Making up for lost time

Hello Everyone

Well as I promised there has been a lot of model building and I need to get them on the blog so you all can see what I have been building.

This Chicago Great Western gondola is an old brass car I found in a box of broken trains I used for parts.  I have had it for several years and one day I took it out of my projects cabinet and decided to create a car to carry a load of structural steel.  There are Kadee couplers and Athearn diecast sprung trucks under the car along with Plastruct, Selley Custsom Finishes, and Cal-scale detail parts.  It is painted gloss black with Microscale and Champion Decals finished with Testors Dullcote.  The Chicago Great Western is a railroad often overlooked by modelers and I am guilty of the same.  With so many other roads in the Midwest some of us forget there were unsung heroes who moved the freight right under our noses and we did not recognize their existence.  This is the first of two CGW cars I had planned to build. 

This Chicago and North Western boxcar came to be after I watched a CVision video showing a C&NW train passing through Peshtigo, Wisconsin.  I noticed a boxcar with these same markings in the train and I decided to search through my decals to see if I had the correct ones to make a similar car.  Well I did and here is the car.  The car is another badly worn out Athearn boxcar found at a local train show for a couple of dollars.  I stripped it down to the bare metal and completely rebuilt the car using Plastruct, Selley Custom Finishes, Cal-Scale, and Walthers detail parts.  C&NW had several of these 40-foot PS-1 boxcars on their lines throughout the Midwest and Plains states serving grain elevators and wood products customers.  Many began to be rebuilt and upgraded in the late 1950's after the Clinton, Iowa car shops were opened. This car will operate on my 3-rail layout and is equipped with Lionel die-cast sprung trucks.

Thank you for visiting the blog, and more will be coming soon so stay tuned.

Time to play catch up

Wow, February was the last time I posted.

HOLY COW!!!!!

I am so sorry that this has taken forever, some amazing things happened. I have been churning out a large collection of freight cars and other projects. I also had an amazing chance to go to the St. Louis Railroad Prototype Modelers show. I have had a very busy few months so let me start to make things better by showing you some of the cars that I have built and were able to show at the St. Louis RPM.
This C&NW 50 foot single door boxcar was scratch built from some metal sides I had found in a box of parts and cars bought several years ago.  The remainder of the car was salvaged from various boxcar components that I had accumulated over the years.  It rides on Pecos Valley Brass 2-rail trucks and contains Walthers, Selley custom Finishes, Cal-Scale, Plastruct, and  All-Nation parts.  The car is lettered in the as delivered paint scheme for these cars that were assigned to freight service.  Several of these cars were also assigned to express service when delivered in the early 1940's.

This Milwaukee Road diesel fuel tank car is scratch built from parts of a Walthers tank portion and a Thomas brass tank car frame.  It includes parts from Cal-Scale, Selley Custom Finishes, and Plastruct.   It rides on Auel Bettendorf sprung trucks and will be used on my Proto Hi-Rail layout.  The Milwaukee Road used several of these diesel fuel tank cars in outlying terminals to save costs on building large, expensive fuel tanks in smaller terminals were only 2-4 engines were being fueled during a 1 week period. 

There you go everyone, and trust me all my recent builds will make it to the blog as soon as I am able to post.