Notes on Designing, Building, and Operating Model Railroads
A hobby adventure
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 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.
In our freight car building and detailing adventures, we sometimes forget about finishing the wheelsets and trucks that carry the latest builds around our model railroads. Here are a couple of tips to enhance these components and the final freight car effort.
It has been a while since my last post. My hobby activity ebbs and flows and sometimes there isn’t much inspiring a report here. At a recent op session on an HO scale Las Cruces layout, Mike (the owner) noted a need for more box cars. I had recently gone through a few boxes of stored equipment and had found a couple of old kits that were built but not quite completed. He has another op session soon, so I thought it would be good to ready these for service. Details on Mike’s layout were posted earlier.
Continue reading “Weathering Railroad Models – A Pair of Box Cars”
Building models using a minimum of commercial parts or set directions is often referred to as scratchbuilding. Anyone who is building a model railroad that closely follows a specific prototype location will need to scratchbuild a number of structures to capture the look and feel of the real place. In some cases, commercial models can be modified and altered to represent an actual structure but those instances are infrequent. Scratchbuilding has challenged many model railroaders over the years. The fear of failing or messing up a project inhibits many modelers. I think all model railroaders should attempt at least one scratchbuilt structure. I recently finished two small buildings and learned new skills in the process. Click on any image here to review a large size. Let’s take a look at one of these projects.