Caboose

Here is the finished caboose:

I'm happy with how it came out, although I messed up on the final step and forgot to mask the windows before hitting the car with matte finish, so they ended up covered with cloudy spots. After reading some tips online and experimenting with some scrap plastic, I found that the best way to restore them was to burnish each window with a piece of stripwood until the window was evenly hazy, and then apply three or four thin coats of acrylic floor polish to the windows. The result isn't perfect but it's definitely acceptable. Lesson learned...

Expanding the roster

A couple of months ago I picked up a bunch of HOn30 equipment from a very helpful member of the Yahoo HOn30 list, including some flat cars, a Railway Recollections caboose kit, a railbus, and a forney.  The railbus and forney are sure to make an appearance here at some point, but I am currently concentrating on assimilating the freight cars into the St. G. R. R. roster.  Here are two Monson-prototype flats now lettered 27 and 28, with #32 (A Mount Blue kit) for comparison. They still need cut levers but are otherwise complete:

I have also been building the road's first caboose, a Railway Recollections kit for an early Sandy River caboose.  I'm about 95% done, and just waiting for a few detail parts which are supposed to arrive tomorrow.  Meanwhile I have been debating how to arrange the lettering. My initial inclination was to spread the letters across the width of the car, but I'm not sure that's the right look so I mocked up a more compact formation on the other side;

The decals are not firmly set on the model yet, so I will give it a few days before making a decision.

The smoke jack is a length of 1/16" brass tubing inside 3/32" tubing, with a thin paper cap solidified with CA.  The grabs are bent from standard staples with NBW castings added.  I use staples a lot for grab irons and cut levers, since they are easy to bend and come pre-bent with right angles. They are a little thick, though, so I may switch to 0.010" or .015" wire in the future.

"Prototype" tour, part two

Continuing from the last post, thus far my imaginary StGRR right of way has paralleled what is now route 131. Continuing south down the St George Peninsula, the track hugs the shore around a large cove before moving across the peninsula toward Tenant’s Harbor (or “Tennants” as it was apparently spelled in the early 1900s). At this point route 131 turns east to take a broad S curve into town, but this route is too hilly for a railroad, so I looked for a different approach.

From what I can surmise from topo maps and my tour of the area, the most practical path for a railroad to reach the town would have been to head south from this point to follow a stream that runs into town from the north. This stream broadens into a marsh before emptying into the harbor. This area, which the locals appropriately call The Marsh, is shown in the following photo which is looking north from Main Street. The cutting shed shown on the track plan would be to the right of this photo - a bit outside of the town itself.

The marsh passes under Main Street and empties into a cove on Tenant's Harbor, shown  in the next photo.  The StGRR would have run along the side of this cove before turning to the left to its terminus in town.  That curve is included in the track plan, and leads to the railroad facilities and granite wharf.

That's it for the tour.  It should give you a sense of the landscape the railroad is supposed to run through.  I will return to modeling in the next post!