Notes on Designing, Building, and Operating Model Railroads
A hobby adventure
I bought ten pair of the Walthers Proto T-Section Bettendorf trucks (TSB) awhile back. I thought I should prep them so they are ready for the new Accurail box cars. You can see the before and after view in the lead image. Let’s go through the steps to make these trucks a little better.
As the calendar moves ahead, it’s time for an update on prototype modeler events. The St Louis event was a big success. David Hussey has posted a gallery of photos from the St Louis meet. More events are scheduled in the next few months. Let’s take a look!
The Wheeling Freight Terminal has monthly operating sessions. A message is sent to several interested modelers and operators in the area about a week beforehand. I’ve typically been operating on the fourth Thursday of the month and a layout in nearby Las Cruces hosts a session on the second Thursday. August was busy for the usual crew and only Robbie was able to attend the recent session.
After sharing the above image with other modelers, someone asked if I would be adding rivets to the model. The box car is an HO scale Tichy Train Group USRA single sheathed box car kit and apparently the end castings were tooled without rivets on the sides of the end piece to ease the production process. In the image above, note the smooth vertical strip at the very end of the car. I had heard these kit ends lacked some detail on the end castings but I was unaware of the specific nature of the issues. I had a package of Archer Resin Rivet Head decals on hand so I thought I’d put them to use.
A recent weathering blog post generated questions about the washes used in the processes. Let’s take a look at the materials and the steps I use in applying weathering washes to freight cars.