Gorre and Daphetid cars

Picked up a bunch of G&D cars plus 3 undec cars for only 40 bucks. I've got decals to letter the caboose and the 2 reefers. The reefers used to to be yellow, no lettering that I repainted red. I wanted red reefers to match the passenger cars. The yellow reefers are numbered in the low 100's, so I'm going to number the red ones 150 and 151. I'm just going to build the kits up as designed,  no super detailing, just metal wheels, Kadees and some weathering.

I'll put and interior and some people in the coaches, maybe lights too.

Quincy enginehouse

I'm building 2 models of the aforementioned enginehouse. I picked one up on eBay and found that the seller had started it and glue wood siding over the cardboard instead of corrugated metal as per the prototype. So I decided to go ahead and build two of them, a wood sheathed version and a scratch built one with corrugated metal.

The wood one was built first and was a very straight forward build. I used a Peco engine inspection pit and Woodland scenics LED lamps. The fence is Central Valley and a few figures and detail castings were added to the diorama.

The other building was built using individual board on board. I used the kits corrugated metal and weather it using AK washes and chalks. 

Above you can see the walls before I added the metal sheathing. I wasn't sure we're or how big the openings for the tool room and machine shop were, so I made a guess. I made both openings towards the rear, thinking that if they were working on something, they would like to be out of the weather and could have the engine sitting partially outside and not block the openings.

Below is the assembled structure.

Not sure if I'll finish the roof since I want to add interior details later. You see that I re-weathered the tool room.

Here are both buildings 

The structure on the left (diorama) is for sale. $350 which includes shipping. If interested, drop me a note.

Spaceway1999@yahoo.com

Finally an update

Hi everyone!
Sorry that it's been so long without an update! I've been remodeling my house and now it's done!! The kitchen was the last ( and most expensive) part of the project.

Cabinets got added to this area 

Pink and yellow tile! So 1950s 

Demo time!

Add more cabinets and put the microwave over the stove

More counter space and I also added a dishwasher.

Put in recessed lighting and Led strip lights under the cabinets near the floor. Used Hue adjustable led strip lights. Can control them with my phone. Lots of fun!

Hon3 Engine Terminal complete

Finally finished up the engine terminal. Finished building the Campbell sandhouse, I built it with the sandtower on the other end similar to the Chama tower layout. Dragged it outside for a few pictures.

Need to tone down the grass a bit I think.

My friend for whom I've built this for will add various details to this. This whole thing only weighs about 10 pounds or so. Very light and easy to carry. The coal tower is removable. This was a fun project and I'm happy the way it turned out. Thanks for following along ! I'm going to finish the Westerfield cars I started earlier and then ???

Westerfield car builds

While I'm waiting for my sandhouse to arrive, I thought I'd build though some of my stack of Westerfield car kits. I've probably built over a hundred of these over the years. This batch I got on eBay for around $12 a car. I like to build them in batches, as it seems to go faster.

 

I'm building a W1 B&O hopper, 2 PRR H21a hoppers and a PRR GTRA gondola.

I made a new deck for the gon using Builders in Scale laserwood. The kit had a cast "wood" floor that contains lead for weight, but I like the look of real wood. I'll paint the insides of the gon prior to assembly, that makes it easier to weather for me.

 I work on a glass table which helps to keep everything square.

Below is a pic of the engine terminal waiting for sandhouse. The white spot to the left of the turntable is were it goes.

All the main scenery is in, roundhouse installed. Man this is a lame'o picture.

However you can see my refinished floors and fresh paint on the walls. "We want train pictures!"

I'll drag this outside and take some nice pictures after the sandhouse in installed

 

 

Scenery on HOn3 engine terminal

After doing some major rework to my house, new bathroom, painting, new molding and new fixtures, I'm back to my engine terminal. Doing scenery is one of the things I really enjoy doing. It's nice to see the bare wood get covered and start looking like it's a part of nature.
First thing I did was to drag the layout outside and airbrush the track. I used different shades of grey, umbers and sienna's for colours.

I start by spraying the sides of the rails with a mix of burnt and raw sienna. I then paint the ties by spraying straight down with burnt umber. I then highlight using light to dark greys. After the paint hardens off in 20 min or so, I then use chalks and go over ties with some earth colours.

Here I'm starting the rock retaining wall

 One side is done. Used cinders for the ballast on top. Later, I also added some coal that would have spilled from the gons during unloading

 

More progress on the other side

The ground cover in place so far will have more shades and texture added. I like to build things up in layers, this includes paint, weathering and scenery. Here is a overall look so far.

Today I'll finish up the ground cover, add more colour and textures plus weeds. One building I don't have is a sandhouse. If anyone has one to sell (or donate) please let me know. (Spaceway1999@yahoo.com)

Wiring the Hon3 engine terminal

Between working on my bathroom remodeling project and this, I've just about finished wiring this up.
I wired this so that if I decide to put blocks in at some later date, it will be real easy to do. I highly recommend using some sort of connectors on the wires, makes it real easy to make changes, plus don't have to worry about a stray wire strand causing a short.

In the picture above, you can see I labeled at the tracks using a green marker. RH5 means roundhouse track 5. Also, next to the terminal strip I also wrote the track id on the wood

A benefit to building a module is I can set it up on the coffee table and work from the comfort of my couch

Since I'm using DCC, I'm ganging all the wire feeds together

Neat and tidy is the key to trouble free wiring. There will be 2 feeds that go to each terminal strip to supply track power

Bought cable anchors (the small black squares) to keep the wiring tidy.

Now that wiring is done. I can turn my attention to scenery.