Not much time for Model Railroading this month

Or at least not in the mood. Holly and I have made several trips to Joplin since the disaster, and that, along with work, left little time for model railroading.

Hanrahan Reefer

This is a La Belle wood kit that I started a decade ago. I really like to older style wood kits. These kits are still available at labellemodels.com. Rick Steele, the owner of La Belle, recently purchased the old Red Ball line and will be reintroducing it. The Hanrahan Ice Bunker car is unique as far as I know, in that most ice bunk cars had ice bunkers as at both ends, and a loading door in the center, but the Hanrahan is basically the opposite.

Planes, yes, ya gotta have a few planes

This is a long discontinued AHM kit for a Bell P-39Q Airacobra. There are not a lot of 1/87 scale planes available. I have 6-8 planes, so I will have to model and airport.

HON3 Gondola

This is a Bachman standard gauge car, purchased ready-to-run. I took it apart but a section out of the middle to convert it in to a 3' gauge car. I did some fairly heavy weathering, and I lettered this for my Trees Unlimited logging line.

June has to be better than May

The tornado that split Joplin in half on the 22nd, has reset my view of life. You never know what is going to happen next, and it ain't always good. Everybody we know survived, but lots of people lost everything. The size of the devistation is more than I can comprehend.
On to model railroading, there is never enough time for model railroading.

Rutland Gondola

I built this from a Funaro and Camerlengo kit. Gee, I hope I spelled that right, but then I don't care enough to look it up. It was a resin kit that was warped and I spent a lot of time clamping, applying heat, clamping in another direction, actually weeks of playing around with it.

In the end, I finally got it straight, applied Scalecoat paint, and decals.

Fredonia Linseed Oil Works

1912 photo of the facility.

1925 ad in the Frisco employee magazine

One the neat industries I ran across in my research was the Fredonia Linseed Oil Works.ever would have though of Flaxseed being grown in Kansas. Also, back in the first half of the 20th century, Soybeans was a new crop. I took the picture below at the Fredonia historical society...they thought I was nuts.

I made my own rendetion of the huckster that was used to sell the farmers on growing Flaxseed and Soybeans using the Athearn Huckster model. I printed out the signs and the side panels showing the types of Flaxseed.

Model T

This is a Jordan styrene and metal kit. They are excellent kits, great detail, and a little fragile. The fenders and body sides are made from heavy aluminum foil. Really makes a good looking model.