Lackawanna boxcars part 2

The last blog post focused on upgrading a pair of Accurail plastic HO scale 36-foot boxcars to follow Lackawanna prototypes. One of the details to remove are the door braces. In the lead image, I used an X-Acto #17 chisel blade to carefully remove the bulk of the molded on brace. Use a new blade, apply slow pressure, and wiggle the blade slightly to keep cutting the detail.

Continue reading “Lackawanna boxcars part 2”

Lackawanna boxcars, part 1

DL&W 3855 looks like it was refreshed in the 1915 image taken by company photographer Watson B. Bunnell from the Lackawanna Collection at Steamtown NPS.

I’ve been planning to add a pair of Lackawanna boxcars to the freight car fleet. They had 15,295 boxcars listed in the October 1926 ORER. This isn’t a top ten overall quantity but they had the sixth most boxcars of railroads serving the Northeastern states. DL&W cars could have arrived on the Allegheny Yard branch in Pittsburgh via the Buffalo, Rochester & Pittsburgh connection. Plus, I like how their fleet looks.

Continue reading “Lackawanna boxcars, part 1”

Weathering Ideas

Photo X4939, Railfan.net ‘erielack’ E-Mail List Photo Archive

I recently came across this 1926 image featuring a couple of boxcars on the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western railroad in New Jersey. Let’s take a good look at the weathering on these cars. They have obviously seen some mileage as the lettering is faded. Some streaks are visible from water and a little dust is apparent. But there’s much more here that we can model. Click on any image here to review a larger size.

The images on this blog post were originally taken by William B Barry, Jr., in his service as a DL&W company photographer. Thousands of historic DL&W photographs have been scanned my NPS Steamtown and can be found through the Erie Lackawanna E-Mail List Photo Archive.

Continue reading “Weathering Ideas”

All the Way from Bippus

Erie Railroad company photo, Steamtown NPS, Image #A-417. The original image can be accessed through this link.

 

One of the activities I’ve enjoyed the most with my morning coffee is trolling through the latest image uploads from the Steamtown National Park Service to the Erie Lackawanna email list photo archive. There are about 16 images posted each day, mostly historical Delaware, Lackawanna, & Western company photos. I find something to learn from at least one of the images. Since the first of the year, four of the images have been from Erie Railroad glass plate negative taken about 1909, like this image of the Bippus, Indiana depot that leads today’s blog post.

Continue reading “All the Way from Bippus”

What’s in the Yard? – 2

The DL&W Freight House in Orange, NJ, December 1920

DL&W company photo, Steamtown NPS, Image #X1689.

Ray Breyer is back with another detailed look at the freight cars in a period image. This time, Ray has three images to use from the same facility and were taken on the same day. Click on any image here to view a larger size.

As an early rail modeler I’m constantly on the lookout for high-quality photos of period railroading, whether it’s my favorite prototype’s infrastructure, rolling stock or engines. I’m also looking for good images in context, showing why things may look the way they do, especially the area surrounding a given image’s viewpoint. Finally, just about any halfway decent period is fair game, since it can highlight rare freight equipment or ‘general atmosphere’ which may prove to be useful when working on my owl layout’s scenery.

Continue reading “What’s in the Yard? – 2”