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.

A Superdetailed N Scale Layout

At a recent train show I met an excellent modeler, who built everything you see here. He has an amazing eye for detail, and isn’t afraid to kitbash even the most expensive brass locomotive into just what he’s looking for. Gutting Atlas geeps, Intermountain tunnel motors (EMD SD40T-2’s) and completely redetailing them part by part into something really exceptional is his typical way to model. His layout is well-researched and constructed. Although the scenery isn’t completely finished he can teach the average modeler alot about the necessity of important details. He says that “the trick isn’t to put every detail found on the prototype, but certianly enough to make the model unique and recognizable to anyone who might have seen one in person.”

Not only does he kitbash diesels, he also scratchbuilt accurate telephone and electric poles to serve the roundhouse properly. All the vehicles adhere to a late 1980’s time frame and check out some of the smaller details he’s added to the scene.

Here’s a collection of some of his projects, some finished, some in progress. Each has been disassembled and reassembled to ensure that the major modifications would fit just right. On the right, shop trucks were scratchbuilt for when a locomotive’s trucks are removed and the frame needs to move to another portion of the shop. The oil-stained concrete is always a good touch.

A heavily kitbashed Southern Pacific rebuilt GP9E rounds the curve with a loaded ballast hopper.

The locomotives are serviced out back on the garden tracks. the Pit was made just like the real thing, with board-formed concrete.

Another fascination of his is Maintenence of Way equipment, and most of his fleet is scratchbuilt or heavily kitbashed using photographs of ATSF and SP subjects as important reference.

GHQ kits are also a sub-hobby of his, he builds them with all the movable joints and even modifies them as-needed to make them fully posable. N scale vehicle modeling is a pretty exact hobby, and it looks quite impressive when done well.

Modeling Gaffe 5- How am I going to Unload this car?

How many model railroads have you been to where a wide variety of cars are just parked next a (probably inadequately sized) industry with no way to unload even a boxcar?

This irksome trait is found almost all the time in beginner layouts, for which they are excused, but also on too many modelers who consider themselves “serious” railroad modelers. It’s especially annoying when they enjoy superdetailing and weathering their models, while their buildings are either straight-out-of-the-box or simple structure kits. I’d say a majority of model railroad industrial building kits won’t support (regular) rail service. Walther’s has succeeded in making some nicely porportioned kits that look believable enough to support traffic, but most other manufacturers fall short, with a few really excellent exceptions.

More often than not you see modelers ignore the specific hardware found on the cars and either:
-Create inadequate loading docks that are either too high or low for boxcar and reefer traffic.
-Ignoring completely how you’d logically unload a specific type of freight cars, like that gravel old gondola on the coal trestle with a SOLID floor, mimicing a drop-bottom gondola, and failing.
-I VERY rarely see a realistic unloading/loading apparatus for covered hoppers, be them cement, grain, plastics, or sugar. Almost always they disappear under a little metal shed and are “unloaded” as if by magic!
-Woodchip hoppers and scrap steel/structural steel gondolas are frequently just put on the siding, to be “magically (un)loaded”
-An overwhelming majority of modelers ignore TANK CAR unloading apparatuses, despite being repeatedly written about in modeling magazines. (in some cases, all you need is a valved spigot sticking out of the ground.)
-Don’t even get me started about Intermodal Facilities or Piggyback Trailer loading facilities, they’re almost never modeled correctly, and I can say with certianty that only a handful of modelers actually have dedicated the space to these industries that dominate the modern scene.

Team tracks, while oddly ignored by many modelers, provide perhaps THE greatest flexibility of any industry, take little space and can (with proper detailing) accept ANY type of freight car.

The best remedy for addressing this problem is RESEARCH! Go out into the world and take photographs of interesting industrial buildings and attempt to match the details found on them, remember that Industrial buildings only have the bare-essential details on them compared to commercial/residential structures, and we at least must model that bare-bones detail.

IF you’re period modeling, the Library of Congress (US) has the HABS/HAER Historical Building database, with scale drawings, written historical documents and plenty of detail photographs. Also University Libraries or even your local library has plenty of photos of local, state, and sometimes nationally important industrial buildings. Some time spent researching here will benefit you in the future. I’d bet OSHA has modern documents profiling how to safely unload many types of freight cars. Army Transportation Corps manuals also have this information.

Don’t forget to check out modeling magazines or books, some authors really care about this sort of thing, and provide really valuble information about how a freight car was unloaded. Safely and properly.

All the resources for the proper and realistic (un)loading of freight cars are out there, you just have to make the extra effort to find it.

How to Make a Scale River, Lake, Harbor, or Just about any other body of Water

Now that we’ve covered size, shape and color theory of these necessary waterways, let’s move onto the modeling portion of this tutorial.

Our Main Ingredients are the following:

The “WATER”

For water, Woodland Scenics has been selling a horrendously overpriced product called “Realistic Water” which is actually just Acryllic Glazing Liquid used for painting light layers of paint on a painting. Learn more about Acrylic glazing liquid here. You can get this stuff by the GALLON for half the price of the bottle of WS product at Blick Art Supply.

This stuff is smelly, but not noxious. I would suggest opening a window if you want to model while you pour this stuff. It takes about 24 hours to dry and ONLY pour in 1/16″ depths. In all honesty, you really don’t need to pour this stuff deep, it looks fine on the surface.

Paint

Using color samples directly taken from the river via the satelite photos I posted in my previous article, I came up with this list of “necessary colors”

You can explore the ‘zillions’ of other colors out there; here.

The Colors I used to paint the River are mostly from Benjamin Moore’s “Color Sample” paint jars. These 3oz Jars cost about $3-4 and cover a 2X2 foot area if used completely. Yu can get these at a well-stocked hardware store, or a Home Improvement warehouse.
The other colors in the 2oz containers are the $1 craft paints you can get from any craft store.

The Colors Are:
-Dark Green: “Mohegan Sage” (Ben #2138-30)
-Tan: “Monroe Bisque” (Ben# HC-26)
-Sky Blue: “Yarmouth Blue” (Ben#HC-150)
-Dark Brown: “Clinton Brown” (Ben#HC-72)
Craft Paint:
-Navy Blue
-Sand Stone

Optional Regional colors:
for Clay rivers, use “Terra Cotta”
for black use “Asphaltum” (which is a very dark brown. Avoid black at ALL COSTS)

Prepping the Riverbed, Lakebed, or Harbor.

You can approach this two ways:

1. Involves laying down a flat piece of particle board, adding the riverbanks in, then painting the surface and adding the acryllic glaze, then finally adding ripples with acrylic gloss medium. This is good for wide, deep rivers, harbors, lakes and channels.

2. For creeks and shallow or seasonal rivers that vary wildly in depth year-round, or a river that has a lot of sandbars or islands, try this method: (READ MORE) <-Will be written about tomorrow

Painting Technique:

Gently blend your sand color and your brown colors the farther from shore you get, then blend the brown into the green, and finally add navy blue in the center if this is a deep river. (See the color chart above)

Let this dry overnight to see if the colors you blended looks satisfactory. Make sure that all blends between colors are SEAMLESS, and don’t have a distinct break in color, unless you’re modeling underwater vegetation like Algae in the deep log pond (above) or brown coastal seaweed.

Join the Fun! Micro Layouts are a Blast!

Micro Layouts are probably the most beneficial section of the hobby due to the fact that they, in the definition given by Micro Layout compiler and modeler Carl Arendt: “Micro layouts are small model railroads, usually less than three or four square feet in area, that nonetheless have a clear purpose and excellent operating capability. “

FOUR MAIN TYPES OF LAYOUTS

There are four main types of micro layouts, and about 80% of micro layouts are based on these concepts:

 

1. The Pizza Layout is a classic. Originally devised for HO or N scale, the pizza layout is a circle of track, usually scenicked. Rarely are these layouts build with any other trackwork like spurs, but there are notable exceptions. The term originated from either the pizza like look of the loop of track or the fact that some Pizza layouts were built in pizza boxes!

2. The Ingelnook Switching Puzzle dates back to 1978 and is the brainchild of Allen Wright, according to this source. The ingenious 5/3/3 ratio of 5 cars on the main and capacities for 3 cars on both sidings has been lauded as the “perfect” switching ratio. This type of layout is very portable and mentally challenging to shunt or switch cars around with. The Inglenook puzzle exists in real life on some railroads all around the world, like Italy and the US.

3. The Traverser is another very popular method of switching in even less space then the Inglenook. The problem is that a transfer table, a rather unusual piece of railroad equipment that is rarely found outside of railroad backshops, is the hallmark of this plan. This eliminates the need for switches, but realistically limits the modeling subject to a handful of prototype locations. Some variations on this layout can be found on Carl’s site.

4. Ridiculously small micro layouts like the curious “dime layout” that uses a US 10 cent piece as the inner portion of track in what one could term a “bite sized doughnut” layout. (In keeping with the food theme presented by the pizza layout. ) The coin conducts electricity and the outer rail is bent to an improbable radius. Here’s photos of one in action!

5. (Not Illustrated) would have to be the sector plate layouts. I really don’t like sector plates, because they’re not very realistic, and none exist in real life unlike turntables and transfer tables. They do add flexibility through the ability to move an entire train from one track to another, which is interesting.

These are certainly not all of the types of micro layouts out there. Some base their switching maneuvers around a turntable, some are actually small “traditional” loop layouts that feature sidings and the like, somewhat similar to MR 4X8 foot project layouts, but squeezed down to less than 4 square feet. Others offer unorthodox track-work or very complex track age with tight curves and clearances and lots of #4 switches.

THEMES

There are infinite stories a model railroad can tell, and micro layouts push the boundaries of the traditional railroad themes. Some of the more traditional layout themes, like Anthracite coal mining, or modern intermodal terminals would be an impractical. The interesting part of micro layouts is that you can create small portions of large industries and use the micro layout as a small vignette to portray that specific industry.

Some of the more popular themes include:

1. Railroad back shops. Rebuilding cars and locomotives required a lot of specialized switching maneuvers and is one of the few prototypical places for turntables and transfer tables.

2. Wharves and seaside scenes are always popular. From the dock to a point of interchange, or from a mine to the dock. Some layouts even incorporate ”live loads” of coal, ore or soil that dump from the railroad cars into the awaiting vessel. Car float operations are also another interesting facet of this theme. A good number of micro layouts feature lighthouses.

3. Urban Traction is a great space saving theme to explore. It’s one of the few places in which railroading can be accomplished with ultra-sharp curves and overhead wire. The scratch-built trolley cars, street cars and MOW motor flats whizzing around a small layout make for great fun.

4. Mining and Logging operations are popular subjects for micro layouts, although It seems silly to have a lumber mill 5 inches from the stand of trees being harvested..the same goes for most mining layouts.

5.  Using unusual gauges narrow gauge railroads are popular. Examples like Gn15, (1:29 scale using 1:87 HO gauge track, which scales to 15″ industrial gauge in G.) or On3 (1:48 O scale using scale 36″ gauge track) On30 (O scale on HO gauge track representing 30″ narrow gauge) Sn3 (1:64 S scale on their 36″ gauge track, which is almost HO gauge track)   HOn3 (HO 36″ narrow gauge) or HOn30 (HO scale on N 1:160 gauge track)  some crazy modelers even use Nn3 (N scale on Z gauge track)  are the backbone of the Narrow Gauge Movement.

6. Food related industries are popular. Winery layouts, Brewery operations, pickle factories and even a maple syrup factory are all represented among the  cadre of micro layouts.  

7. Brick works, Lime kilns, Railroad Tie creosoting plants and other realistic narrow gauge industrial railroads are very popular modeling subjects, this is another portion of micro layouts in which you can make a realistic layout in a small space.

8. The last main theme is dictated by the package it comes in. I’m building a shoebox layout, which when completed will be a small mining operation in HOn3 (The photo shows the plan in full HO gauge.) The packages can range from an orange crate, to a wine box to a shoe box, or even smaller, like a CD case. The business card layout is by far some of the most entertaining modeling I’ve seen. These unusual puzzle layouts can be excellently designed.

 

 

 

A small mining operation in HO scale is the theme, still a lot to be decided upon. Here are some photos utilizing my shoebox.

The Hopper will go from the mine (above track) out onto the Ore Trestle, where it will be dumped into a barge or equivalent.

For More inspiration, please visit his site, which features HUNDREDS of fantastic layouts that can be built on a shelf, in a briefcase, inside a pizza box or a shoebox, as a traditional diorama, or even as small as a CD case.

http://carendt.com/

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/

Building a 4 Lane Concrete Street in HO scale

Ok, first let’s pick a spot to place our street. In my case, I’m using it to depict the “main drag” in town, a heavily used street that features four lanes. It crosses four tracks, one mainline, one siding, and a pair of industrial spurs. This road is built from 0.60″ styrene sheet with a cork base to elevate it to the level of the rails. The Styrene looks most like concrete streets, and the pavement is scored using a utility knife and a ruler into 20 foot squares for expansion and contraction (*in the actual street)

First cut the sheet cork about 45 scale feet across in whatever direction you want the road to go. Cork is available at craft and hardware stores in a variety of thicknesses (buy whichever thickness you deem best to match your track’s cork height.) Next using a HOT glue gun, attach the cork to your bench work, use utility knife to cut away extra you might have mis-cut.

Next, locate a plastics store. California has “TAP plastics” and you can get syrene in a variety of thicknesses, down to 0.30 in some stores. (The Santa Rosa Location) 0.60 is available in most plastic stores and comes in large sheets, which you can have cut down to a more manageable size to transport home.

Using your space constraints as a guide (the edge of the rails being a most notable constraint to the size and legnth of the road, you mark the areas in which the track intersects the large piece of styrene, then using your utility knife, score and snap the styrene, laying it into place to see if it fits. Adjust as needed, and move onto the next step.

Next, take your utility knife, flipping the knife upside down for scoring, not cutting. Take your ruler and measure 20 (the middle of the street) in and score a line down the center of the street. Now, perpendicular to your vertical line, score expansion joints every 20 feet.

Once that is done take some cheap gray auto primer and spray your styrene road gray. (Make sure to do this outside.)

Next, Road markings.

I was pretty conservative with my road markings because I couldn’t find my magazine copy of “Realistic Layouts 4″ which includes plenty of information on building excellent looking roads.

Using the MDOT (Michigan DOT) diagram for railroad crossings, I marked the road accordingly.
MDOT guidelines are available here: MDOT Railroad Crossing Guidelines
and HERE.

Using a PRISMACOLORWhite colored pencil, some masking tape, and my trusty scale ruler, I marked the requisite two-foot thick stop line, located 15 feet from the center line of the track, or 8 feet from the descended arms of a crossing gate. (This crossing is protected by pneumatic gates controlled by a crossing tower.

I did a single solid white line down the center of the street as well, in line with the MDOT diagram.

Next, I checked for clearance on the industrial spur to see if I needed a “Keep Clear” area in the section of road occupied by the Union ICE truck. It doesn’t look like I need that painted on my roadway.

Then, using a mix of craft acrylics I began to weather the road. Adding the tire marks from the thousand+ daily cars that travel over this road, adding the oil drops in front of each stop line, and then after making all that dark-hued detail, I went in with some bragdon enterprises weathering powder, their gray powder, and toned the color back to a concrete color, which isn’t shown in the above photograph.

Here’s what the un-weathered road looks like. It’s nice, but not realistic.

I hope this gives you an Idea for your next scale thoroughfare.

Roadbuilding in Scale

 

THIS ARTICLE IS GOING TO BE RE-WRITTEN.

 CHECK BACK SOON.

NEW PHOTOS AND TEXT TO COME.

 

Roads have perplexed modelers for decades on which type of material is best for roads. Like many modelers, I have used a variety of materials to model different kinds of roads. Basically, when I want to build a road, street, Avenue, driveway, parking lot, or dirt or gravel road I chose a material that best represents the actual material.

For Parking lots, I use Water putty, I also use water putty for streets that have rails embedded in them.

For Residental Streets, I use Non-Skid tread, usually used for boats for it’s subtle texture and perfect width.

 
Driveways can be made from cut “shirt” non-corrugated cardboard.

Dirt and Gravel Roads can be made from smoothed out sculptamold, with gravel embedded in the scuptamold. It’s best to dye the sculptamold a brown color before smushing the gravel in place.

For Concrete Avenues, like the one we’re going to see laid down, we’re going to use 0.60″ styrene atop a base of sheet cork, with stripwood crossings. In the past I have used “elmer board” but it warps and doesn’t look realistic.

Example of Elmer Board Street:

Here’s an In-Progress photograph of the Cork-Styrene Road, made to look like weathered a Concrete Avenue:

Tune in for our next post describing how to lay down, paint, mark and weather a four lane styrene Avenue.

The El Camino Citrus Association in 3D!

Another Fine 3D building model from Textual Creations, based from my plans (with some revised dimensions) of the Classic El Camino Packing house located in Claremont, California. The Prototype was demolished in the 1950’s.

 

Only descrepencies between the real building and this 3D model are that there should be another loading door adjacent to the main entry door in the side with the annex. The Sunkist Signs need some revision too, but that’s not a major problem.

El Camino Citrus Association Structure Plans

Here’s some measurements for the El Camino Citrus Association, slightly “selectively compressed” for my HO scale model to fit the available space without being HUGE. (Although it is the largest building on the layout by far.

EDIT: AS OF TODAY, I HAVE a CAD 3D model of the Packing House along with OFFICIAL PLANS AVAILABLE IN A .PDF file for you to Use. e-mail me at:

If you’d like a copy of these plans.

REFER TO PHOTOGRAPHS IN THIS POST FIRST BEFORE CREATING THIS MODEL!!
http://modelrailroading.wordpress.com/2008/03/31/modelgenic-buildings-1-el-camino-citrus-assn/

 

 

Remember to bevel the bottoms of the Arches on a 45* slope from the drawing one 1ft downwards. (The thickness of the walls is 1 foot.)