Spring if finally trying to be sprung. This means, a couple of layout structures can make progress again! The Hinde & Dauch factory, and Canadian General Electric are too big to fit in my spray booth to paint inside (at least any painting being done with an airbrush!). This meant, that I couldn’t start with a coat of primer to find any areas that needed construction touch-ups, and provide a good grippy base for paint until it was warm enough to take a rattle can of Tamiya Fine Surface Primer to the patio. This lovely Easter Sunday in Toronto provided the first day where it was warm enough and when I wasn’t at work where I could take things out to the patio and paint.
Before and after of primer on the two buildings.
Even outside, safety is priority. A pair of latex gloves and my respirator that I would use at the paint booth inside are a must. The regulator particularly, so, you only get one pair of lungs, I don’t plan on destroying them sucking in paint particles!
Darth Stephen painting on the patio. Gotta protect those lungs!
There will be at least one more day out on the patio painting, I need to do the base brickwork with the airbrush at a minimum, and that will mean bringing the compressor and all the gear out. I will wait a couple of weeks to do that. Rattle canning at 10 degrees is fine, but its just a touch too chilly to drag out all the gear and use the airbrush. I just need to walk the fine line on Toronto’s legendary stupid humidity kicking in!
Edit: Should have waited, didn’t even think. Below are a couple of pictures of them back on the layout after the primer has dried enough to handle and get them in off the patio before and of our neighbours kids throw something onto the patio and smash then! These are done right? I don’t need do do all that work of painting brick, stone and windows and adding signs/details do I?
Back in late 2022, I spent a lot of time hunting for an electrical gremlin that caused every locomotive crossing the frog at the first swtich coming out of CNR Staging shorting out and stopping. It had me, at my wits end, ready to scream “Trains are StupidTM ” (TMTrevor Marshall). Suffice to say, the problem was not resolved despite my best efforts, and I was nearing the point of doing legitimate damage to the switch trying to file and grind looking for the cause of the short. After a hard day at work this week, I realized that my friend Dan Garcia who built the switches using Fast Tracks jigs, made me two extra turnouts. On my original track plan, everything was a tight Number 4 turnout. He was, convinced that in one location, I had room for a pair of Number 5’s instead, so he built me two ladders of a LH/RH switch in tight sequence. It turned out, he was correct, the Number 5’s did fit, so I used them. This means, somewhere in the house, I have a pair of Number 4 switches, and could potentially “just” rip out the problem switch. That of course, makes it sound like an easier task than it is, but we will get there.
The spare switches located, and the left hand one for the replacement job split from the righthand one.
First up, how to remove the scenery and the existing switch without completely destroying an end of the layout. Fingers crossed, with careful cutting and scraping, I could get it out. Using a variety of knives and edges, I created an edge around the switch I wanted to take out. In some places, my scenery and the ballast crumbled reasonably easy, in others, I used some warm water to try and re-activate the glues to see if the dirt and ballast would soften. These techniques worked, and in a bit of time, I was able to loosen enough ground cover that I could start to see if I could remove the switch. I glued down my track using silicone caulk, So I was hoping I could get a putty knife in and separate it from the pink foam beneath. I was mostly able to do so, not perfectly clean, but clean enough. I wound up having to cut some of the track at either end, while the diverging track the joiners for alignment slid off easily. at the left side of the pictures, the joiners were completely stuck, and I was trying desperately hard to not mess up the alignment with staging.
Starting with partial scenery in place, working on breaking up the scenery, and then fitting in the new switch and cutting the track down to size to fit the gap of the removed switch.
Once I had the track out, I spent some time cleaning up the debris where the track was, and preparing the area for installing a new switch. I then, very carefully started trimming the rails of the new switch to fit. My goal, was for it to drop in, and use rail joiners to ensure the rails stayed aligned. Once it is in and tested, I will paint it in place, then redo the ballast and scenery. For now, the goal is to get the switch in, working, and wired up to test. I was able to drop the switch in so that I didn’t even have to adjust the Fast Tracks Bullfrog control, the throw rod fit into the bar on the new switch, talk about precise trimming and filing! In fact, the new switch is so tightly fit, and sits so smoothly, I am not going to glue it down as I did with the rest of my track. I will allow the ballast and scenery to lock it into place after I work my way through a methodical testing and finishing process. Tonight, I ran all four of my main layout locos and a couple of others through it back and forth and down the diverging track, nothing stalled. Next up, will be painting the ties and track. After that, another round of testing, then if all is OK, on to new ballast. Then more testing. and so on until the scenery is restored to where it was before I started cutting it away.
Ugly looking prior to painting and re-ballasting/re-scenicing, but, locomotives run through it both ways, no stalls, no strange behaviour.
Far and away my most “temperamental” locomotive is my Rapido SW1200RS. Even with a keep alive installed and active, it is a finicky locomotive, and likes to stall. For a long time, I thought it was this locomotive that was the problem, not the switch frog. While I still don’t know what in the frog was shorting out, I reached the point of determining that it was the path of least resistance to just remove the apparently faulty track, and install a new piece of track. The video below shows the Rapido SW1200RS going through the switch in all directions, which trips the Frog Juicer to change polarity, and keep on going. This is something that would not have happened before the swap out.
I am, to put it mildly, incredibly pleased with myself and feel quite clever. Between the realization I had all the tools I needed to swap a switch, and having the new switch seemingly work, really makes me feel good about the layout. To be honest, I hadn’t done a lot of layout work the past few weeks, but being able to run trains and feel they may work could get me back in the groove here for April and into the summer!
I am sitting here in a world where this year, I basically have no freight car kits on the go. I have a couple of more freight cars on order, but realistically, more boxcars are not what I need, or freight cars of any kind. I need to finish the scenery on the layout, keep plugging away at buildings, and start making operations paperwork for the freight cars I have so I can invite friends over and actually try to operate the layout and see how that goes. That said, a car I ordered a while ago has come in. I want a model of a GACX Airslide Hopper painted for the “Canadian Doughnut Company Ltd”. I know this car was seen in Toronto, but no idea if it would have ever made it to the Gillett Company Mill. A while back Athearn announced a new run of their GACX 2600 Airflow hoppers, and I had a set of the Black Cat Publishing decals for the CDL car. So I ordered one, knowing I could remove the factory printing from a blank car, and add the decals.
The first thing I do with every car or piece of equipment for the layout is replace the wheels with Code 88 semi-scale wheels, and Kadee 58 scale head couplers. This helps with a bunch of things, in theory, operations as all my cars have the same couplers. I also cut the trip pins off as all my coupling/uncoupling will be done manually. Similarly, for the wheels, using the same wheels means that hopefully any areas where there are issues, when I have to make adjustments, no equipment with different treads causes issues. This is hopefully something that will come home to roost when I actually start operating more (I say that a lot, I really do need to run more trains!).
First up, Couplers and wheels. Swapping out the Athearn Plastic Couplers for Kadee 58 Scale Head, and the Code 110 Wheels for Code 88 semi-finescale wheelsets (I have a supply of pre-painted wheels for when new cars are built or bought).
Moving on from the basic mechanical upgrades, I needed to strip the factory printed lettering to renumber the car, and change build dates and data. To do this, I started with my least noxious chemical, to see if it would work. This being Microscale Micro Sol, a solution intended to help settle newly applied decals. I don’t remember the last time (or if I’ve ever) tried to strip Athearn printing, but I’d head online Micro Sol would soften their printing from a short application. This turned out to be entirely true. In less than a minute, the lettering would start to scrape away with a toothpick. This is, still something you want to be gentle doing, and quick;y clean away the Micro Sol. It also effects the overall coating, and the goal is to not create big patches where the base colour is too distorted. A bit of distortion is OK, as the new lettering and weathering will hide it, but you want to gently scrape away the existing letters as they become soft. You can always apply more Micro Sol after a scrape and wipe up to soften any bits of lettering that are clinging on.
Removing Athearn Genesis lettering with Micro Sol and a Toothpick.
There was a lot more lettering to remove on the sides, but fortunately, with the blank generic GACX car as a base, there was nothing in the way of the “Canadian Doughnut Company Ltd” lettering and logo. the hardest part would be getting these aligned across the car. The decals are printed in parts, designed to provide a gap over the ribs between panels, makes getting them to lie flat easier, keeping everything aligned, harder! I did a combination of things, none of which I got usable pictures of, but using various straight edge rulers and tape, I gave myself alignment lines for each row. I think there are a couple of minor misalignments, but I can live with being close as I have to really squint to see them!
Stripping printed markings from the side, and applying the Black Cat Decals.
Once the decals were down, and had a chance to set, it was back at them with setting solutions and a knife, to poke holes so the Walthers Solvaset could get in beneath and melt away any air pockets. After a few applications, the decals settled down and the carrier film all but disappeared along with any air bubbles caught beneath the decals.
Did this rare car ever actually serve the one mill in Liberty Village? I don’t know, but I know I wanted it as an option for an occasional appearance, and I’m happy with how it came out.
Another one for the “to be weathered” pile. Always something else to do, but for now, at least this quick project of a couple of evenings work is done and looking snazzy prior to being dirtied up!
Always with the side projects I am. In this case, something that may or may not turn into a bigger project, but I am always looking to improve my skills at things. In this case, looking at getting better at making different types of molds to cast parts in 3D or with detail all around. I’ve read plenty of blog posts and articles, and decided for something I’ve been puttering at where I need some extra tires cast, taking the tire from a kit and trying to re-cast it would be a good way to learn.
There are many ways to make molds. One I have seen for small parts is using a film canister and hanging the part in with a post so that the mold wraps the part, and the post/sprue acts as a way to pour in the resin. I have lots of film canisters, so this was worth a shot. I was able to hang the part, and pour resin around it, what I wasn’t able to do, was demold the canister from the resin, despite having applied mold release. There was just too much surface tension. After I cut the canister, I was able to peel it away. The next step is to just carefully cut the mold open to release the master part. The mold is held together for pouring resin by an elastic band. The resin I have is short pot life (time between mixing the A and B parts, and starting to cure). This means I only have a minute to get resin into the mold before it starts to set. This turns out, to be a major problem as even my most gentle pour into the injection point generated air bubbles, and I didn’t have a syringe type tool to inject resin. My efforts at parts from this mold were, just bad. As well, the mold didn’t cure fully, and had some nasty air bubbles.
My second attempt, was closer to a more traditional flat mold, but with the part held just off the base so the mold silicone would wrap the part when poured, but have a very thin top wall when pouring resin that I could pop the part out of. This mold worked better, but I still had an iffy pour of the silicone had air bubbles I didn’t get out when pouring and tapping it to try and release/burst air bubbles. The first pour revealed the hole for pouring was still too small, but I was able to cut the opening bigger and get reasonable parts, but discovered again the mold had air bubbles. Fortunately, for small molds and resin pours, its a small amount of material and the costs of failure are low. The effort to learn and experiment is worth the cost of time and materials.
Adventures in making molds. Trying to make a full 3D mold of a part from a kit so I can make modifications to it to turn it into something else. Without much success in actually getting the resin in to make parts (or good molds to be honest with the silicone)
After the first coupe of tests, it was re-evaluation time, and I went back to what I know, a mold where the part is flat on the base this loses the potential for a 3D part with detail on all sides, but for where I will be using the wheels, this won’t matter. This style of mold is also much more forgiving in being able to see if you’ve got air bubbles and getting them to come out of the future part before the resin starts to cure. My experiment was really about pushing myself to learn by doing. That my experiments failed is really less important to me than that I tried, and learned in the process. Going back to a typical mold, I quickly got three wheels that are good enough to use.
Third Time’s the Charm (going right to left for 1, 2 & 3). My 3rd mold (on the left), where I basically abandoned having any backside detail that wouldn’t be visible got me a good enough to use mold and three reasonably clean castings.
I did learn a few things, one, part of the reason some of my molds don’t seem to cure is a reaction between the SmoothOn Moldstar Silicone and the material being cast. I’ve had this problem before, and I clearly hadn’t read the instructions well. Some materials will prevent the silicone for the mold from fully curing. It seems a spray of clear coat to seal the parts is needed. Noted for my next batch of 3D printed window masters where I have sometimes had this problem. I also think, that I need a slower curing resin with a longer pot life (the time between mixing and starting to set) for some of the molds I was trying to make, as the quick setting resin not giving me enough time to get it into the mold and get rid of air bubbles.
As I’ve written about recently, I have been working on the small portion of 219 Dufferin Street, the former Canadian General Electric tungsten light factory that makes it onto my layout. There are times I wish I was getting more of all my structures onto the layout because they all look so great, but then I remember that I am scratch-building everything, and only having small parts of buildings makes doing so achievable (its also all that fits on my 14″ wide benchwork!!).
This building is a real standout, lots of different windows and brickwork patterns. In order to create some of the trim on the ends of the boiler house, I decided to make a bunch of masters using 0.020×0.080 styrene strips, and some brick sheet to create the stepped/smooth details. Once I’d made up a dozen, I cast a couple of molds, and cast them in resin. I made two molds as my first one didn’t set great, so I made a second. This was a good call, between the two molds of the 12 master parts, I was probably getting about 15 good parts, considering I needed around 40, that meant three runs of casting. I made an alignment jig from some styrene to aid in installing them, and getting the spacing right.
I wanted to come back to my wall cores that I am cutting with my Cricut. I am, intentionally leaving window openings a bit small when I am drawing them, this means, when the walls are cut, the windows don’t fit. The reason for this, is that the Cricut cuts are not 100% perfect, its much better and easier to make a window opening bigger, than to create material and make it smaller. Once I have the cores together, I take the windows and a fine sharpie, and trace out where I need to carefully trim away material to get the opening. As always, smart work dictates that the openings should always be too small when working with a knife, so that they can be filed to finished size and not made too big. This is of course, a slow process as you near the end, as you want to only just take enough material away. That said, for me at least, its inevitable that some openings or parts of them are not perfect. This inevitably means at the end of a walls construction, there is some filling with putty from the back to close in gaps and make sure there are not tiny dots of light escaping around the windows.
Casting brick details for the tops of the short walls, and showing how I trim out the undersized openings cut by the Cricut in the wall cores.
Once all the many steps of building the walls were done in adding layers of brickwork and detail, I got them assembled and mounted to the base. I built the building in two parts, the main factory end and side walls, and the boiler house wals that are closest to the tracks. Once the two sub assemblies were done, I installed the boiler house at the front edge of the base styrene, and then worked to butt the factory up against it. Filling gaps at the rear against the backdrop is easier than filling a gap at the front which is more visible.
With the walls assembled, the past big part to build is the stone base of the chimney. The chimney is octagonal, and after much searching a couple of years ago, I found a Cibolo Crossing hydrocal chimney. It is a solid part, and rather than trying to cut it to size as its too tall, I designed the square base of the chimney to act as a drop in hide so I could get the height I wanted. This meant though, that I couldn’t just fasten the chimney to a flat base. To make the stone surround, I layered 3 squares of 0.040″ styrene sheet off cuts from building structures, and traced out the octagonal base. I then took my calipers and measured the diameter of the chimney at the height of the base. With that, I then traced a second octagon using the smaller dimension. This would be my cutout to create a slide down frame. To cut this out, I first drilled holes at the corners of the octagon, and a centre point. With the centre point, I drilled out a 1″ hole using a spade bit on slow speed. Once that big chunk was out, using a flat blade in an xacto handle, I started to trim away to my inner cut lines. Leaving the hole small, I started test fitting. As it got it close to size and sliding down to where it needed to be, I switched from cutting to sanding, and using files and sanding sticks, got the opening to size, and flared the underside so the opening was slightly larger at the bottom to make a tight fit on chimney. With it sliding into place, it is now good to go for painting. For now, the base and chimney are being left separate, as they will be painted differently from the rest of the building, and frankly, the weight of the solid cast chimney actually makes the building unwieldy to manoeuvre on the bench.
The Cibolo Crossing cast hydroal chimney is too tall, so I need to make a piece to cover the square part of the chimney as a “base”. Marking, cutting and fitting a layered bock of 0.040″ styrene. Need to spend some time sanding and cleaning up the layers around the edges!
I like going back and forth from the bench to the layout as I scratch-build structures. It helps me see if I am staying in the size of the space, and if I am happy with the look and feel of the building as it comes together. After weeks of work, actually putting all the parts together for the first time and seeing how it looks, is a really rewarding feeling. It makes the hours and the mistakes and the swearing at the mistakes worth it to see something that you have spent all this time on actually sitting on the layout, and looking like you had planner when you started.
All together in position, nothing helping to hold it up. The roof and skylights are separate pieces to allow for painting, and access to install windows after painting.
The building is not quite ready for the paint booth, but that’s ok, as this is another building along with Hinde and Dauch that is too big for my indoor spray booth. I can’t actually get a go on with painting this until the spring, and given March is coming in like a Lion in 2023 with all the snow after a light start to winter, it could be a while before I’m painting it, but getting this large structure off my workbench frees up room for some other projects and work, and raises questions about how on earth I am going to build the biggest structure on my layout in the Gillett Castle of 135 Fraser Avenue. Its 3 feet long, I may have to figure out somewhere else in the house to do the assembly, but since that is likely the last structure to be built, that’s definitely not a today problem!
Mowat Avenue streetscape, now with almost no foam core stand-ins!
Decals that never settled, even with multiple coats of Microscale Microsol, but settling nicely with an attack with an xacto knife and stronger Walthers Solvaset.
Recently, I got together with friends for a gathering at my friend Hunter Hughsons. It was the first time I’d gotten together with modellers since our 2020 Febraury meetup in his basement. Funny that right? One of my friends there passed on a tip. Ryan Mendell and I brought the same car amongst our projects, the Solway-Semet car by Yarmouth Model Works. Pierre Oliver who runs Yarmouth had left by the time we retreated to the basement to look at models after dinner, but Ryan gave a tip he got from Pierre, as some of my cars had decals that had just refused to set. He said, get a stronger setting solution than Microscale MicroSol, like Walthers Solvaset. Then, take an Xacto knife, and just poke at the decal hundreds of times to make tiny holes where it hasn’t settled. Then, apply the Solvaset, and let it work. It may still take multiple applications, but 100% even after a single application, decals that I had all but abandoned hope of getting to settle down properly, were settling and the carrier film disappearing. The small victories! I still have 8 or 10 cars to go back and work on, but this simple fix has made me very happy!
Musings on my Model Railroading Addiction 