Work caboose

Here's a second caboose for my roster - a Mount Blue Model Co. kit for a SR&RL work caboose.  It will be #11 on my roster, although for now I'm leaving it unlettered - like the prototype, apparently.  It makes a good complement to caboose 10.

Let's see, where was I...

It’s been nearly a year since I last posted anything here, mostly because I haven’t been able to do much modeling due to work, house repairs, the kids' activities, etc.  I’m slowly getting back to the bench, though, and should be posting more in the near future.  On my list for the next few months are finishing the freight house, building a station and several freight car kits I picked up from Mt. Blue at the recent Springfield show, installing the turntable, starting the scenery, and finishing the road’s first locomotive and passenger car.  Lots to do - stay tuned!

Freight house, part 2: testing location on layout

Here is the partially-assembled freight house in position on the Thomaston layout section, which is currently sitting on my workbench. I cut a piece of plywood to represent the dock so that I could install the standard gauge siding that runs behind the freight house. These photos also show the finished fascia on this section, but I haven't yet installed the knobs for the turnout controls.  I picked up a Maine Central boxcar at the recent Springfield show, and you can see how the elevated track brings the decks of the two cars to the same level.

The passenger station will sit just beyond the freight house.  After a train pulls into the station to offload passengers, the locomotive will be run around the consist, and the combine moved to the front track while the freight house and transfer siding are switched.  The outbound train will then be assembled and coupled to the combine in preparation for the run back to Tenants Harbor.

I may cut back the shorter siding so that it ends just short of the crossover, where a dirt road will cross the St. G. R. R. tracks.  If you look closely you can see an elevated spot at the front edge of the layout where the road will eventually go.

A standard gauge gondola full of coal could be spotted at the far end of the short siding to re-fuel the narrow gauge locomotives, and also to fill two-foot gondolas to ship coal to the industries on the line. I like the historical images I've seen of coal being hand-shoveled between standard and narrow gauge gondolas, so this is a chance to recreate that situation on my layout.  I may also place an overhead crane in the middle of the transfer siding to move granite blocks from the narrow gauge to the standard gauge.

Freight house

Despite not posting for a while, I have been busy with several modeling projects, including the first building for my layout.  The kit is the Wolfeborough Freight House from Bollinger Edgerly Scale Trains.  The prototype still exists in Wolfeborough, Vermont.  I am painting it in the standard Maine Central colors that were used for SR&RL buildings after MEC took control in 1912.

The freight house will sit between the St. G. R. R. tracks and a Maine Central siding. I modeled one freight door open on the front side for interest.  That will require adding at least a partial floor, and some crates and assorted items. So far the walls have been assembled and painted with Model Master Navy Aggressor Gray and Euro Dark Green, and the windows and doors are installed.

Finishing the turntable

The last task on the turntable (other than installing it, of course) was to add the nut-bolt-washer castings and the truss rods with their turnbuckles. Attaching the 96 NBWs was tedious, but after losing a couple dozen of them I finally got them all installed. Stringing the monofilament to make the truss rods was a piece of cake by comparison.

It took some experimentation to get the coloring right on the turntable pit. It is molded from a cream-colored plastic that I guess is supposed to look like aged concrete, but is way too yellowish for my taste. I tried a series of streaky black washes, but that just made the yellowish color darker. Applying light grey powder on top of the washes gave a pretty good concrete effect, though, especially as it also toned down the rust streaks I had applied where the approach rails meet the pit.  I may eventually add some weeds to the dirt floor, but otherwise it is ready to be installed on the layout.

Turntable progress

Continuing with the turntable build, I made the king posts and bracing out of stripwood instead of styrene, both because I found it easier to shape the wood to form the tapered posts, and because that's what I had in stock. The center posts are scale 12x12 stripwood tapered to 9x9, and the side posts are 10x10 tapered to roughly 8x8.  The braces are 4x6 stripwood. Here they are installed:

I colored the turntable before adding the hardware, using the same combination of weathering powders and India ink/alcohol wash that I used for the deck: after masking the deck, I sprayed the turntable with grey primer, and then gave the entire thing an I/A wash.  I then painted on weathering powders with a soft brush, using Monroe Models' (formerly A.I.M.) "grimy black" with a little "medium earth" brushed on top.

After the entire turntable was "painted", I brushed on another I/A wash to smooth out the texture and introduce some variation in color. The neat thing about this technique is that you can control how much of the color you remove - for example, on the bracing I removed most of the powder to reveal some of the grey underneath, as if the braces were made of untreated wood while the other timbers were creosoted.

I added the pads that the truss rods will run over, but still have to add the truss rods, turnbuckles, and something like 68 NBW castings. But that's for another day...

Scratch-bashing the Thomaston turntable

I need a turntable to complete the trackage in Thomaston. The Peco N scale turntable is the perfect length but doesn't have the look I want, which is similar to the wooden turntables found on the SR&RL and WW&F. I bought one anyway, and it looks like it would be relatively straightforward to scratchbuild a new underframe and superstructure.

Thankfully, the good people at the On2 FAQ had uploaded the plans from an old On2 turntable kit. After some experimentation, I found that printing the plans at 42% gave a good match to the diameter of the Peco turntable, meaning that I could take measurements directly off the plans. The resulting turntable will be 11'6" wide, which is slightly narrower than the prototype. I can live with that, though, especially since that my layout is freelanced.

So far I have attached new side girders to either side using two lengths of scale 14"x14" with a spacer between them, and added scale 8x14 and 14x14 cross-girders (probably not the right term!) across the bottom.  I also weathered the pit and coated the bottom with dirt.

The most tedious part so far has been notching the cross-girders to fit around the underside of the Peco turntable - not prototypical, but it won't be visible in the final installation.

I still need to build the superstructure, paint and weather everything, and add the NBWs, truss rods, and other hardware.