Roadworks

As part of a prior post on the Maastrecht's Mill project, I explained how I added several dirt roads around the sawmill and town of Cass.

One road runs perpendicular to the railroad, past the sawmill and disappears into the forested backdrop. I tried to paint the road with some single point perspective to it, so it appears the road has some distance to it. This was partially aided by blending the rock cutting on the layout into the backdrop.

I'm not an artist, but I'm happy with the effect as a first attempt.

A stacked photo looking down the road. A small wagon train is making its way into town. The two fellas driving the green wagon are from Knuckleduster miniatures. 

The road also extends around and into the town of Cass. I used a darker brown colour to give the feel of damp earth. I wanted it to feel like it had rained not so long ago and the road is a but muddy. I may yet add some puddles by brushing on some gloss medium in low laying areas.

Improving Bachmann's old time cars

The turn of the century modeller is not spoilt for choice when it comes to ready to run locomotives or rolling stock models.

There are a number of very nice kits made by manufacturer's specialising in turn of the century equipment. However, I do not own any of them. One-third of my rolling stock is made up of Bachmann old time cars. When I started out in turn of the century modelling all I had was four Bachmann old-time freight cars and three passenger cars. I was able to find more of these 34' freight cars for sale second hand to grow my rolling stock fleet. Most cost between NZ$8-12  per car.

Thoroughfare Gap Railroad
Rolling stock by manufacturer
Manufacturer	Number of each	%
Bachmann	17	33%
Frateschi	1	2%
IHC	9	18%
Kitbash	1	2%
Mantua	7	14%
MDC	2	4%
Roundhouse	10	20%
Scratchbuilt	4	8%
Grand Total	51	100%

Most of the Bachmann freight cars are flat cars or gondolas and the detailing is more toy-like. Even so, a little weathering goes a long way in making these cars look better. Over time, I've painted and weathered the decks to look like grey weathered wood and some added custom decals.

To get the cars to run reliably, I replaced the thickly moulded trucks with Walthers proto arch-bar trucks and wheelsets. In doing so I also body mounted the couplers.  I find body mounted couplers much less likely to derail when shoving a string a of cars while switching.

Even after all these improvements, the height of the cars has still bothered me. The car body itself is quite thick as it accommodates a metal plate to give the car enough weight to track well. In addition to this, the cars bolsters are quite high, meaning the car body sits high on the trucks. All this means these cars are obviously taller when sitting next to other cars on the layout.

I decided to try lowering these cars and I'm quite pleased with the results. I filed down the bolsters leaving enough clearance for the trucks and wheelsets to pivot over rough track. I also removed the metal weight. This allowed the plastic shell to fit slightly lower over the plastic underbody.

Bachmann Old-time gondolas, the lowered car is on left, original on the right. Side by side, the height difference is very noticeable. The plastic stirrups have been cut off to be replaced by metal ones. 

The only problem now was the lack of weight. I cut out a section of the plastic underbody frame and filled it with lead shot until the cars achieved the desired weight. The lead shot was glued in place with PVA glue.

So far, I've lowered two of these cars, but they appear to be tracking around the layout just fine. I'll be slowly working my way through the roster.

Blog housekeeping

I've been going through old posts and updating the labels for each post to make them easier to find. Unfortunately, when I've done this I appear to have updated each post, rather than simply saving the changes.

If you follow by email, I fear Blogger may have sent you an email for each of these old posts I have updated. My apologies for the confusion.

On the other hand, it may be a great way to see rerun some old content.

Thanks for your patience.

Bachmann 4-4-0 new tooling repainted

I ordered two of the new bachmann 4-4-0 with sound at the beginning of the year. I was keen to have a reasonably accurate model of the Union Pacific's 119 but felt the wine colour of the model was too brown for my taste. I ordered a 119 model and I've now completed a new paint and decaling job and I'm quite happy with the results.

A big thanks to John Ott for making his decals available on his website, http://www.ottgallery.com I modified his decals to fit my bachmann model. John based his decals on the colour scheme researched by Jim Wilke and Jon Davis, which you can find at http://discussion.cprr.net/2008/02/jupiter-119-paint-colors.html

I followed the rendering by Jon Davis to come up with the overall paint scheme.

Stock loading ramps

Both the towns I have modelled on my layout have stock pens. Shipping livestock is a big part of the business on the thoroughfare gap railroad.

Each town has a trackside corral though, neither had a way of loading the livestock on and off the trains. I've been meaning to make up some loading ramps for several years now but somehow, I've never got around to it.

Recently I discovered a seller on Trade me, the NZ version of eBay, selling some stock loading ramps as 3d printed kits. I purchased four and the went together really easily.

After a little paint and some weathering with soft pastels, they were ready for the layout.

The corral at Cass and the two loading ramps in position. It's great to finally have these little details to complete the scene.

Running the kitbashed 2-6-0

In my earlier post about my kitbashed 2-6-0 I promised I'd 'do a video of it someday'. I've finally got around to making one and posting it to my YouTube channel. You can watch it below.

I've experimented using a voiceover to explain some aspects of the project, which is a departure from my previous subtitle only videos.

Derailments

Recently, I had the privilege of a visit from some fellow model railway enthusiasts. Before my guests arrived I cleaned the tracks, made up several trains and test drove them around the layout to ensure everything was working properly. When my visitors arrived, we started running the trains around the layout. Unfortunately, every train that ran encountered at least one derailment in its passage over the layout. While it didn't dampen my visitor's spirits, I was disappointed the layout ran so poorly. I decided to take steps to minimize further derailments. Firstly I resolved to troubleshoot derailments when they occur. Upon reflection, when I am running trains by myself, I’ve tolerated small derailments because I don't want to interrupt my operating session. I think this lead to a mental bias that the layout actually was running better than it actually was. I’ve accepted that my operating sessions will be interrupted for now. But it will be so I can enjoy more trouble free running in the future. If I can’t resolve a derailment at the time, I will document it, the locomotives and cars involved and work on it at a later date.

Sometimes derailments are easily rerailed in the moment. But stopping to troubleshoot the problem should reduce problems in the future. 

Troubleshooting invariably requires some patience and observation as to what is occurring at the site of a derailment. I've found an HO standards gauge is indispensable when diagnosing problems. By studying my derailments more closely, I could see that most of the cars involved were using Kadee metal wheelsets with plastic axles. About half my rolling stock was equipped with Kadee’s and half with Walthers Proto 33” wheelsets. The Walthers wheelsets are all metal, including the axles. I had found that on my trackwork, the Walthers wheelsets ran smoother and the cars rolled more freely than the Kadee wheelsets. So I decided to standardise and purchased more Walthers Proto 33” wheelsets for the rest of the fleet. Since installing the new wheelsets I’ve seen a dramatic drop in the number of rolling stock derailments. I’m not saying the Walthers wheelsets are better outright, they just appear to work better with my track, which I concede is a bit rough in places. One resource I have found helpful is Joe Fugate’s Make it run like a Dream series. So far Joe has released two books, available in print or ebook, and is working on the third concerning locomotives. Joe shares a multitude of insights and tips to help attain trouble-free running. You can find Joe's books for sale at the Model Railroad Hobbyist store.