CN 40ft Insulated Boxcar - Part 6

Another completed project. 40ft boxcars were becoming scarce in the mid-80s. The fleet was getting older and rarely repainted. Those boxcars are thus representing cars nearing the end of their revenue life. Once again, the weathering was done with acrylic, oil paint and weathering powder. Using various technics is the best way to bring depth to weathering, be it a clean looking model or a rust bucket. Dirt splashes from wheels, grease, rust and washed down dirt by rain are not the same and have different texture.

The first car definitely has seen better day. It's not in bad shape, but over 25 years of dirt and UV ray attacks darkened the paint job. It's a matter of a few year before this one meet the torch.

The second car is in better shape thus quite heavily weathered by the messy handly of bagged cement. Though repainted sometime in the 60s, rust spots are starting their job at eating the paint.

Building this small fleet of 4 insulated boxcars was quite fun. I've learned once again about interesting prototypes, their history and how they moved freight accross the country. The project was varied including a simple detailing job (Maple Leaf car), a quite straightforward rebuilding program (Wet Noodle car) and an ambitious rebuilding program (50ft boxcars). That's the nice thing about this hobby!

 Oh! And I also weathered the old Train Miniature CN OSB boxcar. Not my best wood boxcar weathering job, but that should do the job for this orphaned car in company service.

Kitbashing Bachmann 50ft Boxcars - Part 3

Final chapter of this project. I weathered both boxcar recently using various mix of acrylic paints to fade the color, oil paint washes and weathering powder.

The first car was heavily weathered according to a prototype picture. Cement is a messy commodity to transport and if you look at cement cars - whatever their type - they aren't looking pristine.

On the other hand, the second car is less battered down and represent a boxcar that was repainted quite recently. I like to vary the degree of weathering from car to car. It really brings life into a freight consist.

Poor Man's MLW M420 Kitbash - Part 2

I worked all week end on my M420 after stripping the paint.  16 hours of work later, the project reached a interesting point.

The broken resin cab required good restoration work. After gluing it together, I had to modify the front cab door (round corners), modify the battery box doors under the cab and realign the side windows. New sunshade rails were made out of Plastruct styrene C-channel altered in a L-shape. Other noticeable modification including getting rid of the round fillets on the nose with Magic Sculpt Putty. This is an EMD design. MLW cabs didn’t have fancy like fillet, all corners were square giving a particular brutish feel about this particular locomotive. Sand hatches were also scavenged from an Atlas Trainmain RS32 shell (previously scavenged for my RS18 project).

Remaining things to do on the cab include framing the window, adding the all-weather cab extension, a bell, a horn and headlight. Some detailing must be added to the battery boxes too. And, I’ll need to drill holes for classification lights.

The body shell required a fair amount of surgery. Beyond repair parts were removed, including a butched set of grille and the rear louvers. New doors are paper cuts and new louvers are aluminium foil embossed on an Athearn GP9 shell. The rear louvers were made by scribbing styrene sheets with a dull hobby knife blade. The relief was they cleaned with a round blade to give them a slated look. Later, I layered thin styrene sheet details to make the frame, hinges and latches. So far, so good! I was sure it would end up as a mess.

For the roof, I decided to keep my sculpted wood plank in place. I added scratchbuilt lift rings, a new styrene stacks and ventilation trap (don’t know the real name of that platform sitting in the middle of the roof). Finally, cab steps cut from the RS32 shell were glued on each side of the body.

There’s still a few details to address on the body shell, including filling the number boards area, but it is mostly completed.

The real big challenge starts now. M420 running boards are kind of unique. There’s a lot of similarity with a RS11 frame, but the comparison stops there. I’ll probably have to kitbash, even scratchbuilt entirely this part. Once finished, the new frame will be permanently glued to the body shell. Finally, the cab, painted and detailed, will be screwed in place from beneath. Then, I’ll probably add scratchbuilt brass handrails. There’s very little alternative about the stanchions. It will be the last ordeal. The one against which I lost the battle the first time I built this kitbash 14 years ago. This time, there’s no turning back.

Poor Man's MLW M420 Kitbash - Part 1

Last Thursday, Jérôme and I discussed a lot about the iconic MLW M420 locomotive, which was a staple on Murray Bay back in the 80s until 1993. I was basically telling him that it was the very first locomotive I saw in real life and that it made an enduring impact.


Meanwhile, we powered up a nice Atlas C424 equipped with sound. The locomotive performed very well and the LokSound decoder is a marvelous piece oftypical Alco weird engine sounds. The discussion continued as I told Jérôme I built a M420 out of a C424 shell back in my late teenage years. It wasn't accurate, but most distinctive features were done as correctly as I could, including the cab and ends.

As you can suppose, it wasn't long before Jérôme and I started to say IF we only had to run a few locomotives on the layout, it would be M420s. Thus we stepped on a slippery slope...

A few minutes later, I was discussing using the brand new Atlas C424 chassis to power a kitbashed M420. Then, I started to see if I could get such locomotives at a good price. In the end, it would cost a lot for a foobie. Almost as much as buying outright a correct Kaslo Shop shells plus suiting frame and motor.

But not all hopes were lost... If I could find my old kitbash, restore it and merge it with the sound-equipped M420, that would be a zero dollar working M420 for the layout. Not the most prototypical unit out there, but still better than nothing.

In fact, our idea is simple. Make a working kitbash so the industry will announce a RTR model a few weeks or months later. Who didn't work on a special prototype just to find out a manufacturer decided to make it broadly available later. We are gonna take advantage of this insidious model railroading law to force some businessmen out there to open their eyes to the truth!

They say there's nothing more frightening than a desperate man... let's revisit my original kitbash which I dug out from a box of unused rolling stock.

This particular bash as quite an history. It was built based on a 1974 Model Railroad Craftman issue publishing M420 drawings. Back in 2001, I graduated and entered college. I was still a optimist man then and didn't know life would throw a monkey wrench into things I thought were never-changing. A few month earlier - during 2000 Christmas vacation - I started to build my first realistic layout on a 4' x 4' plywood sheet. The track plan was a folded eight figure, but scenery was quite good: ballasted track, realistic plaster road and all structures were scratchbuilt (I still own most of them and I'm impressed how I could be dedicated back then). Most were real structures from my area. I had a lot of fun building this layout .For the first time, it looked like those attractive Model Railroader and Model Railroad Model Craftsman covers I loved.

One day,  between classes, I went to a local hobby shop located nearby the college with a good friend of mine. There was an Atlas/Kato C424 on the shelves at discounted price. Full of ideas, I told my friend: "you know, I'm sure I could turn this out into something else". I checked out at the counter... and bought also a resin wide cab. I was only a matter of time before I started to bash during Spring break.

Quickly, I came up with a somewhat believeable model. It wasn't perfect, but it wasn't bad at all. The Atlas ran fine. But since the Atlas plastic stanchions didn't fit the new cab, I kind of never finished the model thought it did pull a few trains. That was my best running locomotive.

May 3rd or 13th 2001 could be the day I painted the model.

Later, this project was forgotten and, about 5 years ago, I decided to rebuilt the original C424 since the kitbash was no more to my level. Most brass detail parts had already been scavenged for other projects. I bought a new C424 shell and rebuild everything. But I kept the older shell... just in case.

Now let's look at this first kitbash of mine.

 
Back then, I only used CA glue and didn't know about styrene solvent-based glue. It made a mess. I was also not familiar with putty and didn't use it. I would fill gaps with glue as best as I could and leave it dry. I didn't use files, sand paper. My trusty #11 blade was used to cut, scrap, etc. I used a large metal saw to cut the shell and used a sanding machine to finish details here and there. If my memories as right, I was also starting to experiment with my Dremel tool. Finally, I didn't have an airbrush, so everything was handpainted as smooth as I could. On this particular project, my cab didn't turn out well as I found out painting Floquil CN orange was both impractical and highly toxic.

Styrene sheet was rare in my junk box, so many scratchbuilt details were made out of soft wood sealed with CA glue. Honestly, theses parts are far to be bad. If I would have used a file or sand paper, they would have been quite neat. Custom made grabirons were made out of staples (you read me well, staples!). Piping was done using fine brass wire. When I needed particular castings, I would cut parts from the junkbox and build up something suitable. My Zero Weigth Transfer (ZWT) truck prototype is a testimony to that.

Finally, my last material of choice was kitchen grade aluminium foil. I would emboss louvers and thread plate in it by rubbing the foil on other shells with correct details I wanted to reproduce. I was clumsy, but I still see relevance in that technic.

It's crazy to think the model was almost completed when I gave up on it. As I previously said, I didn't know I would be caught in the most crazy storm I ever saw in a matter of months. It wouldn't be until 2007 that I would come back to model railroading when things would settle down again.

All in all, I still like what I did with the C424. The cab was almost right, the rear end was as prototypical as I could, wood diesel tanks were doing the job and the new hood top sculpted out of a wooden venitian store even mermerized people at my local hobby shop. Should I stress than in the late 90s and early 2000s, I was the only teenage boy in Quebec City area doing kitbashing and scratchbuilding. Store owners were always enthusiastic to give me tricks and encourage me to continue on that way... which I did. Even if the project "failed" in the end, I learned a lot from it. For the first time, I knew I had the skills to do what pros did in magazines and books. Nowadays, at least 50% of my rolling stock and locomotives are bashed in a way of another. It is now a normal thing to do and no more a chore.

 
So now, you probably can hear the mantra in my head (and which Jérôme heard all night long on Thursday's evening) : "M420, M420, M420, M420..."

Let's start restoring that junked model into a shining and hardworking MLW M420!

Dominion Textile... an alternative?

Yesterday, we built a mock up to see if the new proposition for Dominion Textile was standing the test of reality. The benchwork was enlarged up to 28 inches deep to be able to feature a large brick factory wall like the prototype. I must admit that over the last year, I've become addicted to scenes with a deep foreground that set the models into the scenery in a convincing manner. In fact, Dominion Textile scene - including Villeneuve - is one of our rare scene to showcase a "non-railway related" point of view. What you see is what any people not working on the railway would have seen while driving on a nearby road. That's an interesting feature where you can truly appreciate a train simply crossing an area...
 

The layout before we built the mock up

I've got mixed feeling so I'll let it settle down for a while before taking a final decision. Sure, having a train appearing behind a huge structure makes a nice impression. In fact, it feels the trains come from somewhere.

 As a matter of following the prototype, I must admit this looks just like my memories of Dominion Textile. I have a few fuzzy memories of the train appearing in such a dramatic way.

Imagine the leading locomotive is crossing a small bridge while passing by industrial ruins.

I now need to test if the electric powerhouse ruins are enough to give coherence to the corner where Dominion stood until now. I took the afternoon to measure every parts of the ruins on site. Very impressive stuff, more on that later. Last time I visited the area on foot was about 17 years ago. Since then, vegetation grew up at a fast pace, hiding most features from the sight.