Wordless Wednesday #1

 

Curtis Cannery Continued

Since my last post I have continued to work on the main parts of the cannery, starting with the Walthers background kit and some blocks of wood. Two friends from the Alleghany Western Division influenced me here. Dick Bradley sent me an email about my last post suggesting that he wasn't sure about the proportions of the warehouse size to the main cannery building. In his view the adjacent warehouse appears too large compared to the main structure. While the size of the brick portion of the main structure is settled with my choice of kit to kitbash, I did increase the size of the wooden portion. If after the main portion is completed I agree that the warehouse is too large, I may change it. My criticism of it is not it's size, but that it is one of the ubiquitous Walthers kits that everyone recognizes as a model railroad building. Bill Schopf, also from my old division, popularized using wooden blocks as the core of models in several clinics when I was still in Division 12 of the MCR. While I haven't decided exactly how the scratchbuilt structure portions will come together, I am pretty sure of the size and shape depicted by the wooden blocks depicted here. After cutting the two blocks I started on the brick portion of the cannery.

My first step was to make a few adjustments to the Arrowhead Ale background kit to increase the depth of the building. As I was planning to scratchbuild a wood loading dock I cut off that portion of the supplied plastic base. I also cut out a portion of an extra wall piece included in the kit to model the deeper exposed end. For the other end, I cut a section of plain styrene sheet to match the depth. I cut some strip styrene to extend the base under the deeper sides. Having a supply of various sizes of styrene on hand made the fitting of kitbashed parts easier than if I had to order online or drive for hours to shop at the nearest brick and mortar train/hobby store. 

After assembling the building with Bondene, the next step was painting. Heading out to the garage, I sprayed the walls with a gray rattle can primer. At the same time I removed the doors and windows from the sprue and mounted them with blue painter's tape on a paint stick before spraying them with a green rattle can primer. After the building had dried overnight, I started painting the brick portions with three or four different red and brown craft paints over the gray primer with a small piece of natural sponge. It looks like a mottled mess until several coats have been sponged on. I also painted some of the individual blocks of the foundation with a mix of gray and tan craft paints. I applied Vallejo's dark gray wash as a control coat and mortar color to the bricks and foundation. 

Once the paint had all dried and set up, I glued the door and window castings in place. The one finished side that I had scavenged from the extra casting had several issues. The appropriate door casting with a transom was not included, so I ended up using one without a transom and boarding up the gap with strip wood. Also, because the two upper windows at that end were aligned with the roof, I trimmed some brick wall scrap to fill those openings. I then measured and cut a heavy piece of sheet styrene for the roof, sprayed it with the gray primer, and glued it into place. As seen in the photo, I made sure that it was square and braced it with some heavy strip styrene to ensure that this portion of the building was stabile in spite of being a three-sided flat.

This photo shows the brick portion of the cannery in place as it currently stands. I have a couple of scratchbuilt additions to add: the wooden loading dock, as well as a water tank and a stair bulkhead on the roof. Also, the roof needs some kind of "texture" beyond the paint. The windows need glazing, and I need to decide if I will add any lighting to this portion of the building. Finally, in looking at the photos, I see the need for some touch up of the trim/concrete sills.

Nooksack Structures - The Cannery

Sketch of possible cannery at Nooksack

So, I have started a new project, planning and collecting information and materials for the proposed cannery at Nooksack. Last week I started sketching some ideas during the Thursday modeling Zoom I attend, and since then I inked it in and started some mockups. Some background: Everson, Washington had a fruit and vegetable cannery called the C. S. Kale Canning Company. I am relocating it to nearby Nooksack and renaming it the Curtis Canning Company. It and other Whatcom County canneries canned beans, beets, carrots, raspberries, pears, cherries, and in the 1950s a lot of green peas. My intension is for it to be a major industry for the 4th subdivision, definitely the largest in Nooksack. 

In this snapshot from today, some mockups tentatively locate parts of the cannery. Starting from the left is a ubiquitous Walthers warehouse, the one building already constructed. Next is a paper mockup of parts from the Walthers Arrowhead Ale background kit. Without kitbashing, it is not deep enough, but by using an extra wall part included in one of the sprues I can make it work. I plan to scratchbuild a wooden loading dock instead of using the plastic one from the kit. I may also scratchbuild a water tank for the roof. Moving to the right or to the east, I have a couple of scraps of wood and my team track dock sort of suggesting the scratchbuilt section seen in the initial sketch. That section needs more planning and  a cardboard mockup.

In this photo, I have a cardboard mockup of a possible additional building located beyond the boiler house drawn in the original sketch. I have DPM modular parts for the boiler house, so it could be started at any time. I have several street view photos of the Carnation plant (that is still standing) from Everson that I may use to create a background photo flat as seen approximated here. If I do, I plan to attempt a couple of techniques from Paul Dolkos: 3D visual foils on either side and layering the photo on matboard. Testing with the NMRA gauge for clearance along the track is critical as I build mockups or buildings. I have ordered the Juniper Freight House kit from Fos Scale Models, thinking it will fit on the other side of the spur, perhaps near where the gauge is sitting in the photo. 

To move beyond some scraps of wood, cut out paper photocopies, and cardboard mockups in a reassonable amount of time, I need to modify my modeling practice. Some possibilities include:

• Focus on this project
• Daily time - a little bit every day
• Maybe more than a little bit - an hour?

 

Adding a Flat Car To the Roster

Great Northern 61631 ready for the roster

 Over the last few weeks I have been working on this older Walthers "shake the box" flat car kit. I wanted to try some new (to me) detailing steps on this 42 foot flat car in addition to just assembling the kit. In trying to match my rolling stock standards, I also ended up trying some new approaches. The two new detailing steps I tackled were replacing the cast on grab irons with metal ones and adding a real wood deck. 

Here on my cluttered workbench, the grab iron process is under way. Working carefully with X-Acto #11 and #18 blades I was able to remove the cast on grab irons without significant damage to the other molded details or my fingers. I soon regretted removing them because while fashioning grab irons with the Tichy .008 wire was doable, installing them was, at best, frustrating. After getting one installed, I changed approaches. I found I had some Details West .019 wire in the parts drawer. It is oversize, but I didn't have any .0125. Thanks to a suggestion from Chuck Diljak on a Thursday night Zoom meeting I made a fixture to form the grab iron bends, so they came out somewhat consistently in size. Drilling the holes consistently was another matter. At any rate, I now had wire grabs on the ends and sides of the flat car. Definitely first time quality, but there. 

Fashioning the wood deck went much smoother. After measuring the plastic deck width and sanding it with a sanding block, I cut the 80 pieces I needed. Using my chopper set to the width of the car deck, I carefully cut the Northeastern Scale Lumber HO scale 2" X 6" to length. The care was needed to successfully keep my shaky  fingers out of the razor blade guillotine. I then stained the deck planks a few at a time in a mixture of my alcohol stain and a few extra drops of grimy black paint in a yogurt cup. After they all were stained and removed, I left them to dry overnight. Gluing them to the sanded deck with white glue went easily, with an occasional check with a small hand square. 

With my two detailing experiments completed, it was on to following the kit directions and trying to meet my rolling stock standards. With the metal weight included in the kit (rust sanded off and primed with rattle can primer) and metal wheels, the flat car was still below NMRA RP-20.1 weight. Even though I glued a combination of lead shot and "Liquid Gravity" between the center sills and along the trough beside the steel weight, it continues to be slightly under weight. One new approach that I tried was to paint the wheels with an enamel paint marker that I had on hand. While in the past I found that I didn't like using the paint markers for rails, it made easy work of painting the metal wheel fronts. Even after washing with alcohol, wheels painted with acrylics scratch easily. I later used the marker to touch up the wire grabs that had their acrylic paint flake off with barely any effort. I am hopeful that the use of enamel paint will make for more secure paint application for delicate areas. The paint marker is a breeze for my shaky hands, and clean up is negligible. 

After installing Kadee 148 Whisker couplers and installing the freshly painted trucks and metal wheels, I thought I was close to being done. Well, not so fast! Not only did the car look too high on the trucks as seen in this photo, the couplers tested too high on my test track. The problem was that the hole in the trucks didn't fit well enough onto the bolster post to slide down into position. Actually, after enlarging the hole with a round jeweler's file and testing the now too low coupler height, I realized that the problem was that the post was too large. I was able to cut a slit into red Kadee washers to fit over the oversized post and that brought the coupler height into alignment on my test track. After some paint touch up and installing the oversize brake wheel that came with the kit, I deemed it ready for inclusion on my roster as seen on the opening photo. After the inevitable banging off of the brake wheel occurs, I hope to have picked up a more appropriate one to replace it. 

While I still need to fashion a lumber load to fit this flat car and bring it up to proper weight, I think that I may return to experimenting with a next layer of scenery next. 

TOMA Phase One: More Operations Planning

Desk for industry clerk or agent/operator

After leaving off my last post wondering about bill boxes, I made a decision. I want to have the fascia relatively clear, functioning as a frame. While I want to use car cards/waybills, I don't want the operators to be carrying them around. So, I cleared off the dispatcher's desk, cleaned up the Word files of schematic diagrams that I had started, and made some labels for bill boxes. I printed the schematics on cover stock and mounted them and the bill boxes above the desk. Voila, the dispatcher's desk is the agent's desk.  The agent or industry clerk uses the information from the car cards to make up switch lists for the engineer/conductor to use to do the switching. 

My long range operations plan, as it stands now, is based on the one Chris Adams uses on his railroad, described on his blog HERE. I have created realistic paperwork for the 4th Subdivision including wheel reports, Form 19s, and clearance cards, but don't plan to use them in this first phase, at least to start. I do plan to use switch lists. I am working out a sequence scenario with a freight extra running from the west staging and a 1st class passenger train running from the east staging (East Branch) and meeting at Nooksack as the first step. The extra freight will turn at East Branch and then return through Nooksack also working the NP interchange. I will see how this works before adding additional steps. Lots still to do with scenery and structures here, but I can try out this approach in the meantime. 

 

TOMA Phase One: Fine Tuning Operations

 

East Branch fascia up and painted

Over the past week or two, I have been working on a clinic about planning the railroad after moving. In doing so, I reminded myself that "presentation" and flexible operations are both goals that I am striving for. Yesterday, I wrapped up adding fascia to East Branch, the sceniced staging. Fascia is a part of what I refer to as presentation as it "frames" the modeled railroad. I used some 1/8" hardboard backdrop scraps that I had on hand, then cut them, screwed them in place, and painted them my standard SW "Andiron" color. I still have some Sculptamold terrain building to do to match the dips cut into the fascia as well as installing a plug port to finalize the fascia install. 

However, with East Branch more visually tied to Nooksack, I felt the need to consider fine-tuning my operations plans; just how is the East Branch going to work? In an earlier post from last fall, I had as a starting point a bulleted list. Much more recently I have "run trains" a few times to test what might work and decided that some kind of "sequence operations" makes sense, but struggled with organizing how to sort cars while being aware of industry needs without using car cards. Last week, Tony Thompson on his modeling the SP blog referenced a link to a film from the 1950s. Then, yesterday, the same film was linked in the NMRA turntable. By now I have watched the film, "Assembling A Freight Train," several times, enjoying and learning from it on several levels (atmosphere, realism, prototype operations). 

The film is a great resource for modelers of the transition era ranging from color images of rolling stock to an in-depth explanation of the nuances and procedures of making up a train. I was particularly struck by how I might solve my dilemma. First of all, what is all the fuss about; what dilemma do I speak of? Unlike many model railroaders, I am considerably more interested in the research of what is shipped or where it is shipped from than researching or matching 100% accuracy of the model of the car in which it is shipped. How do I implement going down that rabbit hole on my railroad? Also, somewhat related, is the diversity and variety that Byron Henderson speaks of in his online article, Ops Challenge (and Fun!) on a Small Layout. He suggests, "including both a classification yard as well as the more traditional role of pulling and spotting cars from sidings." My dilemma is how to organize the classifying. I don't want just random sorting. 

The film, by going through the actual process provides one approach. While during switching, the operator is taking on the role of engineer and conductor. On the other hand, during classification, the operator is taking on the roles of the industry clerks and switch engine crew. In the role of industry clerk, the operator employs simplified car cards and waybills to determine contents, sources, and destinations of the cars while working as the switch crew sorts and blocks the train. 

So, while I had not originally planned on using car cards and waybills on this first phase, I unpacked the ones from the Meadville attic layout. In my current plan, they will be used to make up trains in the staging yards, including East Branch. Of the rolling stock I have on the layout now, I have car cards for all but three of the cars. On the other hand, I will need to make up pretty much all new four-cycle waybills; the four industries at Willow Springs are now at Nooksack. I have an industry list chart started and pages of notes gathered over the years. The cannery planned at Nooksack and based on the one in Everson will be one of the largest industries in this first phase as well as the future whole basement 4th Subdivision. Two of the other industries here at Nooksack are very typical for a 1950s rail served town: team track and fuel/oil dealer. I will also have the NP interchange, as well as the (for now unmodeled) Ferndale's GN mainline interchange and Chikamin connections as destinations with their associated industries. Taking on the role of industry clerk, I can make up some four-cycle waybills to be used here on TOMA phase one: Nooksack and staging. I still haven't made up my mind whether to include a bill box here on the fascia for the industry clerk or at the agent/dispatcher desk. Before deciding where the cards and waybills will be located, I need to write them up!

Scenery From the Ground Up -- Part 2

Having decided to keep the signal tower in its location at East Branch and the NP interchange, I have continued with the first layer of scenery around it. I started by modeling a wooden grade crossing for the driveway that accesses the tower. Then I created a gravel road as the driveway. Today, I expanded the sceniced area with more of the original grout ground cover. 

Knowing that I was going to create a gravel road, I decided on a rustic wooden grade crossing. I chose sixteen feet as an appropriate width for a one lane drive, particularly as that is a typical length of wooden planks. I had 1/8" X 1/8" and 1/32" X 1/8" strip wood on hand, and those sizes worked well with my flex track. Those sizes roughly represent 12" X 12" and 3" X 12" boards in HO scale. I cut them to length on my chopper and stained them with grimy black acrylic paint, thinned with 70% isopropyl alcohol. After they had dried I glued the thinner planks to the plastic ties with CA, and the two thicker boards were glued to the painted foam with Elmer's Glue-All. 

I am very happy how the grade crossing came together. The 1/32" board along the outer edge of the rail is super glued to the spike heads, angled up from the ties and butted up to the rail. Moving outward from the rail, the next 1/32" thick piece is superglued directly to the top of the ties. The outer board is one of the 1/8" square pieces, glued directly to the foam. The same pattern is repeated on the other side, outside the rail. Four of the thinner planks are super glued directly to the ties, between the spike heads, leaving room for the wheel flanges. This combination appears to work really well, leaving room for the rolling stock to move through the crossing without problems. 

The next step was to attempt to model a gravel road with sanded grout. I used the 09 Natural Gray color of Polyblend Plus and Woodland Scenics' fine gray ballast blended together while still dry. Following the same method of painting on thinned white glue, tapping a spoon of the grout mixture over the glue, and then eyedroppering alcohol as a wetting agent followed by dripping on scenic cement described in the earlier post I created a somewhat soupy mess. Tapping on a bit more of the grout mix and some straight ballast on the wettest parts firmed up the road. While it was drying I used a sacrificial HO vehicle to form some tread marks (perhaps a little too deep) and then let it dry. A final step after the roadway had dried was to sand the crossing planks that had been stained by the scenic cement with 320 grit sandpaper. 

Earlier today, I expanded the area with the first layer of scenery to the east of the gravel drive and to the east along the back berm. A repeat of the same process with more of the original mix of both colors of sanded grout and some filtered sand from the tube sand. Yes, it is rather barren looking without additional greenery and details. That said, I am really liking the sanded grout as a first layer. It provides some texture and color that is closer to scale than the ground goop I have used in the past. I also like the wooden grade crossing, which fortuitously came together easily as a mini-scratchbuilding project.