Green Mountain Railroad Layout Build


Progress on the coaches continues! Having never detailed custom rolling stock before, I took a few hours today to carefully drill and position the 24” grab irons for the doors of the coaches.

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I think they turned out great for a first attempt:)

Next on the list is the end grab irons located on the bottom edge of each corner of the coaches.
 
Projects on the GMRC build continue! I spent a few hours over the course of the week tackling more work on the passenger coaches. I’ve gone ahead and drilled the holes for the end grab irons. I’ve also taken time to drill holes for the end door gates.

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Like the other details, these will be painted. In addition to this, I’ve also carefully removed excess flashing and spurs from each coach chassis. Since these coaches are Life-Like brand, they didn’t have the best moldings or details.

My plan is to install some details on the underside of the coaches as well as interior seating.

The next step for the coaches is to apply Tamiya putty to a few tiny cracks in the shells, as well as filling in each hole I drilled for the detail components. I plan to use an extra grab iron to press into the putty as it dries to create the exact diameter hole I need, thereby preventing any gaps between the hole drilled and the detail parts themselves.

Earlier in the week I received a locomotive I ordered. I got it used on eBay as a project locomotive. I posted about it earlier in the week regarding the DCC system not working. Now that I fixed that issue, I can focus on the other projects involved. This locomotive has some front end damage.

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All the pieces came with it but it will require some careful work to get it back together. Once it is repaired, this GMRC #305 will service freight operations on the layout:)

Speaking of which, James Hilton and I have made some progress on the layout design itself! I don’t have a fully completed track plan yet, but when I do I will definitely share it. It features a compressed version of North Walpole yard, Bellows Falls Station, and Chester Depot with some freight OPs mixed in.
 
Progress on the coaches continues! Having never detailed custom rolling stock before, I took a few hours today to carefully drill and position the 24” grab irons for the doors of the coaches.

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I think they turned out great for a first attempt:)

Next on the list is the end grab irons located on the bottom edge of each corner of the coaches.
Outstanding start Joshua!
In my younger days I would buy an Athearn blue box engine and super detail it with everything I could find from CalScale, Kemtron, Detail Associates, etc.
 
I’ve applied the Tamiya putty and I’m letting it cure. It was a little harder to apply than I anticipated so things got a little messy.

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What is the best way to clean up the areas with putty and smooth everything out prior to painting? I planned on using my hobby knife to clean up sharper edges and some fine grit sandpaper for the rest.
 
I’ve applied the Tamiya putty and I’m letting it cure. It was a little harder to apply than I anticipated so things got a little messy.

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What is the best way to clean up the areas with putty and smooth everything out prior to painting? I planned on using my hobby knife to clean up sharper edges and some fine grit sandpaper for the rest.
Use one of the flexible nail files that have 4 different grits.
 
I was able to clean up the putty on the passenger coaches thanks to the suggestion by @Marlin39

I took some time today after tidying up the coaches to repair the front end on the GMRC project locomotive.

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The plow is slightly off-center. There were two pre-formed indents for where holes could be drilled for attaching the plow. I am fairly certain my drilling was directly centered with the holes but perhaps not! I didn’t check previously but the provided indents could have also been mis-aligned and I didn’t notice. Despite this, the locomotive turned out better than I expected!

There are still 3 pieces left that came with the locomotive but I have no idea what they are or where they go. Any ideas?

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I think the box is an electrical cabinet air filter box, not all locos had them but it would go behind the cab on fireman side.
Can’t tell what the other two are.
Thanks for the info! I’ll look it up and see if these were on any of the GMRC locomotives.

I’ll take a better photo of the other two pieces and add it to the post.
 
I decided to treat myself (again) with a few more rolling stock purchases. I can use Christmas as the excuse for this one.

I was browsing eBay last night (big mistake) and I found some items I couldn’t say no to. As I indicated in a previous post when I started planning this build, I wanted to focus on acquiring and detailing the rolling stock first. My primary focus has been on the passenger cars and locomotives. The freight cars don’t all have to be GMRC which makes it easier.

Since my plans changed from a 4’ x 8’ layout to a roughly 9’ x 9’ around the wall shelf layout, I have been able to select a wider variety of passenger cars. Behold the 85’ Budd coaches.

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The GMRC uses a similar style car in addition to “old-fashioned” Pullman coaches. Here is an example:

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My plan is to paint and decal the Budd cars accordingly.

My next purchase was more Pullman 60’ coaches. I found some by Rivarossi for a really great price!

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These were detailed so well and look fantastic, I couldn’t say no. Like the coaches I’m currently detailing, I plan to add grab irons and end door gates to these as well.

The last items I purchased were a pack of coupler pockets and a set of Pullman standard trucks.

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My current plan is to convert to body-mounted couplers on my “DIY” coaches and add Pullman standard trucks to each car. For now, my plan is to only add them to the combine coach which will be part of any excursion train on my GMRC layout. The rest of the train will be a combination of either the 2 Budd coaches or a full set of Pullman cars.
 
Vermont Rail Systems runs the old GMRC lines now. I work just down below their main yard in Burlington. They've still got some of those coaches for their dinner excursion trains, so I see them go by from time to time.
They also still have an old Alco in the Green and Yellow livery that they run from time to time. I saw it paired up with their SD70M once. 🤣 Mostly they use it for the excursions. 😊
 



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