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.

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.

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.

Forney update: painted, lettered, coaled, and crewed

The body is now finished with the exception of a few details that I will add after the locomotive is reassembled, namely the bell rope, whistle cord, and control rod for the sander valve.

Detailing the Railway Recollections forney

A couple of years ago I bought an assembled Railway Recollections model of SR&RL #21 from another modeler.  The kit uses the Bachmann 0-6-0 mechanism with the middle driver removed - the resulting driver wheelbase is spot-on at 6'.  The previous owner had already added a bell and a whistle, but being the detail freak that I am, I decided to see how close I could get it to the prototype as it looked circa 1920.  Here's a shot of the model before I started working on it:

The kit is well designed and the proportions are close to the prototype dimensions. The only major cosmetic change I had to do was to reduce the thickness of the headlight base (the headlight itself is very close to scale).  I wanted to wire it for lighting anyway, so after cutting off the headlight and filing down the base, I hollowed out the headlight with a drill and inserted an LED before gluing it back on.

The only other changes to the body shell were to file down the top of the smokestack a little bit and to lower the short sections of running boards near the cab - the kit places them higher than prototypical in order to clear part of the Bachmann frame.  I will eventually have to mill down the frame but I think it will be worth the effort.

I then installed grabs on the cab and tank sides, handrails on the boiler and smokebox front, an air compressor, and lots of piping, matching prototype photos as best as I could. Other details included a finial on the sand dome lid (made from a short piece of wire dipped in CA to form a bead) and sand pipes on both sides. Here are photos of each side before painting:

After painting and lettering, I will add window glass, a crew, and a coal load, plus bell and whistle ropes. Once that's done I will start on the chassis.

Completed station

Here's the completed station.  The SR&RL-style enamel signs were printed with an inkjet printer, cut out with a sharp knife, and attached with double-sided tape.

Interior lighting for passenger station

I added two LEDs for interior lighting, one in the waiting room and one in the freight section, but they were too white for my taste. Another hobby of mine is theatrical lighting design, so I had several swatch books of color filters lying around. I cut a small piece from a color correction filter (Lee 205, which converts daylight to 3800K) and wrapped it around each LED. The photo below was taken before I installed the filter in the freight section, so you can compare the effect with and without the filter.  The light looks slightly less yellow in person than it does here.