I stumbled across this video on the last extant gasworks in the UK:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-xBegNoKnI  If you have a gasholder, this will show you how the gas was produced (from coal) and the process and buildings for that production.  LOTS of modeling inspiration here.  Gasworks were common in the US through the post WWII period.

dave

It's the big day for the folks up north.  One description of Canada is "A nation forged by a railroad." 

Muggy and warm in SE NH, cloudy, chance of showers.  I had a blood test this AM, their scheduling system failed and they were -triple booked-.  But the vampires worked quickly.

Today I'll work on cleaning up the belt drive castings.

dave

If anyone has one of these packages floating around and don't need them, let me know.  What I'm particularly looking for is another cone pulley, there are 2 in the package.

Thanks in advance

dave

Several forums (fora?) ago, I did a thread on the Laser Modelers 3 Winchendon Machine Shop kit.  That project stalled, in part because of "analysis paralysis", and in part because I was waiting for some parts to come in.  So I've decided to dig this one out and continue work. 

Here's what I'm starting from:

That's -4 boxes- of stuff.  So the first order of business is to inventory what I have in each, and figure out which boxes have parts for the ground floor, which boxes have parts for the 2nd floor, which boxes have walls and roofs, which boxes have parts that I -might- want to use but don't have a specific purpose yet.  The kit came in 2 flavors, just the building, and the building plus the machine tools & interior parts.  I got the base kit and bought my own machine tools, engine, boiler, etc.  One part I completed (more or less) was the boiler house, with a scratchbuilt boiler.

What I remember was that I had worked out the position for each machine tool on the ground floor, and the belt runs for those tools.  As I recall, I think I was waiting for some figures to use as machine operators.

Stay tuned!  (But don't expect daily updates...  As someone else said, "Watching me model is like watching grass grow."  In my case, it's more bursty.  There'll be a lot of visible activity, and then quiet while I either get my mojo back, wait for parts, wait for glue/paint to dry, etc. )

dave

https://www.shorpy.com/node/27739?size=_original#caption

dave

https://www.shorpy.com/node/27736?size=_original#caption  This is the kind of photo that makes me go "Ahhhhhhh...."

dave

(Copied from the 2024 Winter Build thread to provide a permanent home.)

I've built a bunch of large factory or mill buildings with lots of the same window casting.  Newer packages of Tichy window castings come with pre-cut glazing, but so far San Juan Details (nee Grandt Line) does not, nor do my stash of older Tichy packages.  Short of buying an engraver (e.g. Cricut) or laser cutter, I've tried a bunch of techniques to cut out a lot of same-size glazing pieces.  Here's the way that has worked best so far.

• Measure the window opening/glazing size (digital calipers - a great investment for accurate modeling.) 
• In a program that can draw rectangles and let you set the size (I'm ashamed I'm using an old version of PowerPoint), draw the glazing rectangle to the correct size.  
• Then add more rectangles, so they share the long edge and are aligned along the top and bottom.  I did 20 windows for this project.
• Print that out, then tape a piece of clear styrene (I'm using .010), aligning to the top left corner of the row of windows on the printout.
• Scribe/cut along the long edges of the set of window castings, top to bottom.  I'm using a straightedge (taped into place) and a triangle to conveniently cut those vertical lines.
• Cut along the bottom of the window rectangles.  The result is a bunch of hopefully correctly sized rectangles held at the top by the tape.  I usually have to do a bit of sanding to get a tight fit.  That's OK (although on a large mill building that gets tedious!)

dave

https://www.shorpy.com/node/27732?size=_original#caption

There's a variety of siding materials and a particularly beat up shingle roof, all of it pretty badly decrepit...

dave

How much interest is there in reading stories about our railroads and their employees/passengers?  I enjoy The Judge's stories from Tahope, but I don't know if that's something other people want to read.

dave

https://www.shorpy.com/node/27671?size=_original#caption  

'sharp' in both the technical sense of the word, and as a term of appreciation...   Take a good look at the weathering!   

Info on this loco's history:  https://climaxlocomotives.com/confirmed/snsrch/?sn=534&submit1=Search

dave

Well, the weather predictions that said "snow turns to freezing rain by 8:00 AM" were correct, unfortunately.  Looks like we'll get rain/freezing rain/sleet for the rest of the day, maybe turning to snow in the evening.  Ugh.  I'd rather have the originally predicted 14" of snow...   But the big problem comes tonight and tomorrow, when the winds pick up.   Enough about the weather!  

Today's plan is for more work on the Ambroid passenger car.  Yesterday I cut/carved a template for cutting the oval windows from a piece of styrene.  Today I'll cut some more siding and use that template to see if I can get a better looking oval.  And I'll mount the scribed siding to the bottom of the other car side, add the fascia board there, and start work on the pieces between the windows.

dave

I got a partially assembled Ambroid/Northeastern Scale Lumber (B&M prototype) wood open platform coach kit on eBay. This thread will detail some of the challenges in doing this classic kit. 

The box has some pre-cut sides, pre-cut floor pieces, milled roof, some cast parts and a lot of sticks:

It seems this box had parts of 2 kits, there are 2 sets of end platform castings and a couple other extra parts.  The most interesting thing is the milled car side subwalls.  This has the belt rail molding milled into it.  

Here's a test fit of the platform castings after those are cleaned up and the two part floors are glued together:


The instructions are -minimal-, but Bob Parrish has some good instructions on building similar cars on the LaBelle Models website https://www.labellemodels.com/hints-pointers-c-91.html 

The biggest challenge is shaping the roof. 

dave

A thread for pictures of interest to those who model the 19th or early 20th century.  

I'll start off with a Shorpy photo, this is a nice overhead view of Detroit.  Lots of roof details to see here:  
https://www.shorpy.com/node/27647?size=_original#caption   The one thing that surprises me is how clean the rooftops are.  Usually I see more junk/weathering on rooftops.  

dave

After a lot of work behind-the-scenes to look at alternatives, funding, etc. the owner/operator of Railroad-Line has announced tomorrow will be its last day.  

A group is working on capturing the data and seeing if we can set up a new Railroad-Line, on a different hosting environment.  The goal would be to reopen in March, but a lot of work has to be done to set up, check out, and establish an environment that has the data but that performs much better than the current environment.  

dave

https://kyhistory.com/digital/collection/Cusick/id/405/rec/19

This is a great early rail photo.  Wonderful detail is visible on both side and end of the car, along with the lettering.  The mill in the background is pretty interesting, too.

dave

The SL&N is a freelance railroad set in the 1890s.  The railroad exists to connect the northwest PA oil country to New England mill towns, through the modeling mechanism of removing all the land between the Susquehanna and Merrimack rivers.  Primary inspirations are the Rutland and the Colorado Midland, in part because those run through mountainous terrain and in part because there's a lot of documentation on their 19th century construction, operations and rolling stock.   There's also an HOn30 line based very loosely on the Monson, that connects a slate quarry down to a finishing factory and the standard gauge interchange.  

When we moved back to NH, I looked for a house with a totally dry unfinished basement.  We finished 2/3 of the basement space into 2 rooms plus a 3/4 bath.  Half the expense was for the bathroom. I knew I wanted a sink, and that required an up-flushing system.  The toilet prevents me from tracking modeling dust upstairs, and the shower was inexpensive to add to the bathroom.  My thought is this would make a good in-law apartment or a 'lock the teenager in the basement' facility for future homeowners.  If you can afford it, a sink is absolutely worth having in or close to your workshop space.  

Unfortunately, the building inspector made us build a closet in one corner for the electrical panel, but I worked around that (literally) in the track plan.  I did some special things for wiring.  Both rooms (train room and workshop room) have overhead lights AND outlets for track lighting, switched separately.  The 'track lighting' outlets will be used for layout wiring.  And each pair of outlets has one outlet permanently hot, with the other switched.  So both rooms have a bank of 3 switches, for 'overhead lights', 'track/layout lights' and 'switched outlets'.  The latter makes it easy to turn off all the layout electronics, all the power tools, etc.  

The flooring is vinyl plank that includes a layer of cork, on top of the concrete slab.  This stuff has held up very well to the abuse I've given it, including spilling some solvents (wiped up immediately.)  I was able to dent it when I dropped a hammer claw-side down.  But more importantly, the cork underlayment part makes it very comfortable to stand on the flooring.  And the color is close to the red oak flooring in the rest of the house.  

dave

Stolen from the daily Far Side retrospective site.  I now have a name for what my trains encounter on my layout!

Today I might start opening the windows on the front of the main mill building.  I figure to try that one first.

dave

I think I'll try the South River Model Works Lamson & Goodnow project that I've been pondering for several years.  This will be a bash, both to make the main mill larger (kit looks too compressed to me) and to fit in the available space.

Here's the hole:

You can see, I still need to do rough scenery to the left side.  The green tape marks the main line.  There's a spur into the property, you can see its location on my template as the pink chalk running roughly in the middle of this photo:

I cut some rosin paper to the approximate shape of the hole.  I used pink sidewalk chalk to run over the location of the siding and the main line. 

Then I put the template on a workbench (specially cleared off for the occasion ) and started to ponder the structures:

My thought is to use the back wall sections, which are about an inch longer, instead of the front wall sections for the front of the mill.  This will add about 2", making the total length of the main mill about 11 1/2".  Note the end of the black ruler on the left of the white foundation template, that's the new end of the mill.  I can put that small (2") annex shown on the right of the mill on either side, or omit it all together.  I'll create a blank rear wall, which won't be visible.  The office building will fit to the left, and I'll construct a woodshed or something on the right side where there's some space to fill.  I could do a boiler house and make the end of the spur coal delivery...

I'll probably do some vertical arrangement, too, i.e. putting the mill or the office or both higher than track level. 

The next step will be to scan the actual wall sections and do a full-size mock-up on foamcore. 

At least this is my current thinking...

dave

Today is the first day of potentially record temperatures here in SE NH, and across most of the northeast.  It's muggy, too.  I'd be happy if you-all in Florida would keep your weather to yourselves!  

I'll work on the backdrop project in the basement. 

dave

I have the old Floquil paint chip card (actual paint colors painted onto chips of treated cardboard and then glued to the card).  But one color that's missing is Brunswick Green.  So if someone has a bottle of Brunswick Green, could you paint a bit onto a piece of photo paper (so the paint won't just soak into the paper and change the color), and send it to me?  I'll add that to the sample I'm preparing to send to KeepItRusty for his Floquil paint matching project.

I took the Floquil card to the local photo shop, and they did a scan and print using their color-calibrated systems.  The result is pretty close to the Floquil card (but the metallic paints don't have that obvious metallic sheen to them.)  

Thanks in advance!

dave