WPF 4-30 to 5-7

[Mike_Arnold]

Well shoot. I'll start it off this week with some more coal load pictures...lol

Starting from this reply

Mike, the coal loads look great, but I am really impressed with the overall design of the scene in your second photo. Everything is laid out in a very realistic way and I love the elevated section serving the industries in the background. Good work!!

You can thank my club for doing such great workmanship to make sure that our layout is great!

Starting with a block of foam cut to approximate size of hopper.

Then you can slice the block into a few smaller pieces.

Put it inside the hopper, make sure it fits. If not, trim the edges. Also mark the edges of the hopper with a pen so you know where to cut the load at.

Cut the load until you get a shape you like.

Test fit in the hopper, trim if necessary.

Paint the foam black.

Add glue (I recommend using tacky glue).

Spread it evenly across.

And press it into your bin of coal (I used black WS ballast) and this is what you get.

This is the finished product! I ended up doing a total of 8, considering doing a few more. I just need to work out all of the kinks on these dreaded LBF bethgons.

Also, I'm making a reefer car collection. Can anyone tell me, was it prototypical to see different road names' reefers on a single train back when BN was still around?

Athearn Genesis BNFE (No sound)

Let's see what you guys have!

 

[logandsawman]

Wow, Mike, great job!! I won't be topping it, but will have a photo tomorrow for you guys.

lasm

 

[souleman1948]

That's exactly how I made my loads for my ore cars. Absolutely works great and is pretty easy to do. What I also did on my ore cars was centered a good size fishing sinker in the middle of the car and secured it in there with paraffin wax. Added weight and helped the cars stay on the track when I made a long ore train. Found a couple of pictures. You can't really see the sinker but it's there. $1.99 for a pack of 10 vs $10 for the stick on jobs at the hobby shop. Nice work Mike.

 

[kjd]

Coal trains, another of my favorite things, especially green and black (or blue and white). When I first got some coal cars I did what Mike did. Lately, I've been rebuilding the first loadout I did nearly 10 years ago. It is now operational and loaded the cars in the photo. I use crushed walnut shells intended for media blasting (sand blasting but with walnut shells) from Harbor Freight and dyed black. 25 lbs cost around $20 and another $10 or so for dye. I only did about 10lbs but can load lots of cars. Loadout photos will come later, they are on the other camera and now it's late. There are a few on my website in my signature.

One thing that's cool about the loadout is it makes all the loads the same. They even have the little bulge at one end and taper off at the other just like the real ones. Well, the real ones before they've run 1000 miles. Derailments are a bit more messy than with the foam inserts though. Not that I would know anything about that.....



As far as the different color reefers on the BN, it is my understanding they are from different eras. I think the yellow ones were first in the 1980s, later, they were repainted green and later white. I'd have to look up dates to be sure on the green and white.

 

[logandsawman]

Lots of nice coal loads!!!! Here is my new building, the "learning kit" for the modular buildings Woodland Scenics makes. I have one of their tractors and old trucks in the shot, too. Needs some barrells and a stack of tires, a couple people.

I did a multi step process for the paint, painted the whole sheet with brown primer and picked out several individual blocks which I painted, after dried overshot the whole thing with white and gray and rubbed it off so it ended up in the cracks.



Then I put the thing together. I thought the walls were kind of flimsy, reinforced them to make them straight across:



Have Fun!!!!!!! lasm

 

[Mike_Arnold]

All great work guys. Those walnut coal loads look amazing!

I bought some waffle side Boxcars... Lol. And a Hopper I've been eyeing for a while.

 

[Sirfoldalot]

All very nice work.
LASM .. Excellent job on the brick work ..

 

[wombat457]

As mentioned, all great work as well as being informative.

 

[kjd]

Mike, most of the yellow BNFE cars were repainted to white by the end of 1986. The green ones came a few years later when BN simplified their car schemes and got rid of the large billboard lettering.

 

[NC&StL]

Working on the CTC panel for the new and improved TA&G Railway.

 

[Bridgeliner]

Here is my completed project from last week. I had several box cars from roads that you would not generally see on the D&H...Sabine River & Northern, McCloud River Railroad, BN, and a few others. I stripped them down and repainted adding some Highball Graphics decals and weathered them up. I was pleased with the results. It also toned down all the crazy colors in the rolling stock fleet which is what I have been noticing on prototype photos.

 

[DairyStateDad]

All this stuff looks great. I am very curious about the walnut shell material. Seems like a real bargain. How would it be to color rusty red for iron ore or dull gray for gravel ballast?

From the DairyStatePhone

 

[mountaingoatgreg]

Made a quick video of my Free-mo module that was setup at the OKC Spring train show this past weekend.

[video=youtube;bFw-XYrBrf4]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFw-XYrBrf4[/video]

 

[kjd]

All this stuff looks great. I am very curious about the walnut shell material. Seems like a real bargain. How would it be to color rusty red for iron ore or dull gray for gravel ballast?

From the DairyStatePhone

I've heard it's the same material Woodland Scenics uses. I dyed it with Rit fabric dye. I should have added some green to take away the purple tint the black ended up with. It took awhile to dry 10lbs of soggy walnut shells.

 

[Rico]

Great stuff from everyone!
I'm slowly getting back in the saddle so hopefully will have something to share next time...

 

[Model Train Structures]

It's some really good looking projects posted here for this week. To go along with all the COAL on page one, I'll add a few pics of my recently finished project: Van Lear Coal Mine. Van Lear was where Loretta Lynn's Daddy worked; hence, the Coal Miners Daughter.
Thanks for looking,
D.A.

 

[souleman1948]

One day I might be as good as you guys. The weathering of rolling stock that I have seen on this site is just wonderful. As they say, "all in due time". This is my favorite thread. I love to pull it up often each week.
Mike