My Northern Pacific Butte Montana Layout.


I'm in the process of putting the roofs on the model now. I will attempt to get some good photos today, maybe even this morning!
 
Forgot to mess with my camera yesterday, will do today. The building is for the most part completed. Will be adding a few more details; but, no reason not to takes some photos.
 
here are four photos of the completely assembled building, there is still some weathering and detailing to complete yet. This is the South walls
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Here is the East walls of the building.
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Again, the closest wall is out of Focus! However, I'm tired of fooling around with my camera; so, this will have to do!
 
Here are photos of the North and West walls.

The North Wall.
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The west Wall.
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Overall I am happy with how the building turned out. Because no dimensions where given as far as where to make your cuts, I found this Kit-Bash to have been the most difficult Kit-Bash in Art Curren's book. Some of the problems with the Tyco kit I found, was that the windows where not the same depth as the walls were thick. This means that the window glazing is set back from the window muntins and doesn't look realistic. I think that as manufactured, Tyco thought that the Kit Builders might want to have the sliding doors so they where movable. Maybe they would; however, this would have made assembling the walls very difficult.
 
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I have been thinking about having another contest! This one would have my Art Curren Book as the prize. Something along the lines of the nicest Kit-Bash of a building. Does this sound like fun to anyone? I will make the announcement in the General Discussion Forum. If interested go there and read all about it.
 
I have been thinking about having another contest! This one would have my Art Curren Book as the prize. Something along the lines of the nicest Kit-Bash of a building. Does this sound like fun to anyone? I will make the announcement in the General Discussion Forum. If interested go there and read all about it.
Yes. It sounds like much fun, but I have to say I will probably not have time to participate.
 
Here is my Northern Pacific W-3 Mikado 2-8-2 again, hauling a freight over the HooDoo Gulch Trestle. This loco is a Rivarossi Mikado, Kit-Bashed into the W-3. It was Kit Bashed in the early 1990s, back when this type of modeling was far more popular and cast brass parts where more available. It has a Digitrax DH123D Decoder in it. The Sand Dome on the front, is a piece of wood doweling turned to shape on my drill motor. The dog house on the tender was scratch built from Evergreen sheet Plastic. The Rivarossi tender had about an inch worth of length cut out of it under the dog house and the coal bunker was raised to allow a larger load of coal and real coal installed. It was a fun project!
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Hi Mark,

I like your building, quite an undertaking!

Wonder if you made the lettering for your Mikado locomotive or were able to purchase them in decals?

Thanks, Dave
 
MARK - I don't remember seeing this loco before. OUTSTANDING JOB!
If you did not say - I would have taken it for a brass model. Love what you did on the tender!
 
Thanks to those of you who have followed along on this project and thanks for the nice comments. It was a fun project and it turned out well. I only wish I had a better place to put it on my layout.
 
This is another something, changed to something else. This Bachmann RS-3 started life as an Erie RS-3, this is a Bachmann Sound Value locomotive. I chose the Erie Model as it was somewhat close to the N.P.'s color scheme, Black and Yellow. So, planning out how I was going to convert to a Northern Pacific RS-3, I removed the couplers and their boxes, allowing the shell to be removed. Then, I had to paint over the Erie name, road number and yellow trim. Then I went to the Joe Carron photo collection at the Northern Pacific Railway Historical Association website and looked through Joe's photos of RS-3s. Most all of Northern Pacific's RS-3s had the Canoe End Yellow & Black Paint schemes. The Canoe end means that the yellow ends don't come down straight to the walkways as mine shows; but, rather have a curve starting from the top of the end hoods and curving down, along the sides and ending along the walkways, looking like a canoe. All the RS-3s Joe showed had this feature excepting #861. I liked this scheme as it was simpler. So, I painted the ends and the under frame of the walkways. yellow. I opened the cab up, removed the windows and painted the interior of the cab B.N. green. I don't remember if I placed an engineer and fireman in the cab or not. I remember having them face either direction, as at the time I did not know if N.P. had their RS-3s run long end forward or Short end Forward. By having the engineer on the long hood side facing the long hood end and the other the other way around for the short hood, I had a train crew facing the right direction no matter which way N.P. ran their engines. I painted and weathered the trucks and wheels, painted yellow on the handrails near the steps and painted the edges of the steps yellow. I added an oval extension to the exhaust stack. and double chime horns to the cab roof. So, once again I have defeated the manufacturers opinions that the Northern Pacific is not worth there time to produce models of.

The loco is a good runner, strong puller and has nice sound. It's one of my favorite locos to pull my trains with. I would like to add an N.P. RS-3 with the Canoe paint scheme, if I could find one!

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Please Note: When I took the two photos above, I did not notice that the camera was tipped to the right slightly. The trestle is actually level across it's top, so the train is not heading down hill as is shown.
 
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Here is a couple photos of my Athearn Blue Box F-7 done up in Northern Pacific Livery. Obviously for some screwy reason Athearn felt that Northern Pacific's F-7 where done in a Dark Green. This was wrong on their part. So, I had to paint them over in Black, and re-decal them.
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The photo below maybe shows off the consist a bit better. The A and B are both powered. The rear facing unit is an unpowered dummy, but does have headlights that come on when the consist is in reverse. The powered units where remotored with NWSL motors. In addition to repainting and re-decalling, the units have Walthers F unit detail kits, which provide grab irons and glazing for the windows. After the re-power these engines are very good runners and hell for strong pullers! The photo below shows that I need to close up the distance between units.

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Mark -- Your repaint and decal work looks very good. I would not know from the photo that they would be "BlueBox" models.
I do see where the units need to be closer together.
 
Yes, I need to pull them closer together. I think I will just use draw bars for all three locomotives.
 
If you can - How about a drawbar and pin arrangement a-kin to the way a tender is attached to a Brass Loco?
 
Here is the Life Like Proto 2000 SW-1200 that I just converted to DCC. I had wanted to put a Keep Alive device in the loco; but, there just wasn't enough room. I found that the Northern Pacific didn't have any SW1200 until 1955 and since I model 1953, I had to change my SW1200 to an SW900, Number 106. The two locomotives are similar but do have differences. Sometimes you just need to compromise.

Sorry about the focus! With my camera, I really can't tell if a photo will be focused or not until I post it here. If at some time I find that I can take another photo, i will try to get it better!

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