Recovery, Delayed Posts and the flat-out best Chain-Link Fence tutorial ever!

I wrote back in December 2021 that I caught “the virus” and was hoping to be over it in short order. Yeah, well that didn’t happen.  Read on…

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Recovery and Delayed Posts

“What doesn’t kill you gives you a set of unhealthy coping mechanisms and a dark sense of humour” – Unknown

So, what started out as an optimistic case of COVID-19, turned into a 7-week absence from work, including 5 weeks (solid) of 24 hour-a-day coughing fits, being as weak as a kitten, and 2 plus months of continual work to get back to my fitness level. I get that everyone’s story with COVID is different. I was lucky not to have ended up at the hospital, but it was a close-run thing. Thankfully, Australia’s public health system held up and is outstanding; I had a fantastic team on my side made up of my GP, The Royal Melbourne Hospital‘s COVID triage team, Nurse-On-Call, family and friends to help out. Seems that raising a child is not the only thing that requires a village.

I’m still finding that overwhelming tiredness at the end of the day remains. Each day that goes by, thank the fates, I am still here and getting back toward normal. While my wife caught COVID, it was less aggressive with her than with me. It would have been better not to have caught it at all. I’ve now had my 3rd vaccination and hope not to catch it again. Let’s just hope that it turns more benign as time goes on and as we become used to having it in the world at large.

If you’ve been through it I hope that you are O.K. and that your family and friends likewise are on the mend.

Needless to say, posting has been delayed as life, in general, has taken priority. I hope that you will stick with me as I get back on track to work on finishing the last post in the “Operations on a Maintenance Centre Layout (Part 7 – Op till you Drop)” series. In this post, which I’ve begun working on again will take us through an op session on the layout. I aim to finish that soon.

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Chain-Link Fence Tutorial

Boomer-Diaries on YouTube has been a must-watch, that I found during my time watching ‘everything’ on YouTube during my convalescence. He recently posted what I feel is the best Chain Link fence tutorial I’ve ever seen or read. I’ve linked it below. Watch and enjoy as you get a masterclass in how-to modelling, painting and dressing a great scenic item.

Once you go down this rabbit-hole though, you may be some time, to misquote Capt Robert Oates (of Scott’s doomed Antartcic expedition) as Boomer diaries has a big collection of outstnading videos on the current layout build.

Talk more to you all soon.

Andrew

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Resources

This series so far:

• Aaron Riley’s Metra Service Centre Layout
• Operations on a Maintenance Centre Layout (Part 1)
• Operations on a Maintenance Centre Layout (Part 2)
• Operations on a Maintenance Centre Layout (Part 3 – Game Theory)
• Operations on a Maintenance Centre Layout (Part 4 – Setting Up)
• Maintenance Centre Layout Operations (Part 5 – Downloads)
• Maintenance Centre Layout Operations (Part 6 – Service Patterns & Impacts)

Staying in Contact

Interested in keeping in touch or discussing posts, pages and ideas?  You can do that in several ways by:

• • Commenting on this post (I read and answer each one)
  • Sending me a note using our About page (email)
  • Connecting with us on Facebook at Andrew’s Trains

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Site Seeing – the Realistic Rust edition

I’m always looking for better techniques to model rust weathering. This video comes courtesy of a post I found on the MRH website by YouTuber MarklinofSweden. He shows how to create a realistic corrosion effect very simply. Take a look at the video I’m sure you’ll be impressed.

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Modelling realistic rust

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Got another technique that works for you? Please share it with me and if you found this post useful please like and comment. I’m really interested in what you’re up to with your weathering journey.

Site Seeing – Sebastopol Shops RIP Track 2

It’s officially Australia Day so I thought I’d share more work done weathering the Southern Boxcar underframe and sides. It’s interesting to see how the added brake gear (see more about that here) has become just another part of the model, and no longer seems to dominate the underframe, just as I had hoped it would.

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Southern Boxcar 36188

I’m relatively happy with the work so far. There is work to be done on the patches to tone them down “just” a touch.

Beyond that though the underframe weathering is what I now consider to be just right (considering that it will be hard to see). I had to add a bright white background behind the model for it to show up.  Very pleased with how this work has come out. It looks perfectly functional, and most importantly, looks the business.

I’ve weighted the model appropriate to my needs (that’s roughly the cube root of the on rail weight). This is heavy by the ‘normal’ standards, but with the Kadee sprung and equalised trucks under them my cars run like dream.

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Tasks remaining

• Rust spots need adding on the side, especially on the sliding door (right) side of the car as this area takes a real beating in service. There’ll be less on the left side. I’ll be using Ken Patterson’s oil weathering process, as outlined in the video in the resources section below. I’ve not used this particular method before so it will be interesting to see how it works for me. I’ve weathered in oils before and enjoy them very much, this will be one new technique for quick and dirty rust weathering.
• The roof needs to be attached to the car and I’ll be weathering it to match the side weathering. I always do the sides before I do the roof because much of the run off ends up on the car sides.

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Resources

Ken Patterson’s Oil Weathering method:

Sebastopol Shops Update – More Brake Mods

Work has been busy and I’ve not had much time to model, however I did get time yesterday to begin the weathering process on a couple of car underframes that have come through the brake rod upgrade program. Pictures below…

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Southern 36188

An E&C Shops kit this PS-1 50′ single door boxcar has been in the shops recently for brake rodding updates. With the deeper side sills it provides a good view of what I’m trying to achieve through the upgrade program – adding ‘something‘ between the bottom of the car and rails.

From a lower point of view the rodding detail on this car disappears into the background clutter of hard angles and shadow (image taken in reflected sunlight on my workbench – late afternoon – with nice and flat tones)

Taken at normal railfan height the rodding is there and fools the eye, at least my eye, into believing that this is a super detailed car. Rolling by you’d never guess anything otherwise.

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XAF10 class prototype car

Work continues on the XAF prototype car, an Athearn Blue Box kit. I’ve had my concerns throughout the upgrade that things would stick out like a sore thumb. I needn’t have worried. I like what’s emerging.

This is the car with all brake rodding work completed. I was worried that the brake rodding would be too obvious using the 20 thou brass.

After applying the base of the undercar weathering the experiment has borne sweet fruit. This looks much more like I wanted it to look. Same lighting and location showing the hard angles and shadows. Once on its wheels and with further weathering applied the rodding will disappear into the background, yet have that wow factor as it goes past.

Thanks for stopping by. Comments? Questions? Let me know.

Site seeing – the oil soaked track edition – April 15

Mike Cougill over at OST Publications is an inspiration when it comes to modelling track. His work is in O scale sure, his techniques however can be used in any scale to spruce up, or in this case make a mess of, otherwise perfectly good track.

His recent post about modelling oil soaked track is a point in case. Simple, presented in a straightforward style and always willing to experiment Mike’s technique provides a great result.

Image courtesy of Mike Cougill

Mike’s site is full of great articles and ideas. Very well worth the time taken to visit.

Site update: 02 December – More weathering photos

I’ve completed the remaining weathering of the body of the 40 foot Hi-Cube. There may be one or two more minor tweaks that I’ll make to get that just right look, overall I am very happy with this cars look. As an experiment using multiple techniques that I’ve not used altogether before I’m very happy and will try this next on a HO scale car. Where are we up to?

Flash on showing most of the car completed

The second round of body and roof weathering has gone on. Keeping in mind that this car ran mostly in the dryer states and most of that in Texas in my modelling location there is a preponderance of dust and rust and not a lot of rain weathering. I believe that I have another of these cars in my O scale stash and will document the weathering as I go in the next week for all of you.

Interior shot showing the walls and weathering

I am particularly pleased with the internal look of the car. I hand painted the interior since I wanted a little tooth on the interior of the car, adding some Acrylic Painting Medium to the cheapo acrylic paint to thin and help it settle.

Close up of the wall and floor weathering

Minor touch ups to the door openings remain, to add the dings and rusting, prevalent around boxcar doors. Overall I’m pretty happy with the outcome. There are still the trucks to do, but we’re getting close. More again soon.

Site update – November 29

I’ve been laid up the last two days due to some (hopefully) simple skin surgery to remove another unusual mole. Being unable to lift or move too much this week gave me some much-needed time to catch up on some modelling that I’ve put off for far too long. Today’s work has been added to the weathering section, and shows Atlas O’s completely incorrect model of the Cotton Belt 40 foot Hi Cube.

A little history

The real SP & SSW cars in SP class B-70-36 are both small in number and used in captive service for high volume – low weight appliance service from major appliance manufacturers to distribution centres. The cars were 40′-6″ long hi-cube box cars; they were all built by Pacific Car & Foundry in 1966 and had 5001 cubic foot capacity, Hydra-Cushion underframes and 10′-6″ Youngstown sliding doors.

Image courtesy T. E. Cobb via railgoat.railfan.net

They came to be nicknamed the “Ugly Ducklings” due their awkward appearance. Built for appliance service and used later in their life for other roles the SP cars in class B-70-36 were numbered as follows:

• SP 659100-659111 and had DF-B loaders

The Cotton Belt cars (the highest number) in class B-70-36 were numbered as follows:

• SSW 36014-36126 DF, DF-B, Car Pac loaders

The car being weathered, as provided by Atlas, is car number 36000 which was a wooden sheathed car of a completely different class. The car is actually a Pullman-Standard built Hi-Cube boxcar built for the D&RGW in November of 1967 (see image below). Built for Whirlpool appliance service D&RGW’s 67422 (shown below) had Equipco load dividers and was assigned to load on the Erie Lackawanna at Marion, Ohio. 67422 was also equipped with Pullman-Standard’s ‘Damage Free’ Hydroframe and was painted in the Grande’s contemporary ‘Action Road’ livery.

Image courtesy of James Belmont via railpictures.net

Weathering the model

On this model I’ve tried a multi-disciplinary approach. I’ve used just about everything in my weathering tool chest. Oils, Acrylics, RustAll and Weathering Powders. It’s a bit of an experiment in seeing how to integrate all the different techniques I’ve used. You can head on over to the new page now or take a look at a couple of images of the work today.

Early afternoon shot of the weathering on the roof

Lower resolution image showing the weathering on the floor

I’ll be posting more photos tomorrow as I work on finishing this car. Enjoy the full-page.

Site seeing: 01 November – Model Railroad Hobbyist Painting EBook

The nice folks over at Model Railroad Hobbyist have available for download (to MRH Subscribers only) the Guide to acrylic painting … in a post-Floquil world. Written by Joe Fugate, this 42 page PDF (zipped download) provides a means for railway modellers to work beyond the end of the Floquil model railroad paint era.

Designed to get you where you need to go when repainting Floquil railroad colours using paints from the following manufacturers:

• Vallejo Model Air / Game Air
• Badger MODELflex, and
• Model Master

This guide provides a timely and useful map to help get the right colour for your next model rail painting project. You can find the download location at:

http://model-railroad-hobbyist.com/forum/170

Keep in mind though that you need to be a subscriber. No payment required so if you are not already a subscriber, you really ought to be. Each month the MRH team produce an outstanding free magazine packed with great stories, information, and resources. Plus there are the forums. Yep you guessed it – I’m a fan and have been since day one.

 

Site seeing: 23 October – The weathering I’m not worthy edition

Back in August I showcased the work of Martin Wellberg, from Borne in the Netherlands. He’s back after working on another set of large models. On to the visual feast.

Site 1: Martin Wellberg’s ‘Dirty Stuff 2’ on Freerails

I’m not going to write too much about this, this is entirely weathered train porn, it’s that simple. First let’s look over Martin’s HO Scale B&O Boxcar:

Second let’s take a look at what I consider to be the best weathered freight car I’ve seen:

Hope that you enjoyed these images. Thanks go out to Martin for being so willing to share his work.

Site seeing – September 11 – The cause weathering is cool edition

Weathering is cool. Having said that, it is an art that takes time and experience to master. Today’s modeller has a very skilful eye and has nailed so many subjects that I just had to share.

Site 1: Dean Bradley’s Rails in Scale blog

Courtesy of Dean Bradley (http://railsinscale.blogspot.com.au/)

Focused primarily on NSW railways in the years between 1986 and 1989 Dean’s work is very skilful. I showed a teaser image at the end of my post from September 09 this year of one of his 46 class electric locos. Got some nice feedback from that and having had the time to look over Dean’s other posts wanted to share his work.

There are not a lot of ‘instructions’ regarding his weathering technique which is a shame. However, Dean’s results speak for themselves. About the best blog post for understanding Dean’s full weathering process is from 24 October 2013 and titled ‘On Track models NHEF Hopper – weathering tips‘.

Site 2: Dean’s Facebook page

Apart from being a very good modeller and weathering artist, Dean is also a manufacturer and contract weatherer. Have a look at his Facebook page for more information and for lots of model photos of his work.