CNR 4-6-0 H-6-g Ten Wheeler

Original

This is my Van Hobbies CNR H-6-g 4-6-0 Ten Wheeler that came with a can motor. When I acquired this loco it was factory painted numbered 1369 with tilted wafers. I carefully removed the numbering from the tender, loco side and the number boards. The easiest way to remove old decals is to paint on decal setting solution, let is sit for a couple of minutes and then remove them with the tip of an Xacto blade.  If you are careful you can get the decal off without scratching the paint. I also use a q-tip with alcohol on it to sweep up the little flecks of decal. I added brass raised numbers to the cab. 
I installed a Soundtraxx 750 D&RGW decoder in the tender. While I had this open I installed an LED backup light.
I also installed a 1.1" speaker in the tender. Before installing the speaker I drew a template in Auto Cad and laid this on the floor of the tender and then drilled a series of professional looking holes in the floor. I then air brushed some black to cover the bare brass seen in those drill holes. A Soundtraxx double sided gasket was used to stick the speaker to the floor and because I did it this way there was no need for a speaker enclosure. I am considering installing a high bass speaker in the future.

 When I installed the decoder in this tender I made my own wire plug by cutting what I need from strip connectors. The connector is left inside the tender to make it tidy. I never take the tender off the engines very often, but if you need to do this you just have to remove the shell on the tender to disconnect the wiring plug. I filed a small notch on the bottom of the wall of the tender for the wires to pass through to the engine. I could not go through the floor because it would have interfered with the movement of the truck on the tender. 
This loco looks great and runs nice but as of this writing it will still only pull five 40' box cars on level track. I need to spend more time on trying to add weight or making some other adjustments so it will pull better. I also added semi scale Kadee couplers on the front and back. I painted the sun shades, driver rims and rods black. To paint the rims I just put it on my test track and give it some speed and then just held the brush against the rim.

The glass cover on the head light was done by putting white glue on the inside edge and then putting glue on a stick and dragging across the head light. It dries perfecty clear.

Foster Fire Hall

 

This is a building that I used to fill in a spot. This building is scratch built and the measurments came form the Bawlf AB Fire Hall that is still standing. Bawlf is just east of Camrose. It was a relatively easy build that makes quite a nice looking building. There is no interior modeled because when standing at the original building from 30' away you could not see anything on the inside through the windows. This is very typical of all buildings if you look at them with no lights on in the inside. I plan to add a fire truck out side if I can find one for the 1950's. The tower on the building was used to hang wet fire hoses to dry them out after use so that they don't rot. This was needed because of the material that fire hoses were made from back then.

Here I have added the dirt up next to the foundation so it doesn't look like it is sitting on top of the ground. I have also added grass, static grass, a tree at the back and added a little gravel to the drive way. In my home town back in 1959 we still had old style phones and a telephone operator in town. This operator had the ability to make all the phones ring at once both in town and rurally. They would then make an announcement that there was a fire somewhere. They could also use it to make community announcements. It was a big loss when we went to the new exchange around 1967. 

D7 Cat with blade

This kit is from Woodland Scenics which is not the best made kit. It needs filing and filling to get it together. The best part of the kit is the tracks and the blade. You get what you pay for and the price point is ok. But you can add some things to make it better.

A picture of the real thing

Here is the model I have. I have added leavers for stearing and the control lever for the cable lift, Add some weathering and looks good. 

Here is the finished model

JI Case Curved Roof Dealership

 This is a picture of the model of the curved roof dealership.   This is the test pattern which are cut from .04" card stock. I get to test how it goes together and make any changes to the drawings before I cut the final parts on the laser. I need 2 supports for the roof on the inside so I added these to the drawing. The walls will be stucco which will be cut from 100 grit sand paper and glued to the exterior walls. The roof is made from .02" styrene. The shingles are scaled texture printed on paper and glued to the stryrene with 77 spray glue. I did not do a detailed interior as you really can't see much inside the structure easily. You can also see the joint in the cornner that helps to make it more sturdy and improves aliginment when putting a structure together. If you want 45degree corner you can't use this because you can't hide the joint. To hide the joint you have to add corner boards. I will add the door and window openings to the drawing now that I have seen the building.

Below is a picture of the drawing that goes to the laser. I altered the drawing to have a false front on the one end. The half circles are roof supports, 2 are glued to the false front and a couple are put in the middle.

Here is a picture of the 2nd building assembled with the unpainted sandpaper glued to it. The floor is card stock.

The following picture shows the sand paper painted. I just painted the interior with  a brush to give it some texture. The building will not be lit so seeing inside will be limited. This also shows the shingle texture on the roof. It is a texture of ashphault shingles from the internet. I scaled it down to size and joined a few panels together to be able to cover the roof in Inkscape. It is then printed on plain paper and then glued to the .02" styrene sheet. Once this had time to set I glued the roof to the building.

You can see just a slight overlap in the shingles down the center. The shingles sheet had to be cut in half and glued on in 2 pieces so they dropped the right way on both sides of the roof.  I will be able to hide this overlap when I weather it with some chalks. It still needs a chimney, vent pipe and power connection. I will add these after the windows are installed.

The following picture shows the windows and doors installed. The windows and man doors are Tichy and the big doors are scratch built from the remnants of the doors that were cut out of the walls. The 2 side doors are metal overhead doors. The signs are from the internet, scaled down and printed on plain paper and then glued on.

On the inside there is not much detail just a hoist with an old Athern car on it, a 1/64 scale tractor  because it is cheap and 3 or 4 people. You really can't see well inside so the 1/64 tractor looks fine. I may have to put a light in it through the floor??

Here are pictures of the finished model.

Resin kit learnings

Resin Kit Learnings

I have built a few of these kits and used resin detailed parts that I have cast or bought. I find these equally as challenging as any scratch built projects I have completed. There are some beautiful kits out there. I recommend that you start by buying one of these at a swap meet and put it together it will increase your modeling skill and problem solving. If you are not happy then you buy another and learn from that. These skills will build your confidence for when you want to scratch build an item.

 As some of you may know there can be some special challenges that are unique to resin. There are different types of resin you may want to know about.  I will go over how to to fix some problems that may come up with kit parts. I will cover the different types of glues that can be used. There are also steps to prep the resin for painting and additional things that have to be done when painting. 

Resin kits are created because they are cheaper to produce.  They do not require the expensive molds that are needed for injection molding and they can be produced in smaller runs. A lot of these kits would never be produced as injection molded kits. So they are special in this way. As with ALL kits it is very important to read all the instruction carefully then read all the instruction carefully again. You need to handle the parts with more care than injected molded kits as the parts can be brittle and will break if too much force is applied. Resin is easy to file, drill and even tap. They will also be covered in mold release which is used so the rubber molds do not get damaged when removing parts. This extends the life of the rubber molds. I will cover mold release later. 

The more modern kits use what we will call white resin, while some of the older kits were made using a yellow resin that is more brittle and harder to work with. If you are just starting out I would stay away from the yellow ones unless you get them really cheap and use them to learn on but maybe not keep in the end.

You will also may come across parts that have weak spots caused by air bubbles or are slightly warped and have flash that need to be removed. The directions will  instruct you on how to handle this. The parts need to be checked for flash and this can be filed away. When you come across a part that has a thin spot on the back that looks almost opaque or is a hole this doesn't mean the part can't be used. I use autobody filler to fill and reinforce these spots just gently apply it so you do not push it through to the front. Let it dry and sand it smooth. If you come across a part that is warped which usually happens on larger parts like walls or longer pieces then this can be fixed by using a hair dryer or a heat gun. You need a perfectly flat surface to lay the part on.  I use the glass that is on the top of my bench. Lay the part on the glass and evenly heat it with the hairdryer. As it gets hotter it will start to lay flat. Once you think it is flat place something on top of it to hold it down while it cools. This will work about 90% of the time. If it is a thicker part or it is being stubborn I will use the heat gun. You can also place the part in water that is 100C for 2-3 min. Then take it out and lay it flat. Once it has cooled it should hold it's shape. Of course that is not a hundred percent foolproof  as you can see below.  I bought this car  at a swap meet. Then the roof bent up in the middle. It had been heated 3 times both the frame and the roof. I was keeping it just as reference to scratch build a new one someday. 

It is now in the garbage some things just can't be fixed. This rarely happens so do not let it stop you from buying any of the resin kits that are out there.

Here is a picture of a Sylvan CN caboose model built from a kit that some have thought was a brass model. That was an oh baby I got it moment. The one stack has a small tilt from handeling

Mold release is like spraying Pam or silicone on your hands.  It will impede your glueing and painting so you must wash the parts first to remove the mold release.  This is a process you should be doing with all your kits no matter what they are made from. You can use  dish soap or  hand cleaner.  I use an old toothbrush to scrub it clean and then rinse it and allow it to air dry. 

For glueing you do not have many choices AC and epoxy glues are about the only ones that work reliably. AC is fast but epoxy is stronger.  

Now you have it put together and are ready to paint. You should, as with all projects inspect it for fingerprints and oil from your hands and spot clean those areas and let it dry. You just have to be careful with the details. You can chose the type of paint you want to use. I have used acrylic, lacquer and enamel based paints from different companies and all work well.

   Have Fun

Farm Details IH 3 bottom plow

This is another GHQ kit. It was a nice kit to build and comes with some spare parts.  It's necessary to take the time to look at each part and ensure you understand the build.  The instructions are well done. I used CA to glue the parts on.  It is quite a delicate build so you must be gentle as you get further into the build.  It took me about 4 hrs to complete the kit.

      Here is a picture of the real thing 

 I painted it IH red using an airbrush and then hand painted the rims and tires. My model is seen as a new item at the dealership so I left the plow shears red. There is also no weathering on it.

 Can you see the difference between the first two pictures and the last two pictures?

                                                                        These are the final pictures

I saw the paint on the rim still showed red through the white, the wheel on the left side was cockeyed and the red still showed on the left tire. The steel look on the front shear is just a refection it is painted. The camera lets you see things that your eye doesn't pick up. This is why I take so many pictures of my models.  It is necessary for you to decide what you can fix and what you can live with. I also adjusted the left wheel without breaking any thing😊

Farm Details GHQ IH manure spreader

This is a kit from GHQ of a red ( IH model 200) manure spreader. It is a very nicely done kit which took almost no prep work to the castings. You do have to take your time to figure out which pieces go where from the instructions. It is not hard, you just have to take your time.

Here is what a real one looks like.

 Here is the Model

Farm Stone Boat

Here is a little 1hr project. It is called a stone boat because they used to haul stones on I guess. It has 2 4x6" skids and 2x6" planks on top of the skids. There is a chain attached to the end of the skids and could then be hooked up to a tractor or a horse. We had one and it was also used to haul manure from the barn to the field. You forked it on and you froked it off. My grandfather used to haul water in the winter in barrels which worked until you hit a snow drift and tiped them. This usually happened in the last few hundred feet from the house and so back you went so I was told. It had 2 posts on the front with a a board attached to the top of them. You stood behind this if you were driving horses. It was removed when there were no more horses being used. You can haul all kinds of  awkward pieces around the yard. It finally rotted away in the 70's

Refurbished old passenger car

 This was car was bought second hand for $10 and is 60' long.  I use it as my way freight train on the branch line. It only serves two towns with 24" radius curves. It is not intended to be a model of an exact CN car but it is correct for the era. It needed to be repainted on the outside and touched up on the inside. I then added older square CN decals to age it a bit. I also added LED lights to the inside that get power from the axels. The roof was always removable so that helped when I refurbished the car. 

Here it has been sanded to remove paint runs and brush strokes. The glass for the windows was glued in as a single piece on the inside so I cut out masking for the windows on the laser. It only took 40min to draw, cut and install the window masking.

This shows the end view of the masking. I didn't have to mask the door because it is all black along with the diaphragms.

This is the inside of the roof with the 2 lights installed with a connector.

This is the string of LED lights that you would stuff in a jar. They are cheap and about 3' long. I cut 2 bulbs off the end and the spacing worked out well. They are a nice warm white 3000k

Here the car has been painted CN green #11 on the outside and you can see the male plug that comes up from the axle.

 Once it was painted I removed the plastic as best as I could and repainted the diaphragms with a brush.

The repainted ends

In this shot you can see the old glue that holds the clear plastic in place. It was too much work to try and take this off without making a bigger mess so I just painted grey over the inside where there was any glue.

In this shot I have finished painting the inside, added some shades and have added the decals to the outside. 

Here you can see the interior after the glue marks have been painted over. I also added a few more blinds on the windows.

This shows the lighting in the car. 

This shows the connection I used to get power from the axles. The trucks are Central Valley with axles that are  insulated on one side. I cleaned the wheels and axles as they had paint on them. They conduct and run really nice. There is no flicker in the lights. I thinks it is nice looking car.