Spring has sprung

Well it has been a long time since I last had time to Blog. Lots of cold weather and trade shows have come and gone. We finally had some reasonably warm temperatures today, so I finished up a few cars this evening. Now that the show season is over, I hope to be able to get an evening or so each week to work on the model railroad and maybe a weekend or two.





I have shown this Pennsy Cabin Car before, but I added window glass using Micro Scale Krystal Klear and it really help the empty look. OK, it still looks empty, but now it is harder to see inside. This was kitbashed from a couple Tyco Cabooses' per a magazine article. Not really a Pennsy fan, but I like some of their cars.

Here we have a Snow Crab built from a 3-in-1 Roundhouse Kit. A snow crab is the oppisite of a snow plow. Yeah, that is right, it was used to put snow on the tracks. Why, you asked?

When the snow is very deep, the rotary snow plow, really a blower, would basically make trench for the train to go through. The problem was, the wind would blow the snow back in the trench, sometimes very fast. The snow crab would be pulled weights first, behind the first rotary plow, with the wings extended to grab the snow close to the track, or within its' wing span, and pile

it back int he middle of the track. Then a second rotary plow would come thourgh and blow the new pile out of the now, twice as wide trench, The wider trench would take longer to fill in, therefore, keeping the line open longer.

A couple months back, at a meeting of the Turkey Creek Division of the NMRA, we had a hands-on clinic on weathering freight cars.

The cars were donated by Show Me Model Railroad Company in Grandview, MO. http://www.showmelines.com/

The clinic was put on by Fran and Miles Hale of Model Railroad University. http://www.modelrailroadinguniversity.com/

A special thanks to both Show Me Model Railroad and Model Railroad University.

Nothing real special here. This is an Athearn car that I decoarted with some old Champ decals. They have to be old Champ decals, since there is no such thing as a new Champ decal.

Here are a couple before pictures. This is a Megow paper wrap car I picked up somewhere. Check ont the great detail on the truck side frames. This kit is

probably older than me, and certainly dates to before I started model railroading. I did a little clean up and added several details. Including hand rails, basic, very basic, brake detail, A-Line stirrups, etc. I also installed

some old metal sprung trucks I had laying around. Just cause the old truck are cool, I am keeping them in the box with the model so all the original pieces I

have are together. I really like taking the old kits and detailing them a little. Certainly not contest quality, but an interesting piece of vintage HO model railroading.