Decals

 

I love decals.  They promise so much potential, the ability to letter some great model that I have built and painted.  I have a good number of decals, from old Walthers’ sets to the latest offerings from Highball Graphics and K4.  When I first started building serious model trains, Accu-Cals were my go-to, they had great sets covering the New England railroads I was trying to model. Microscale is the big kid on the block, Champ and Herald king have faded away and several new suppliers have filled in some of the gaps.  Black Cat Decals does a great job for Canadian railroads.  

The reason I am going on like this is while there are many decal suppliers, the ability to letter Pullman Heavyweight cars is difficult.  The good news is Microscale makes a few different sets in both gold (gold leaf) and Deluxe Gold (Painted Gold) to letter the cars painted green.  You may need to cobble together names, but it is possible.  The two-tone gray cars are a whole other matter. Champ did make decals for these cars painted in the two-tone, both in while and aluminum (silver grey), but these sets are long out of production.  Bethlehem Car works offers these for New Haven cars, but not useful for other railroads. I have been keeping an eye on eBay to pick up a few more sets.

So, for all the decal manufacturers, I ask for new sets of Pullman decals. A good set for the two-tone cars, including stripes.  The sets need lots of names, even sets of syllables to create names would be useful. Additional sets of names for green cars would be useful as well. While I am no expert on the Pullman, I do know of resources and would be happy to help.

More Passenger Cars

Now that I have shown off some of the easier cars to build (or place on the tracks) I am back to creating multi media projects, in this case a Pullman 8 Section / 5 double bedroom heavy weight Pullman.  This one I am building a bit differently, I am using the Bachmann Pullman sleeper as a core for a set of bras car side.  I picked this project up from another modeler who decide he did not want to finish it. The two part care side were already assembled and the core had been stripped off the underbody details.  The core includes the ends. One of the pluses of using the Bachmann Pullman is it has only one vestibule, as did the 8-5 Pullmans, having the correct blind end on the non vestibule end.  As you can see below the car is ready for painting.  even though the core and sides will all be Pullman green, it is easier to paint the parts separately and then assemble.  It is much simpler to add the decals then the appropriate finish, I go either flat or satin, and then add the window material, shades and railings.  At this point I will assemble the whole care. 

I removed the material from from the window band that could be seen
 through the new widows on the brass car sides.  I also sanded down all
the high spots on the core so the sides will fit as flat as possible.

Why a Pullman 8-5?  This car will be a clover serious sleeper, assigned to the NYC but out on Pullman lease.  These cars showed up on a number of New Haven and B&M trains over the years including the Montrealer/Washintonian, the Bar Harbor Express and the Night White Mountains, all in to the mid to late 1950's in both Pullman Green and the Pullman Two Tone Gray.

This is also my 100th post!  I will hopefully get to 200 much quicker.

New Passenger Cars and Proto-freelancing

First of all, sorry for being absent for do long, not real good reason.  I have been building models and doing stuff to make a expansion on the layout that has not been worked on at all.  I just finished writing a review for NHRHTA Speedwitch publication  on the just released New Haven County cars made by Rapido.  They are typical of the previous released of the NH stainless steel cars already released by Rapido, excellent cars.

Now I model the Norwich and Worcester in 1958, and I wanted the baggage lounge parlors for the East Wind.  This is where proto freelancing comes in, I keep the traffic levels and trains from the early 1950's and use it for the late 1950's.  When the real East Wind stopped running in August of 1955, it was typically a 4 or 5 car consist including a heavyweight diner, with the B&M and the NH each supplying a heavyweight car to the pool.  The B&M supplied the Mountaineer, this car can be modeled with either the an old set of concord Jct brass car sides or a relatively new kit from Bethlehem Car Works.  The New supplied on of there standard heavyweight diners, either painted silver gray or silver gray with a green window band.  There are no models out that come close and it is a major kitbash.  I am hoping that BCW will release a NH standard diner, as they have already done the first class NH diner used on the Merchants Limited.  Neither of those car were ever painted silver gray.  The NH did use grill cars in the early 1950's, but again, not stainless steel grill cars around either.  I could use a full NH stainless diner, but that is not what I ended up doing.

I picked up an old school Walthers diner some one had built at a train show..  This is the old stamped metal sides, cast ends and wood floor.  The roof is plastic, and the rivet detail is great, making it one of the "newer" metal kits. Th instruction say is is good for the NH and the NYC, but I can't find any drawings or photos of a similar car on the NH.  I painted it a silver color and used correct black lettering to finish it up.  The interior is a 3d printed one I pickup off of eBay.  I numbered it 5249, one above the last NH heavyweight diner.  It makes a great stand it for short money.

There is a my signature passenger train for my railroad, the East Wind, with the signature cars on it. 

I hope to be better at posting as I continue to work on various projects.  There are lots of passenger cars yet to be built, maybe even a freight car or too!

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.