Sunday, August 25, 2019

Freight car roster

There is now a link in the upper right corner to the St. G. R. R. freight car roster. So far I have built 10 of the 24 cars on the list. Here is the general lineup as I currently imagine it:

10-14: Non-revenue: Cabooses 10 and 11, plus three slots for future additions.
15-22: Short (20') flatcars from JM Concepts, now out of production. I believe they are freelanced. Two have been built and six are in progress.
23-26: Boxcars.  The only one that is already in service is #25, which was originally numbered 35.
27-32: 24' and 28' flatcars based on Maine prototypes: the Monson RR (Stevens Creek Models, re-released by RS Laser Kits a few years ago but I believe they are again out of production), Kennebec Central (Railway Recollections), and SR&RL (Mt. Blue Model Co.).  The SR&RL flatcars will have sides for coal service.  #31 is under construction; the rest are in service.

The single digits are reserved for locomotives and passenger cars.  I will update the roster as I finish more rolling stock.


Thursday, August 22, 2019

Flatcars 29 and 30

I took a break from the forney project to build a couple of Railway Recollections flatcar kits. These cars are based on Kennebec Central prototypes.  Flatcars 12 and 28 are in the background (as well as #27, temporarily missing a truck).


The kits came with Grandt Line trucks that lack brakes, whereas I had used 3D-printed trucks with brake gear from Marsh Creek Miniatures for flats 27 and 28.  Interestingly, some of the Maine two-foot cars, such as on the the B&SR, had brakes only on one truck, so I swapped one truck between the new cars and numbers 27 and 28 to imitate this look.

Saturday, August 3, 2019

More forney details

July was a typically slow summer modeling month, but I found some time to detail the rear deck of the forney.  In addition to the stirrups and other details, I added 1x2 trim around the top edge to make it look like the deck overhangs the frame, as on the prototype locomotives:



In the model, the housing on top of the deck is the mechanism that allows the rear truck to slide from side to side to accommodate sharper curves.  I made sure that the details won't restrict this motion, although with my relatively broad curves it wasn't likely to be a problem.  The wires are from the Kato passenger truck used to provide extra pickups for the motor.  At some point in the future I might replace the truck with something more prototypical, but for now I will keep it as it's hard to see anyway.