Kit Building

Today I was examining the rock ballast I put down and was looking at some other things around the layout. I was also taking some time and organizing all my rolling stock, and taking a look at what projects I needed to get done. I found some old Athern and Roundhouse kits that had yet to be put together. I remember as a kid seeing aisles and aisles of HO kits from Athearn and Roundhouse, and some Walthers. As a kid I always went towards the RTR stuff as well as Bachman. As a kid that's all I could afford.

As I got older, and got back into the hobby, I looked on eBay. There I could find older kits for a decent price. I picked up some kits here and there to expand my Rolling stock. So today I took some time and put about 4 kits together. All in all it took me about 45 mins all together to assemble these kits. I put on some metal couplers in exchange for the horn hoot style that came with.

Today the part of building these kits is what I love about this hobby. Everything seems to be so "ready made" these days. Sometimes it feels nice to go back to the way it was and really get into the roots of model railroading.

One of the kits was an undecorated box car. I painted it a generic primer red/brown (which is close to boxcar red in my opinion). I plan on lettering it up for the Washington Northern.

These two are 40' Hi-Cubes. Both are Athearn kits.

Both these kits are Roundhouse. These are 50' Modern Box cars. The SOO Line boxcar is lettered for the WC

Prior to doing some work on those kits, I began working the Blue Star Cement facility. I took one of the extra Madusa Cemnet kits that I had from Walthers. I wanted to make a recessed building out of this, so I decided to cut it in half. I found the center point and cut it with my Xacto hand saw. If you decide to do this, make sure you have a straight edge. 

After cutting, I glued it to the silo parts I made last evening. This too was taken from the kit, but I took one of the end pieces and cut it down the middle with the Xacto saw. This part is easy as the saw fits perfectly in the recessed area.

 I ran out of ballast so I have an order in for some more. I also ended up ripping some of the smaller ballast out as it didn't look right. I also did a test and I plan on putting a little bit of the larger ballast over the smaller stuff to show a new, but used effect. Will get some pictures up in the next blog update hopefully this week.

 

Working on the Team Track/Transload Area

Today I pulled a project out hat I had been working on for quite some time. About a year ago I built a transload shed as I saw on an Atlas forum. First building I tried turned out terrible after i painted it. I tried again with some more Pikestuff kits I had. Turned out OK. I painted it and then weathered. The weathering was awful and the building looked out of place. So back to the drawing board.

After some more reading, and careful measuring and cutting and sanding, I came up with what is pictured below. The main body, door and garage doors are Pikestuff. The concrete base was made of strips from the Pikestuff kits. I painted them with a textured paint from Lowes. I then followed up with a primer gray to capture the cement/concrete look.

I still need to do some touch up painting around the base and add some detail parts.

Stairs are cast metal from a DPM kit and the railings are from a Walthers kit. I started to add the downspouts.

I will be adding another downspout for the other side and i will put a light fixture above the door. I plan on adding some decals and a light weathering job. I also have the industry name to put on the building as well.

Have a great rest of the weekend and happy modeling!

Adding to Industry

 Well I have been very busy over the holidays with work, family, travel and of course the layout. I took some time to do some more work on the food processing/bakery industry on my layout. I decided to add an unloading building where workers come to hook up to the tank cars and unload their cargo. I also bought a set of silos off eBay. The silos are not a kit, but they are 3D printed. Let me tell you they are pretty awesome. I am going to sand them down to a smooth surface and paint them, but until then they will remain gray.

 Next started the work on the unloading building. It is pretty simple. I cut two (2) pieces of corrugated metal from Evergreen and painted them blue, to match the man building. From there I added cut out some doors and and added some vents form some Pikestuff and Walthers kits. I put on some building safety signs from a Microscale kits and boom, mission complete!

After that, I mounted the completed front to a piece of 1/4" foam core board I purchased from AC Moore and placed it next to the industry. Making low relief building out of foam core and Evergreen sheets is a very inexpensive way to kitbash and add some variety to your layout!

End of November Update

So today I decided to tackle building another one of my kits I bought. The Walther's Commissary Background Building Kit. I painted the brick with just a coat of Rustoelum Primer Brown. This is the came color as Boxcar Red from the old Floquil line of paints. After the paint dried I painted the doors and windows with Rustoelum satin green from the rattle can. It almost matched the color of the plastic, but I decided to keep it because after a little weathering, I'm sure it will com out quite nice. I also painted the cement highlights with Model Master Concrete, I picked that up at my local hobby shop.

This is prior to me installing the overhang roof and adding some roof details.

As you can see I still need to do some detailing to the metal piece where the loading dock is and. I touched up the over painted areas with some boxcar read which, when dried, matched the brown primer perfectly. 

I then added some roof details from my parts bin after spraying them with some light green from my paint collection. The details that came with this kit were very small, and in my opinion, unrealistic. I will weather these a bit to give it an older look.

My goal with this project was to make it look like the building was an old Railroad Express Agency building that was abandoned, then bought and re-purposed for a warehouse. I was stoked for that, well then another thought popped into my mind. I was looking on my top shelf and noticed part of the Superior Paper Plant kit I had cut down was up there. I then added it to this kit and came up with this....

I liked the way it looked. Plus I figured I now had an opportunity to bring back the paper plant I wanted. With some preliminary track layouts and such, I realized I couldn't achieve what I was hoping, but not to be discouraged, I did a little looking and figured out I could make this a paper printing facility. Lance is always talking about that it is not the number of industries on the layout, but the number of car spots, and couple that with some variety of cars. So I figured this industry could take come box cars with paper in them, and some tank cars for chemicals for ink. Or even make it a paper plant but only part of the industry being modeled. I will need to do a little more research. 

I also am working on finishing up the unloading racks as well as the final detaisl for the silos for the food plant. 

STAY TUNED!

Progress

Well layout progress has been a little slow lately since I was at training for work the past few days, and with being away from work leaves the issue of having to come back to things that were put on hold.


The bench-work was completed, and I added the background today. The background is Masonite (1/8") cut into two 4' lengths. I have one small 2' section that needs to be cut. The Masonite was secured with 3/4" lath screws. I then painted the Masonite with primer and followed it up with sky blue spray paint when the primer dried. I wasn't sure if I was going to like the results but when I hit it was the sky blue it came to shape nicely. But i saw I was missing spots, but this gave me a nice effect of light, thin gray clouds. To me it seems to give it a little depth.

( The picture looks a bit dark. I will try to get better ones)

I also cut some 1' foam today to fit the layout. I tired using a utility knife, but could never achieve a nice clean cut. I did a little research on YouTube and found that there were some blades out there used to cut foam. I took a trip to my local hardware stores with no luck. So I checked out Amazon, as one of the videos suggested. I picked up Festool blade, model S155/W. This blade is specific for soft materials (cardboard, foam, etc.) This fits most model jig saws. It worked out great, I got a nice clean, smooth edge. I cut four 18" x 4' pieces for the layout. Tomorrow I will paint the bases brown and glue them into place.

I also did some work for my main industry on this layout, a food processing/bakery industry. I am basing it off some photos and overhead shots of these types of industries in my area. The facility will be a kitbash between the Magic Pan Bakery and Buds Trucking Company. Both are Walther's kits. I paints the metal part of the warehouse area today. The colors for this are Almond for the bakery and ingredient unloading building. Silos will be painted white.

Once the foam is secured down, I will then make the decision whether to go with Atlas track, or make the leap and put in hand laid track, but I still may put in a mix of Atlas and some Micro-Engineering. Turnouts for this will be Peco.