A Long Overdue Update

I've been quite silent over the last few weeks and months. No by lack of involvement in the hobby, but rather lack of brain power. As my health isn't stabilized yet, my cognitive capacities are taking a toll. Headache, dizziness and fatigue are plaguing my daily life. Funnily enough, it doesn't seem to impair my capacity to focus on manual jobs like modelling. However, when it is time to do intellectual tasks such as writing a blog post, I quickly hit a wall.

There are a lot of things I'd like to write about, particularly many ongoing projects. Unfortunately after a few paragraphs, I start to lose focus and can't keep my ideas clear. When it is time to conclude a text, I find out it makes no sense... and as you know, English isn't my native language. When I'm tired, I'm prone to making a lot of stupid mistakes. I've have this problem with French now, so imagine dealing with English.

Also, this new year brought some ominous news that my employers are financially in a dire situation. It means it is wise to start planning my next move... and I'm not sure I'm eager to continue to walk down the same path.

Meanwhile, I've started to build my layout room in the basement... I had big projects and finally decided it was better to go back to my initial plan for a modest 17' x 10' room. I know it is not modest, but I've trashed the idea of an around the wall layout and will only build a shelf layout on one wall. It's enough for me and I know too well achieving excellence is all about focus.

Also, while putting my collection in order last Fall, it was clear I had far too much cars in my collection. I trimmed down some stuff I had no use for, then spent the last few months thinking about what could be done. I tried to see which themes were best represented by my motley crew fleet. Quickly, I found out two big groups. Cars that could fit a 1980 CPR/CNR layout and many old time cars that were perfect for early 20th century.

I told myself it was perfect since it fits my interests in early 20th century railroading and 1980 railroads. I bet you recognize my Temiscouata project and the Quebec South Shore Railway. Both are perfect shelf layouts. I've somewhat decided to start with the 1980 layout since I have everything on hands at this point.

I also came to the conclusion I had more than enough projects and it was better to no longer invest in my fleet. Many cars should be upgraded and this is a satisfying way to enjoy this hobby. The same apply to Hedley Junction. For this reason, I started to transform a few blue box kits and Accurail cars to see how they can be improved significantly without going too crazy. My goal is simple, approach car building in a more artistic and impressionist way rather than a technically accurate way. Unfortunately, I've had a hard time writing a post about this endeavour. Fortunately, I took pictures and hope they are self-explanatory. I explored various challenges, including the way to make cast on details look better and which improved details have more impact. Colors and hues played also a big part in that exploration. Yes, I discovered counter intuitive things. For example, that fading a black coal hopper could be done with turquoise blue... As you can see, I'm trying to see things for what they are instead of applying my observation biases. No, faded black isn't always gray and Chessie fans could testify about the C&O hoppers that turned yellow or orange over the years.

Here are a few commented examples:

These old Roundhouse boxcars are notoriously unprototypical. Roof and ends are the most notorious flaws. Improvements include addind door stops, car end vertical posts, new ladders, door latches, correct brakewheel and break housing including chain, metal stirrups and tack boards. While not perfect, these small details add a layer of realism even if the car remain "unprototypical". It is no longer a crude toy.

Old Athearn cars were often fantasy models. However, this UP grain boxcar was extremely accurate, except for the wrong car ends. In my spare parts box, I found two MDC improved dreadnaught car ends to replace the old ones. Details were improved and decals added per prototype pictures. However, I didn't replace the cast on ladder because the risk of ruining the model was real. Instead, I used colors to make them pop up. A very dark brown was used to create shadows and a light color applied on the ladders. The result, they now look slightly detached from the car shell. Athearn also painted the model too dark. Several washes and powders helped to tone it down and lettering add to be cleaned a few time to keep the white color almost intact.

Accurail cars are generally nice. The details are crisp though cast on. Unfortunately, their boxcar stirrups are plain weird and too easy to identify. It's why I replaced them. Also, the roof corner grabirons were replaced by bronze phosphore ones. Why? Because these details pop up against the background. I can tolerate cast on grabirons, but corner grabs only looks good if appropriately modelled. Once again, shadows and highlight helps to bring life to the car ends that generally have a strange look on Accurail cars due to the casting process. Weathered waybills made of paper on tack boards and chalk grafitti give this car a purpose in life helping to improve the realism.

It may not look like this, but this car is now covered in turqoise blue to fade the black. The real D&H car it is based on was extremely faded and took various hues over the time... And be aware this is only the beginning. By the way, this car is a cheap Life-Like one. Reinforcing angles were added on the top cord per prototype, most grabs on the sides were replaced, but the one on the ends were decent enough to warrant keeping. It would have been a waste of time and risky to get rid of them. Each bay received new Accurail triple bay hopper doors. These are nice details and I had a bunch of them from previous kits. This single detail transformed a toy into a real model.

Athearn boxcars are annoyingly easy to spot on a layout... The worst sins are the ends, the doors and roofwalk. Fortunately, I found out ATSF did have almost similar boxcars in their roster. The car ends and roof were correct, so I updated the model. New door and finely crafted door tracks eliminated the toyish look while a new straight sill made it a genuinely ATSF car. Tichy roofwalk and Accurail 8 foot doors completed the transformation, including a Kadee brakewheel. While now perfect, this is now a Santa Fe car and fine details mask quite well the blue box origin.

But it wasn't all. ATSF red boxcars did weather badly. The red paint faded and lots of grime and rust obscured the attractive bright scheme. Working from pictures, I tried to replicate a car as it would have looked in the late 70s-early 80s. Once again, reweight patched, waybills, ACI labels and COTS plates add a layer of reality and life to this cheap model.

In a world where a cheap car now cost well over $25, an average one $30 and a good one $40 or 50$, it is harder and harder to justifiying buying more models. These old kits may be far to be perfect from a prototypical stand points, but at the end of the day, I believe colors, textures and general feel are efficient tools to achieve realism. Not only they cost nothing because our collections are full of them, but they are also a great way to spend quality time actually building, customizing and improving cars. It may sound ridiculous, but to justify these cars existence, I had to do a lot of research so I could make them more than foobies. In the process, I once again learned a lot about car building technologies, changes in AAR policies and working with styrene, brass and decals. These lessons aren't wasted at all and I certainly hope to see these cars running somewhere some day.

2018 Post Mortem

As the year 2018 is coming to a close, it’s time to reflect on what was learned over the last few months and how it can apply to the next year.

An important thing I’ve learned was that I had little patience for half-baked operation schemes. By that, I mean when the story you are enacting with you train movements is full of plot holes and requires fancy explanations to make sense. In the case of Hedley Junction, setting the era forward in the mid-2000s helped to bring more cohesion to the project. Several operation sessions and JMRI simulations helped to figure out what didn’t work and where we could improve the layout. The answer was simple, scenes added for the sake of visual interest and improved operation were, as is often the case, superfluous and ruining the way we could realistically run trains. Completely rebuilding the peninsula as a yard proved to be a wise decision and enhanced drastically our operating sessions. It wasn’t an easy decision to take, but after a few months, I’m pretty sure my fellow club members also agree we made the right decision.

Setting the layout in a much more modern era (from the mid-1980s to the mid-2000s) was a strange idea that was put in motion when Rapido announced the SW1200RS. From that point, we discovered we could “easily” model LLPX GP15-1s with Athearn Genesis models and customize them to replicate locomotives than ran on the Murray Bay. Not that much thought was put into that and it was impulsive at first. However, the idea existed for a long time in the back of our minds. As is often the case, we were initially against a modern era layout because it would lack diversity, would be boring and not classic CN. We are told by the hobby press to cram as much as possible interesting stuff on our layout. Deprogramming yourself isn’t an easy thing to do. What we found was that modelling a more modern Murray Bay Subdivision made our life easier: information is readily available about CFC, we witnessed it in action as railfans, have lot of pictures, excellent quality models for this era exists, operations are easier to implement on a heavily compressed layout and it makes our layout unique in Canada. As for diversity, we quickly found out rolling stock was diverse and locomotives, even if they looked boring, had a lot of personality. I’ve had the time of my life weathering them as close as I could from the prototype.

Another thing I learned was that my physical health, even if I’m relatively young, shouldn’t be taken as granted. Chronic diseases are always insidious and leave you with obviously limited capacities. While not threatening, I know I’m far to have completely recovered since last summer and I thus prefer to work on manageable projects. It means simpler track plan, simpler scenery and well-focused projects. In fact, it isn’t a bad thing and forces me to strike for what matters. I don’t see it as a reason to take shortcut, but rather to make less but better models.

The final thing relearned once again is how it matters to have a vision for a layout, whatever its size or focus. This is the most complex aspect to translate into words due to its highly subjective nature, however, it is primordial if you want a layout to rise above the bar of model railroading and achieve a somewhat artistic value that expresses your vision of your subject. I’m not fool enough to believe Hedley Junction will ever be considered as a piece of art, but I certainly hope what will be done in the future will have personality and translate our mind vision of that railway.

Now, for 2019, I have not clear goal. A hobby isn't a job or an obligation... we walk down the path at our own pace, stopping here and there at whatever we fancy. However, with technical stuff like track work, wiring and operation paper work almost completely done, I wish this new year will be an occasion to bring forward our vision and give this layout its specific personality so it can be much more than a model railroad...

Happy New Year and Modelling!

Donohue MLW S2 - Part 3

Another motive power project completed before Christmas. After the SW1200RS fiasco and overcomplicated GP15-1s wiring, it's a nice touch to end the year on a positive note.

The biggest challenge with this locomotive was to make the details pop under the black coat of paint. Pure black is notorious to be one of the worst color for scale models. Smaller details and shapes are buried because shadows and highlights can't contrast enough with the surrounding color. This effect is even worst when trying to photograph the model.

For this reason, the black paint was faded in various ways, using oil washes, diluted acrylics and some powders. But even that wasn't enough to bring details back. A subtle oil pain drybrushing helped to highlight the louvers, rivets, fan and grilles. Then, not yet satisfied, I used my trusty color pencils to make specific details even more visible. At this point, I new I had stepped into the artistic side of the hobby. It was no longer about recreating a specific effect by following a recipe, but to build up effects until they toll the story I wanted.

In the case of the trucks, they were painted significantly a lighter shade than on the prototype, dusted and dry brushed to replicate the dirt streaking effect that happens in real life. It wasn't enough. Once again, using a color pencil, I lightly colored the truck sideframe edges to had some highlight and better define them.

Taking this extra step is generally what makes a model full of life. Surprisingly enough, we rarely venture to that point when creating scenery. Several layers of scenic materials are laid one upon another. Rarely we will use paint, washes, powders and various other tricks in our tool box to add depth and variety in the mix. If I had a single goal for 2019, it would be to approach layout scenery with the same dedication I have for motive power and freight car weathering.

Atlas GP40-2W CN 9423 - Part 2

Fall 2018 has been an extremely frustrating time to build our locomotive fleet. DCC issues and wiring plagued most of our projects. Fortunately, some projects went soother and I glad to announce CN 9423 is now officially completed.

A generous coat of weathering has been added to the Atlas model, making it closer to the real prototype which was a poor mess back in the early 2000s when it ran over Murray Bay Subdivision rails.

I used my habitual weathering techniques such as oil paints and washes, acrylic paints, PanPastel, weathering powder and several other tricks such as fading, shading and dry brushing. While I'm quite satisfied, I'll note that my peeling/rusting paint effects are a little bit too coarse. I'll have to improve on that, using different methods if I ever want to replicate this interesting effect that was a common occurence on Canadian National locomotives.

And while I'm not 100% happy with this effect, I'm still quite happy with the result. What was a generic RTR model is now a real locomotive full of character. It earned it souls and this absolutely counts to my eyes.

Donohue MLW S2 - Part 2

I wasn't active as much as I wish I could be during the last month. We are still struggling to implement DCC, sound and lighting in a few locomotive projects and it took a toll on our motivation to a certain point.

However, the S2 project is going forward. I did had my doubts about some aspects of this project, but fortunately, a kind soul provided a few hints that were sufficient enough to move the road block in front of me.

I was inspired to take a few extra steps, including a reconstruction of the pilots and replacing the truck sideframes with correct ones. I also put my sanity to the test by trying to replicate the Abitibi Consolidated sticker on the cab. The words had to be pieced together from generic locomotive text lifted from a Microscale Set. By example, Abitibi was made by using groups of letters from a word such as "Prohibited". The red logo had to be handpainted. It is less than 2mm in diameter, barely noticeable. But I felt I had to add this little detail to do justice to the model.

The truck sideframes were from an old tooling Atlas S2. They aren't compatible with new Atlas S2 locomotive and I had to drill holes so wheel axles could fit, then added a pin made from a styrene sprue to secure the sideframe into the truck assembly. I've yet to decide how I'll secure the sideframes semi-permanently. Probably some kind of glue.

Now, it's time to weather this little locomotive and do the final reassembly. The rotating beacon will also be functional. A small pico LED should do the job.