Notes on Designing, Building, and Operating Model Railroads

Canadian Pacific automobile box car

Here’s an HO scale resin freight car kit that took me longer than expected to complete. It’s a 40-foot, Canadian Pacific (CPR) automobile box car that was offered by Yarmouth Model Works.

Take me back to Tulsa

I recently attended the 2022 Layout Design and Operations Weekend in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I signed up to operate on three layouts and to present on Prototype Inspiration for Manageable Size Layouts. I had a blast!

Painting wheelsets

“How to you paint your wheels?” That’s a frequent modeling question. I see it posted on internet forums and hear it at events. Many techniques and tools have been suggested in the model press, on YouTube, and in discussion forums. Here’s what I do.

Vintage vehicles – 2

I took a break from building freight cars after an odd issue appeared on two boxcars when I applied a flat coat. I started building a Jordan Highway Miniatures 1923 Mack dump truck kit. After building it, I built another. I’ll need several vehicles for the future layout, so I kept building those kits. Oh, and I did solve the issue on the boxcars. Those details are in the previous post. Let’s take a close look at these Jordan kits.

Fixing a finish

There are few things more frustrating than arriving at the end of a long term modeling project only to have an issue arise with the finish coat. That’s my opinion at least.