End of an Era: Half a Century Of Blue Box Kits

Athearn announced this Morning that they decided to discontinue the manufacture of their iconic “blue box” kits….this is truly a sad day for HO modelers everywhere. Some may shun them for their detail, but we all know they all reinforced our love of the hobby to some degree. I can honestly point to them specifically for holding my interest in the hobby from toy trains to scale modeling during my teen years. Getting my first blue box locomotive a Union Pacific SW7 (which I still have) is a memory I shant forget. Read the announcement for yourself.

Affordability and Selection were their strong points without a doubt, an average middle class kid could build a roster of freight cars and locomotives in a fun and regular manner $5 and $25 at a time instead of saving up for a $30 pre-built car or $150 RTR locomotive. For those who love seeing a sea of freight cars in their yard, perhaps this will be somewhat harder now and undoubtedly more expensive.

For those learning, impatient or unskilled it was satisfying to build a kit with nothing but a small flathead screwdriver and seldomly some model glue and have it look nice and complete. It’s always been a good entry-level modeling project for beginners, and actually how some of the older modelers among us started; not with a train set, but with an individual model freight car kit. On the kitchen table, working those stamped steel sides, ends and wooden floor onto some sprung metal trucks was an accomplishment! For the younger modelers, the injection molded plastic with sharp lettering provided a satisfying 10 minute assembly and hours of fun running it around your small layout behind your trainset equipment. There was practically something for everyone too, between the MDC roundhouse and the blue box kits, from 1860’s to 1990’s equipment, you could practically model any era.

The Diesels, even with their quirks (like the widebody hood units) were still reliable, powerful locomotives that could outpull practically anything and do so with that classic gear growl that sounded very diesel like…who needs sound? Their flickering cab light and the bevy of blue sparks coming from their cast steel wheels as they yanked a colorful consist of “shake the (blue) box” kits bobbed behind them is still an iconic scene of the hobby.

So, I bid Adeiu to the staple of our HO scale hobby and perhaps the most influencial million pieces of plastic to turn thousands of hobbyists into model railroaders.

Blueprints: Gas-Electric Doodlebug for the CWR&N

Here’s a set of blueprints I recently purchased of California Western Railway & Navigation Company’s M-100 motorcar, dated 1935. If you’d like to have a paper copy of these blueprints, e-mail me and we’ll work out a way to send them to you. If you want to purchase the original copy I have here, make me an offer.

Here’s the original blueprint below, the top photo was inverted into white-on-black line drawing in Photoshop.

It’s a neat piece of history at any rate and it’s interesting to see such unusual artifacts still floating around, I’m just glad that I was able to find them.

Let’s Build an HO scale Art Deco building!

Art Deco was an architectural movement that superceded the Beaux Arts movement in the mid-1920’s and progressed through Art Noveau and eventually turned into Streamline Moderne in 1940. A lot of new materials were used to define art deco architecture from the styles that proceeded it. One of the major materials that was popularized during the era was Vitrolite, an opaque architectural glass that covered the facades of the new structures. It basically is a giant leap forward aestetically from the stones, bricks and wood that was ornately used in the Beaux Arts movement. Also, the mass production of sheet aluminium, copper and stainless steel opened new doors for materials to adorn structures.

Geometric designs were very popular, many of these geometric designs progressed forth from Art Noveau’s heavy lean towards nature themes. Deco added the unusual step of “modernizing” ancient architectural styles, most successfully Neo-Egyptian. Neo-Moorish and other ancient civilization’s architectural motifs were added as time went on until the surprisingly odd “Pacifica” style flopped at the 1940 world’s fair in San Francisco.

THE MODEL

Anyways, I choose a somewhat modest structure as a starting point, as I wanted it to be noticed, but now outrageously overdone. I eventually picked the “The Beacon News” building in Paris, Illinois as my inspiration. This building is covered in turqouise Vitrolite, with the letters actually made from cut black Virtolite built directly into the wall!

My building differs from the original in two ways, the Virtolite panels have become tiles, and the brick has been replaced with stainless steel sheathing.

The first step was to measure and cut the facade. This was done with an HO scale ruler, and I tried to keep the tilework matching the edges of the windows for a nice clean design. After I measured them out and marked the edges, I came in with a razor saw to cut the windows out, and cleaned up the flash with my exacto knife.

I then set took the facade outside and sprayed it a turquiose base color and let it dry.

In the meantime, I started work on the walls. I have plans to use this structure in the future, so I wanted to have all four walls detailed. The back 3 walls are made from 0.60 styrene for strength.

To simulate the board-formed concrete walls typically found on these types of buildings, I came up with this solution.
1. First you apply the tile to the edge of the building that’s facing the facade. Then take a piece of thin balsa sheet and cut random sized boards less than a scale foot wide and as long as necessary.
2. After you’ve made a substantial pile of lumber, take some carpenter’s glue and cover 1/4th of the wall, spreading it evenly. Then in a staggared fashion, build up the wooden wall, trimming the edges that overlap. I added small transom windows to let light in from the sides of the building, while still giving the newspaper employees some privacy.
3. I sealed up the wood with concrete colored paint. This step is essential!
4. Then I covered the entire wood portion of the wall in glue, to further waterproof it.
5. To fill in the cracks, I mixed a couple of teaspoons of hydrocal, which I dyed with a dab of concrete paint, and pushed it into the gaps, completing the illusion of a concrete wall (This photo will be shown in the second part.)

I temporarily placed it on the layout to see how it’d fit into my downtown.

Stay tuned for part two!

Happy Holidays from Us!

Merry Christmas

Happy Hanukkah

From all of us at Interacting with Miniature Railroading!

Please enjoy this holiday slide show of the Gorre& Daphetid presented by the G&D reminiscence project.

http://www.gdlines.com/G&D_card.html

Start Researching Railroads Today!

IF you’re new to the hobby or just getting back into the fascinating world of locomotives, railroads and history, be sure to check out these awesome websites. They are indispensable to the beginner and advanced modeler or historian alike.

To learn all about steam locomotive and find surviving locomotives all ’round the world, look here:
http://www.steamlocomotive.com/

Love geared logging locomotives like the Shay, Heisler and Climax, or want to know what a geared steam locomotive is? Check out http://www.gearedsteam.com/index.html  

Switching Locomotives
http://yardlimit.railfan.net/ They have some of the most obscure and famous (practically all North American Switchers) listed with photos.

With excellent photos of nearly every type of rolling stock or locomotive pictured somewhere on this extensive site, you can’t help but spend hours looking through all these photos!

http://www.northeast.railfan.net/

Want to learn about the big four locomotive builders? (Baldwin, Lima, ALCo, EMD) or some of the most obscure American and world locomotive companies?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Locomotive_manufacturers

For mainline Diesels, check out the locomotive manufactures listings on Wikipedia (It’s actually a pretty reliable source nowadays)
For GM EMD products, like the SW9, look at the bottom of the page for the manufactured locomotive listing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electro-Motive_Diesel
http://www.sdrm.org/roster/diesel/emd/history/

If you like those smoky Alco’s check this out!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ALCO_diesel_locomotives
http://alcoworld.railfan.net/specindx.htm
Or if you’re a Baldwin Fan, check this out.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baldwin_Locomotive_Works
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Baldwin_locomotives
http://baldwindiesels.railfan.net/contents.html

To research a specific railroad, find the Yahoo! group that corresponds to your favorite railroad and join that. For example the “Espee” group os the better of the two Southern Pacific RR groups, and the ATSF group is the Santa Fe oriented ones.

You can even join a group that talks about modeling a specific industry, like the “Citrus Modelers” yahoo group.

If you want to know accurate information about freight cars, visit these two sites:

Steam Era Freight Car Group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/STMFC/

Modern Freight Car Group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MFCL/

The Beginning of DCC? (1930’s Technology!)

A Japanese inventor has developed the very first DCC locomotive…but just look at the unusual design, very steampunk isn’t it?

Notice not only the strange design, but the odd 4-4-4-4 wheel arrangement, it certainly doesn’t look like the PRR’s “Duplex” 4-4-4-4, that’s ‘four’ sure.

Check out that article and the amazing site that accompanies this article here: http://blog.modernmechanix.com/2008/02/19/steampunk-remote-controled-train/

Innovative Recycling Solution for a Common Layout Problem.

Most of us enjoy beverages that come in Aluminium, & Glass. Fizzy beverages are too often seen on layouts, crushing scenery, hindering operations, and add to clutter, especially if they’re abandoned by their owners after having been consumed. For the solution to a folding layout cupholder, go here: http://www.newrailmodels.com/Products/Accessories/CupHolder/Default.htm

What happens if cans have nowhere easy to go when you’re done with them? Here’s an interesting solution that the guys at the Niles club came up with: A can & bottle chute disguised as a scale gas storage tank!

 

You can use a small office trashcan for personal layouts, or for clubs, use a full-sized trashcan.

By taking all those pre-sorted cans to a recycling center, it will probably pay for itself in a couple of trips! Who would have guessed an industry on the layout could actually make you money?

Scale, Gauge, and Porportion.

Three vastly different concepts that need to work together to produce a beautiful miniature object. 

I can make this a multi-part series if you leave a comment saying that you’d like to see a more in-depth version of this post, but otherwise, let’s compare these two locomotives.

This is an excellent example of an “Overfair Railway” 4-6-2 That’s 19″ gauge 4-6-2.
Suberb engineering, and built by the Southern Pacific Shops there in Sacramento, only problem: It’s ugly, and out of porportion. The Running Gear& Frame are works of art. They spoiled the porportional necessity of this 19″ gauge 4-6-2 by adding:

-A headlight that’s too small

-A tender that’s 10% too small

-A cab that’s 25% too big.

-A horrible “Wagon-top” tapered boiler (which is unnecessary for a locomotive of this size anyway)

-You’d think that someone would have said something, or built it to adhere to a specific SCALE, but it seems to have been ignored after he designed the Running Gear.

-The ungainly proportions of this locomotive really detract from the overall beauty of something so mechanically fascinating.

Although this is the largest of the RVRy’s equipment, this 2-6-2 shows the benefit of a well-porportioned miniature. This isn’t even the best-porportioned of locomotives on the roster either.

-The Drivers are realistically small for the Drag-Freight she’ll be pulling.

-The Cab is will within realistic 3′ Narrow Gauge porportional specifications.

-Her USRA-esque tender has scale rivets, and attractive lines for a steel tender.

-The domes, Stack, and headlight all work together coherently to produce an accurate illusion of scale. They all work together to even out the porportion of this 15″ gauge 5″ scale locomotive.

 

Personalized Waybills

While searching around for a robust waybill I could use for my operations, I came across an excellent Idea: Personalized Waybills.

What Makes them different from the normal waybill?

-They’re slightly Wider

-They’re Full-Color

-They feature the correct color of the car being switched for easy reference, and feature the logo and the reporting mark or railroad that used it IN THE FONT of that railroad.

Yes, it was quite time-consuming, but I think it was an excellent Idea.   

-No more fumbling around reading poorly hand-written waybills!

-Color coordination makes for easy mental reference.

-They’re nice looking.

Here’s an example of a waybill YOU can play around with:

Standard White Waybill, Standard Black below:

This one below is for a Proto 2000 Cotton Belt Flatcar, feel free to use any of these for your railroad.

Next is an example of one with flexible numbering. I have a fairly large fleet of SFRD cas, and as opposed to making 50 SFRD files on my computer, I’ll add the numbers neatly by hand, or make stickers and put ‘em on there.

Have one with a mulit-colored or unique paintjob? add it to the waybill! The two below that illustrate this.

 

Finally, a pretty typical waybill, logo, with a regular looking reporting mark.

I hope you find these helpful.

I have 56 different waybills for 56 different kinds of cars (omitting duplicates like PFE and SFRD reefers and such)

I think this is a great Idea for the small layout and shelf layout operators, I think it’d get overwhelming after 75 cars, but comment in this entry if you want more, because I have plenty to share.

 

The San Jacinto Branch- Module Blueprints

I managed to save enough money to buy lumber, and with the help fo my Master Carpenter friend Pete, we managed to have all the modules built in about 10 hours over three days. Below is the basic design I used. To carry wires for leads, or DCC control, simply drill sufficient sized hole equidistant (12″ centerline) through modules AFTER THEY HAVE BEEN CONNECTED (w/mulitple drywall screws, 2-3 is sufficient) to ensure no off-center holes. Add track and scenery and enjoy!