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Picked this up for a couple bucks at a train show: https://www.amazon.com/Railroad-Caboose-Year-History-Legend/dp/0870950118/ Great book with lots of firsthand accounts of life in the caboose

Pretty messed up when it’s cheaper to ship from china! :D

FWIW - Tichy has drums 12 for $4, might end up cheaper/faster if you are in the US. https://www.tichytraingroup.com/Shop/tabid/91/c/ho_details/p/8211-55-gallon-drums-8211/Default.aspx

I'm afraid it was sold to a coworker a while back. No hard feelings at all, I did plenty well talking myself into it :D

Be careful with this, kitty litter swells tremendously when exposed to water. The usual methods of affixing ballast to layouts with diluted white glue will likely be disastrous with kitty litter.

I got a package of rolled lead sheet, 1mm thick - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BKL7RD66 These cut nicely with a chopper (single edged razor blade) or scissors and fit in great between beams on flatcars. A little more pricey than something like split shots, at close to $1/ounce. I definitely get...

Thank you, it's turning out that I like making nice models and then beating them to crap more than I like making fancy stuff :p

Continuing to make slow progress on the "storage car" as well as the actual boxcars. The roof is 0.020" styrene sheet. I thought it looked a lot better than the 1/32" (~= 0.031") wood sheets I had. A little bit of Grimy Black and a shot of dullcote and it's ready for installation/weathering...

A bunch of couplers for scratch built cars, some wheel sets to upgrade cheap-ish plastic trucks, and trying out a few of the 20 ton arch bar trucks from Tahoe on the recommendation of a fellow forum member. Threw in the book on styrene modeling to push me into free shipping territory, maybe I...

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/08/nyregion/ice-box-model-nyc.html Interesting article about a guy in NYC building (and weathering! 😍) models and ending up making money off it. I doubt that's in the cards for me, but it's fun to think about.

To AnyCubic's credit, they have agreed to replace the vat film, even though it is technically considered a consumable item and not warrantied. Still don't see much 3D printing in my immediate future, but at least I'll have a functioning unit if I decide to revisit or offload it.

I bought a bunch of Polly Scale in the early 2010s before it was discontinued. I'm working through what I have left pretty quickly alas, especially the Boxcar Red. Supposedly the Microlux paints from Micromark are blended to match the Polly S colors, but as you can tell from the pic below it's...

It depends on what size you buy, but it's more like 30 cents/ounce here buying Walmart house branded split shots - I'm sure the "Alaska tax" is rough on heavy items. Probably pennies (at ~11 cents/ounce) would have been a better choice on a build like this, since I don't care how much space they...

Starting round 2 of this build - why build one when you can build four at four times the price? :D Laying out the underbody elements, and beginning to string up the truss rods: Adding fishing sinkers for weight: I ended up with one body that was out of square, so I figured I would use...

I've done some structure building with styrene in the past. It's got a lot of advantages and is fairly easy to work with, but I just don't enjoy building with it very much.

Good looking cars! I like those flush roof walks, I may try something like that.

Same family but different trees, I believe. Basswood is native to this side of the pond. It's technically a hardwood but is soft enough that it's very often used for carving and model making. Definitely sturdier and heavier than balsa.

It's all basswood (mostly from Northeastern Scale Lumber), except for the detail parts like grab irons, queenposts, etc.

Timely, just got an email from Micromark that they are doing a free shipping promotion with no minimum order! Code = 23WS063

Thanks Dave, great info! I noticed the straight grab irons, which is convenient since I have a bunch of those on hand. Unfortunately this is literally the only photo of the prototype I've been able to locate, so roof and roof walk are left to best guess. It seems like there could be a roof walk...