My blogging appears to be bogged down. Age must have something to do with it. Anyway the following of my model railroad/railway activities are of note as or 11/2/21:
- A new model vehicle has been acquired for the 1930's auto parked in back of the freight house next to the freight platform. From the original 1950's photo (courtesy Contra Costa County Historical Society) I had identified it as a 1936 Dodge Sedan. I tried for many months to obtain an HO model of the 1936 Dodge but have been unable to find a replacement for the OO scale Oxford Miniatures Austin Sedan being used as a stand in. In that search I stumbled across a 3D printer going by the name of Toys in the Attic who had a model of a 1938 Plymouth F5 sedan. Figuring that was probably as close as I was going to get, I ordered 2 of these 3D prints with one being a backup in case I mucked up the paint and assembly of first one.
It has been painted Vallejo Gull Grey and left unglossed to reflect the aging affect of 12-14 years of the fierce Contra Costa sunshine on 1930's auto paint. The windows have been made with Microscale Micro Krystal Klear. They work if if viewed from a 2 foot or more distance. Now all I need is a 1950-53 California Orange license plate decal to add a plate. - Two new foreign road (non-SP) box cars have been added for the consists of east and west bound Cal-P traffic. For a the past 6 months I have been working on a CMStP&P (Milwaukee Road) Accurail 40' Double Door rib sided kit. I had wanted to add a Royal Slack Adjuster brake cylinder per prototype to the underframe. My attempts to procure a casting for this type of brake gear have also come to naught and I just went ahead finished the car. Other modifications were replacing the running board with a prototype for period wood running board using the Tichy part # 3029 "Roofwalk" and a better Ajax brake wheel. It still needs a corrected reweigh decal to replace the as printed NEW date and location and should have Barber not Bettendorf trucks.
- The second new foreign road boxcar is a Rapido PRR X31a which needs no modification beyond a corrected reweigh date and location applied instead of NEW.
- The SPMW Bachman Scale Test car and Scale Maintenance car have been completed to the 98% at which I usually say that is good enough. The scale test car has been repainted and uses decals made by a friend. I had to replace the lower side grab irons which were cast on to get the decals to fit. The scale maintenance car started as an Accurail outside braced box car and was modified to a picture Jason Hill displayed on the SP Prototype Modelers Facebook group. It took a lot of cutting and rebuilding. I had to scratch the door steps from brass, used Tichy work car windows and covered those with sanded clear styrene to simulate window screening.
- The turntable is my current focus on the Port Costa layout. I have looked at my earlier attempts at a bridge and need to build a new one. I also need to work out the turning, bridge power and locking methods. This may take a couple of months. I am working on it off the layout with the final steps cutting out a square section of the underlay for the pit and putting an almost finished turntable pit and bridge.
- Small projects will include additional ballasting of the house track/siding around to the small company freight dock behind the roundhouse. I have a lot more work to upgrade the stand in buildings behind the roundhouse. I also have to address Tank Hill scenery, refine the station area scenery and add more realistic foliage and trees.
- I also need to add remote controls to the turnouts behind tank hill that cannot be reached. I am looking into manual not motorized solutions. Then there is the mainline trackage that needs to be fully realized so I can display some of the freight cars, road locomotives and passenger equipment I have been acquiring.
