Notes on Designing, Building, and Operating Model Railroads
A hobby adventure
Many model railroaders have projects that have been set aside long ago for one reason or another. I’m no different. You saw in the last post how six USRA box cars were finally completed, five years after the initial start of construction. I took some ribbing about those, especially since they were plastic kits. I expected those comments but long term projects are part of the hobby. I just finished up two more HO scale freight cars that go back a few more years.
Several box car projects have been completed recently and it’s really great to have these in service on the Wheeling Freight Terminal. It makes a big difference when six undecorated cars are replaced by six cars that are painted, lettered, and weathered. I started these five years ago, so it is doubly satisfying to complete these models. Click on any image here to review a larger size.
Many different tools are used to build the models for our railroads. We have all collected a variety of tools over the years. From pliers to knives, tweezers to paint brushes, metal rulers to screwdrivers, our tool boxes and workbenches have quite the selection at hand. I’ve used a few tools recently that are not common but they were very helpful in completing a few projects.
I recently received photos and descriptions of the latest models Jim in West Virginia. I realized he had sent several other photos over the last year. It’s been a little while since we had a virtual RPM post, so let’s catch up with Jim’s work! A list of upcoming RPM events is reviewed at the end of this post. As with most images on the blog, click on any to review a larger size.
I recently started decaling some box cars that I’ve had for a few years. I showed my wife the progress on the Rock Island car seen above and she rolled her eyes and mentioned how difficult the work looked. A comment from a friend in an unrelated conversation a couple of days later hit on a similar note.