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.