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Messages - deemery

#2296
Here's another great textures site:  http://www.mayang.com/textures/


dave
#2297
Layout Tours / Re: Superior & Seattle Railroad Build
April 10, 2014, 08:57:33 AM
Quote from: S&S RR on April 09, 2014, 07:26:03 PM
Quote from: deemery on April 09, 2014, 05:49:14 PM
The "6 wheel truck AS-backwards test" has me thinking:  What about a track test car made of acrylic, that's as long as my longest car, with some 6-wheel trucks?  Moving that back-and-forth (by hand and by loco) might be a very good way to inspect track.


dave

Dave

Great minds think alike - I have one of the clear acrylic cars with 4 wheel trucks and earlier in the week I took the 6 wheel trucks off one of the passenger cars and mounted them on the clear acrylic car.  It works well for finding areas where there are bumps in the track that may bridge the 6 wheel trucks but the issue with my layout was long radii where the side thrust gets real high because of the length of the cars and then the 6 wheel trucks tend to ride up the flange and derail. This will not be an issue for short trains and since my layout is a mountain railroad I think I will be fine.
My "contribution" is the idea to make the acrylic body as long as the longest car on the layout, e.g. 80' if that's what you run.  It's interesting that the combination of 6 wheel and 4 wheel cars cause problems. 


Thinking about this from a manufacturing perspective, the big thing is "ripping" acrylic to the appropriate width, so you can cut off appropriate lengths.  A kit for the "AS-backwards test cars" would need to include amounts of acrylic strip of the appropriate width and bolsters that are glued to the strip once it's cut to the length you need.  Modeler decides where to glue the bolsters (the truck pivot point is a key decision!), glues them on, then drills and taps for both truck screws and coupler mounting boxes.


dave
#2298
Layout Tours / Re: Superior & Seattle Railroad Build
April 09, 2014, 05:49:14 PM
The "6 wheel truck AS-backwards test" has me thinking:  What about a track test car made of acrylic, that's as long as my longest car, with some 6-wheel trucks?  Moving that back-and-forth (by hand and by loco) might be a very good way to inspect track.


dave
#2299
Layout Tours / Re: Superior & Seattle Railroad Build
April 08, 2014, 10:14:44 AM
What about the "Tom's Back AS-ward test?"  It's a bit more descriptive, I think :-)


dave
#2300
Contest Thread # 1 / Re: Foscale - Hoopers Oyster
April 05, 2014, 11:18:22 AM
John Canfield has just announced a limited run Oyster Car.  Here's some info on both the prototype and the model.  I thought this might be of interest, if nothing else it provides information on how oysters were shipped via rail in the early days.  I have no financial connection to John and Bob (other than being a satisfied customer), and apologize in advance if this is not an appropriate post.





Bob McGlone and I are pleased to announce our latest HO scale kit, a very limited edition run of the Stilwell Oyster Car.  The prototype was designed and patented by Arthur Stilwell, railroad builder and eccentric genius, and was built by the Pullman Company in 1897.  The car ran on the Kansas City, Pittsburg (KS) and Gulf RR built by Stilwell and a predecessor of the Kansas City Southern.  The KCP&G ran to Port Arthur (named after Stilwell), Texas and he envisioned the cars hauling oysters from the Gulf to Kansas City and on to Chicago, partly to please George Pullman, an oyster aficionado.  Throughout his life Stilwell acted in accordance with "voices he heard in his head" and over one 7-year period he built 3000 miles of railroad and founded 40 towns. He unfortunately later lost the KCS to unscrupulous business associates and sadly died in the throes of an apoplectic fit in 1928.  Eerily, his wife committed suicide 13 days later and both sets of their cremated remains were stolen from a mortuary.

We know that one of these cars, numbered car A, was built and there is speculation that a second car, B, may have also been built although there is some thought that shortly after being built it was wrecked. Car A shows up in ORERs for the KCS up to 1903 but was gone by 1905.  Despite glowing reports on the car in newspapers of the day, it is apparent that car was not very successful and its tenure was very short-lived.  The car was, however, ingeniously designed to carry oysters inside 4 separate storage tanks containing seawater, necessary to keep the oysters alive in transit.  They were loaded through the 8 top circular loading hatches (which also served as fresh air vents) and upon arriving at their destination, the oysters were unloaded via the 8 side hatches on the car using built in chutes located behind them.

There are no plans available for this car other than the patent drawings we have which show no dimensions.  A 1900 ORER shows the length of this car at 34' but an obscure article from a Reading, PA newspaper from the day said the inside length of the tank was 34'.  In an effort to ascertain the correct dimensions, we knew this car used a Cloud pressed steel truck and from plans for this truck in White's American Freight Car book we determined the truck had a 5'2" wheelbase.  We then scaled this against the patent drawings to determine overall dimensions.  This resulted in a car length of 34' which agreed with the ORER.  We then did another scaling assuming a 33" wheel diameter on the trucks and arrived at the same result.  We believe our calculations are accurate because after constructing the masters for the kit based on these premises, the height of the side of the car was 5'3" from top of floor to top of side, exactly the same as was stated in the ORER.  We are, however, aware that some folks believe the tank length, not the car length, was 34' and we mention this in the interest of full disclosure.  But based on all of our due diligence, we are reasonably confident that our kit is dimensionally true to the original car.  Finally, the prototype photos were also used to identify the final construction details which differed somewhat from the patents drawings in the side tank bracing and hatch details.

Pics of the original car, the masters of the sides and ends showing the rivet detail that carry over into the castings, a full side view of Bob's pilot and a ¾ view of my pilot are attached (see painting notes below).  The kit is composed of a resin core to which highly-detailed sides, ends, underframe, and roof castings are attached and also included are resin bolsters, end beams, and hatch bases.  Additional detail parts are from Selley, Bitter Creek, Tichy, Grandt Line, and Wiseman along with Kadee #5 couplers and draft gear.  The kit also has Bethlehem Car Works Fox trucks and our detailed instructions include how you can alter these trucks to look like the prototype's Cloud trucks which are unfortunately not commercially available.  An article in the Reading PA Eagle on January 2, 1898 said the Stilwell car was painted blue with silver lettering and our kit includes silver decals custom made for this kit by Railgraphics.   Bob and I on our pilot models used slightly different shades of blue and you are certainly free to use whatever shade of blue strikes your fancy.  A word of caution........for my pilot model I used Testors paint from a spray can but Bob used an airbrush for his use of similar Testors paint.  You can see the rivet detail in Bob's pilot model but as you can see in my final pilot model photo the spray can coats definitely go on heavier and unfortunately tend to somewhat obscure the terrific rivet detail so light coats from an airbrush are definitely best.

The price of this kit, including everything you need to complete the model except glue and paint, is $41.  Quantities may be limited due to parts and decal availability and we urge you to make a reservation for the kit as soon as possible to avoid being disappointed.  You can reserve the kit by emailing me at jcan2x@hotmail.com and no payment is necessary until I notify you your kit is complete and ready to go which we anticipate will be within a 3-4 week timeframe.

Thanks for your interest in this highly unusual car and we also thank Walt Wohleking, an oyster fan from Long Island, and the Pullman historic website for supplying us with some additional background information on Stilwell's unique creation.

John Canfield  (jcan2x@hotmail.com)
1701 Hurlingham Court
Virginia Beach, VA  23454-1173

#2301
New Details, Tools & Accessories / Re: New Scissors
March 27, 2014, 09:46:36 AM
Micro-Mark will sell them as "model shingling scissors" at a 'reasonable markup'. 


(I'm not faulting Micro-Mark for being clever and repurposing items like their "static grass rake.")


dave
#2302
Layout Tours / Re: Superior & Seattle Railroad Build
March 20, 2014, 05:44:49 PM

In my case, I was working with Model Masterpieces parts that would have been really expensive to replace.  (No one seems to know what happened to the old MM molds.)

What are you using to glue the plaster together?  I've used carpenter glue, with epoxy where I wanted a particularly strong joint (or gluing wood bracing to plaster.)


dave
#2303
Layout Tours / Re: Superior & Seattle Railroad Build
March 20, 2014, 10:19:11 AM
I know all too well the feeling of terror you get when working on a plaster kit, that one slip can ruin your whole experience! 


dave
#2304
Layout Tours / Re: Superior & Seattle Railroad Build
March 17, 2014, 10:38:42 AM
Most of the rocks you see on the train from Whistler to Vancouver are volcanic.  Particularly once you've cleared Squamish and start climbing, that's all basalt flow from Mt. Garibaldi (one of the Coast Range volcanoes.)  I always enjoyed that drive when we lived there.  My BC photos are all old-fashioned printed photos, so I'll have to dig out the pictures and scan them.


dave
#2305
Layout Tours / Re: Superior & Seattle Railroad Build
March 15, 2014, 08:06:39 PM
We lived in BC (North Delta, suburb of Vancouver) for a couple of years, and did a lot of day trips into the interior.   You have your choice of rocks there :-), some granite (Stawamish Chief!), a lot of basalt and other lava flows, e.g. on the trip up to Whistler, and then back to sedimentary rocks once you're in the interior.   Somewhere I have some great photos of the Othello tunnels on the Kettle Valley RR, scenery that only a model railroader would dream up (and proof that even in scenery, there's a prototype for everything.)


dave
#2306
Layout Tours / Re: Superior & Seattle Railroad Build
March 15, 2014, 07:25:10 PM
Quote from: bparrish on March 15, 2014, 06:57:33 PM
Dave.........

Those were two separate paragraphs but either way......... ya got me.

see ya
Bob
Ah, now I see.  What was it I said about "rocks can't be any dumber"?


dave
#2307
Layout Tours / Re: Superior & Seattle Railroad Build
March 15, 2014, 06:31:19 PM
Quote from: bparrish on March 15, 2014, 01:49:46 PM
...
Rock strata can be done after the crunchies by pulling a coarse wire brush horizontally across the area.  One or two swipes and then allow to dry and color later.  Real easy. ...
No strata for granite.  You may see layers in lava flows like basalt from the volcanoes in the west.  Strata usually means sedimentary or metamorphic rock.  You always want photos from your specific area, and Google Maps street view can be a good "substitute" if you don't have your own.


dave (who plans to study geology when he retires - after 35 years working with people, rocks can't be any dumber!)
#2308
I use an old 4" paintbrush.  For 'big chunks' I have a kid's beach bucket shovel.  For the little stuff, I use an index card or post-it note (because the paper's a bit stiffer than normal paper.) 


About every quarter I do the full-scale "clear the decks" cleaning of the desktop  >:(



dave
#2309
Lighting Your Model / LED rope lights?
February 16, 2014, 12:49:21 PM
Any experience with these?  I'm particularly interested in figuring out how to replace existing 4' 2xT8 bulb shop lights.

dave
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