Rapido meat reefer.

Happy New Year

I have been absent for over a year on my blog, there have been a number of reasons, some good and some bad, but I am back.  I am actually making a couple of hobby resolutions:

1.  Spend more time on my hobbies.  Even a few minutes is a enough time to accomplish things.  

2.  Finish projects before starting new ones.  I know I will not be 100% on this, but I hope I can finish up some more projects.

3.  Post more often.  It has been about 14 months since my last one, so I should accomplish this one with out too much trouble.

Now that I have said what I hope to do, I can say I have not done much of anything in the last year other than picking up a few models and books.  We have been doing a lot of work on out house and the basement where both my layout and workbench are located has been filled with construction material, tools and furniture.  We have finally finished up the final project and I can get back to molding again.

Before Construction

After Construction

1978

I have been working on my 1978 locomotives over the last few weeks.  First was adding DCC to several locomotives, then adding details and additional decals as needed.

First up is a former Reading C630.  This is a Bowser Executive line C630 and I really could not find anything to add to the locomotive.  I did an overspray of dull coat to flatten the finish.  I then did an oil wash to highlight lies and grills.  I than used Pan Pastels to to the balance of the weathering.

This is one of Conrail's 10 C30-7.  It is and older Atlas model that I added a plow, antenna and train control box.  I weathered it the same as the C630.

 The Amtrak F40ph is from Rapido.  Agian I could not find any thing to add detail wise.  Weathered with Pan Pastels only, it represents a fairly new, well maintained locomotive.

Not much visible progress

I have made a bit of progress on the layout.  I have added some more feeders and I still need to add a few more to fix some dead spots.  I than discovered a missed a few spots will mortaring the old foundation last summer and had a leak in the basement.  I had to pull out the stairs leading to the basement to get at eh spots that leaked so I ended up replacing all the treads and risers on the that as well.  The final thing is I added three way switches to the basement so you can turn on and off the lights regardless of what direction you enter.  I have one more change in the basement, a move of some of the duct work for the heat that will improve the headroom and appearance in one corner of the layout room.

More scenery experimentation

Having been happy with my first attempts at static grass, I have giving ballasting and other scenery a try.  Not too bad for a first attempt.

First attempt at Static Grass

I am stating to try scenery on my layout.  I am stating the area by my model of the Thermos company factory on the south side of Norwich.  I have used Homasote  in this are and it is dead flat. To give the track work  bit of definition I carved "roadbed" into the Homasote.  It was fairly quick and easy to do.  I used a new blade in a utility knife that is is used in dry-walling.

You can see my carved ditches, as well as the handle of my knife.  Not perfect,
but it breaks up the complete flatness.

My wife gave me an electrostatic flocking machine for Christmas a couple of years ago and I finally got it out to use it.  (She calls it a grass shouter, which sounds much more fun.)  I followed the guidelines that Chris A. spelled out on his blog, xxxxx  I am pretty happy with the results.  I still have a bunch of things to do , but it is moving in the right direction.