Meets: Reminiscing about O Scale National 2009

It was my first 2R meet and biggest meet outside York's TCA show.  I got to meet a lot of the movers and shakers in the 2R world from master modelers to guys like John Dunn, Mike Pitogo, Rich Yoder from RYM, Pat from P&D Hobbies, Ted Schnepf from Rails Unlimited, and Glenn Guerra from MRMW.

I remember the clinic on scenery, talking with Kirk Mitchell at Justrains' booth and grabbing a building and 2R trucks from him, staring at all of the parts available from SPL and appreciating even more the effort it takes to build steam locomotive models, sifting through the many detail parts, mesmerized by the amount of brass models available NIB, snatching up the 70T bettendorfs made by Auel that I saw at PDT, and just having an overall blast.

And then there was the model contest.  I remember being psyched about that.  A time to show off some of my work for the first time in person.  I was glad to be among the talent displayed in that room and was shocked to have won two awards my first time in.  It has sparked my interest to obtain the same level of craftsmanship or better.  Below are my two place-winning entries.

They are indeed from OST #46 and you can see the whole PDF version of this issue and others of O Scale Trains for free here:

OST PDF Issues

If you like this kind of modeling, be sure to subscribe to Joe G's magazine.  It truly is a great read everytime and its great to see others modeling efforts, stories, tips, and tricks.  It is also a fantastic resource to keep up on the latest products and local train meets.  If you're not a modeler yet, it may inspire you to give it a shot.  It's definitely more fun than a lot of people think.

As always, images are always clickable for larger resolution.
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Modeling: O Scale 2R SOU 3-Bay Hopper 74139

Quality > Quantity. Always.  This means I usually limit my purchases to the most detailed rolling stock and engines available from importers and kit makers.  This also translates to me never buying any Atlas Trainman cars, but I feel there are a few cars I could use if I wanted to take the time to upgrade them to my standards.

I took some time to upgrade this Atlas Trainman Hopper.  I did this by  shaving off the plastic molded in grab irons and support railings and then drilling and adding metal ones instead. I also had to add rivets back where I accidentally shaved them off.

This took several hours, but it is well worth the effort.  I used Lehigh Valley Cornell Red to repaint the shaved plastic and grab irons.  It is a very close match for what Atlas used to paint their car.  The car was also weathered with an airbrush and Bragdon powders and had a railroad tie load added.

Note that to keep things prototypical to my era, I removed the COTS plates with isopropyl alcohol as well as the rebuild year.

As always, you can click to see larger images. 

Modeling: O Scale 2R SOU SW9 1138

I did this repaint a long time ago, but I was contemplating writing a magazine article on it, but didn't feel my photos were good enough for publication, nor did I do anything that special.  I spent a few hours trying to find the right unit to model with moderate work and in my time frame.  I selected 1138 and I had a photo of it in two different time frames.

I modified an AtlasO SW unit for this repaint.

I noticed the cab needed small window shades, a firecracker antenna, and a single-chime horn that extended in front of the cab.  Luckily, I was able to reuse the same headlights.  That can be seen below.

 I ordered spare parts from Atlas due to the fact that 1138 had curved handrails and dropsteps.  The parts are seen below.

One of the harder parts was making the spark arrestors from soldered brass mesh and aluminum tubing.  Not exact measurements were done.  Just all visually to my eye.

Typical polly scale acrylics and microscale decals were used.  I installed laser-cut windows from Chooch Enterprises.  I weathered the units with bragdon powders.  Yellow handrails are done with tamiya flat yellow as this paint holds onto handrails rather well.  Enjoy the rest of the photos of the finished unit.

If someone knows how to get the software to stop rotating my photos longways, it would be nice to know how to avoid this problem.

Update 12-26-10

I haven't posted much here, but this is mainly because the projects I have completed will be showing up in O Scale Trains magazine soon.  My first published article will appear in OST issue #56 or so.  Pick up a copy or subscribe to the one magazine any true O-scale modeler should have!

Review: O Scale 3RS NYC U-25B 2506

Here is the unit MTH NYC U-25B I got from justrains.

First, some info on the engine:
U25B Diesel Engine - With Proto-Sound 2.0 (Scale Wheels) - New York Central
Cab Nos. 2500, 2501 & 2506
Product Number: 20-2964-2
M.S.R.P. $ 449.95
First appeared in: 2010 Volume 1

I requested engine 2506.  Info on unit:
Class DRS-15A from order #300-88359 which was built in February 1964.

I am glad the unit had a lot of styrofoam between the shell and handrails as the ends were still bent in, but not as bad if there had been nothing.

Adding the 3rd rail pickup shoes took like 20 seconds total, though it was funny to read in the instruction manual and it already came with them on.  Adding the foot plates on the ends was easy too. Adding kadees took a minute as well since the screws were included in the plow bag.  Takes an 805 no problem.  I had to take off the rear roof plate and set the engine to 3R and turned the smoke unit POT to off as it was not off entirely.

Only bad things cosmetically I have to say are the following:
-metal add-on parts are shiny compared to dull finish on the shell
-marker lights stick out at different lengths for each marker
-Somehow the black paint has some sort of white residue that is hard to remove from the protective foam they use

Negating lengths (as I do not really measure those), model is prototypical for this unit except:

• The ends have an extra set of MU sockets on the left.
• Missing bar above coupler lift bar
• End railings should not have chains in middle, but continue across.
• Should not have drop step
• Missing flag holders on cab roof
• Missing ATC shoe on one truck
• While horn has the right number of chimes, it is wrong. Base is off and the middle chime should be on the outside of the car body

My eventual fixes:

• Add ATC shoe to forward right truck.
• Remove additional MU sockets (this will be interesting)
• Add yellow bar above coupler lift bar
• Add flag holders
• Contemplating removing marker lights and adding red lenses
• Maybe paint right MU cap yellow (can't find a picture of 2506 to determine if its caps were painted, since it seems hit or miss)
• Maybe try to get rid of chain
• Maybe remove drop steps
• Maybe change horn to a better brass representation
• Maybe swap out bell to a better brass representation
• Weathering

I do want to note that MTH got the trucks right.  Rear right truck did not have the extra wires.  Now only if we could get them to invest in ATC shoe tooling and add them on there for us.

Now for photos.  Enjoy.

Modeling: Yorke Studios Covered Hopper Unloader

This is the unloader that Tom just came out with.  Took about 3 hours to do.  Neat little kit.  Its about $35 when shipping is included.  

You can click on the images for Hi-res shots.

Modeling: O Scale 2R SOU SW1 404

So this project started when I saw on the OGR Forum that SW1 shells were being sold on Ebay.  Of course I wanted an SW1, but the MTH didn't have fixed pilots and I do prefer TMCC where possible, so I went ahead and used an AtlasO SW7 I had on hand with the shell as the shell would fit on the chassis.

I first found my prototype photo.  From there, I added all of the details that were missing from the shell.  I bent my own brass handrails, matching the shape of the shell.  I tried to reuse some of the holders from the AtlasO SW shell, but I also ended up using brass coupler lift bar holders from Cal Scale as well.  I also bent my own handrails for the side of the shell as the preformed Tichy copper grabs would not fit.

The spark arrest is a combination of 2 aluminum tubes glued together, with a brass wire mesh that was soldered together and glued to the top of the tubing construct.  The bottom tube fits snugly to the smoke stack(which I took from an AtlasO stack piece).

The headlight faceplates were from Cal-scale (PSC makes them too) and I had a piece of brass tubing that fit around the faceplate exactly.  They were soldered together after I cut the brass tube to what I thought looked good and close to the picture.  I ended up making number boards from strip styrene and glued them to the side of the headlight housing.

The cab shell (separate from the body shell) itself was modified in two ways.  There was big holes in the rear for whatever MTH used for the rear grab irons to the door.  I filled that in with Bondo and drilled new holes in the bondo for the new handrails I formed.  I also plugged the hole in the front for the horn and added a brass PSC or P&D 3-chime horn as that is what it looked like in the photo.  The interior is a cut-up/modified AtlasO SW interior and is glued to the chassis.  The cab shell fits directly over it without any issues.

To mount the shell, I put white paint around the housings on the bottom of the shell and while still wet, I placed the shell down onto the chassis exactly where I knew where I wanted it.  This left a residue of the rough area where I needed to drill the chassis to allow me to screw the shell to the chassis.  This is seen in one of the photos below.

ERR SC2 and MC2 were used and mounted to the roof of the shell with plenty of room to spare.  Unfortunately at the time that I write this blog post, the SC2 has been discontinued.  I can only hope ERR brings it back soon.  They had quite a few unique sound chips.

The rear hand rails were modified to reflect the picture of the unit I had (and all SW1s I think).  I had an extra front-side handrail set where I cut the 2nd post off and made it into a 1-post set.

And a side-note:  The SW9 chassis used was an older Dallee, non TMCC system, so I had to buy a new speaker from AtlasO and instead of buying a new TMCC chassis that the parts guy wanted me to use, I instead put electrical tape around the entire compartment of the speaker and I was able to get the speaker to slip down in the fuel tank and then used a rectangular styrene piece to keep the speaker in place.  It is a tight fit.  Then on the bottom of the fuel tank, I put some extremely tiny, plastic mesh over the hole to keep the speaker magnet from picking up anything major into the speaker and ruining it.

My workspace as I was doing this project.  Prototype photo shown too.

Added details to MTH shell.  All brass.

Aluminum and Brass Spark Arrestor made by hand.

How I used the shell to tell me where to drill my holes to keep the shell on.

ERR MC2 and SC2 taped to the shell.

Instead of buying new frame, made the old one work with a new speaker.

Rats Nest.

Note new brass headlight and styrene numberboards.

Brass PSC  horn

AtlasO SW Bell