Glazing 622’s windows

Somehow I’ve been convinced that true modellers glaze windows with real glass. I’m not sure if it’s really better; the passenger car has plastic windows, and they look fine to me. However, there is no doubting that when you tell anyone – even a non-modeller – that the windows are glazed with glass, they are […]

Decals for 622

After all that experimentation with Cricut masks, I decided to press forward with decals for 622. They were included on the same decal sheet as the flat car decals from Precision Design, and went on beautifully. I was glad I’d included an extra copy of the decal for the tender rear because I did indeed […]

Sprinting to not finish

The Railway Modellers’ Meet starts with Iain Rice’s keynote this Saturday, and I’m going to have to declare the flatcars ready for display if I hope to get the locomotive into the display as well. It’s been a bit of a push even to get them this far. Every evening I think I’m going to […]

Flat car decals

I spent a pleasant hour talking on the phone with my sister while sliding newly-arrived decals onto the flat cars this afternoon. One of the many nice aspects of the wooden car era is that the lettering was simple. With only five gaps between the six stake pockets, there is room for no more than […]

Bringing the flatcars back to earth

After no small amount of hemming and hawing, I decided to take a mulligan on the body bolsters for the three flat cars. There is no point in finishing a model that you’re not satisfied with. So, off came the too-high bolsters, and I get to make some fresh ones in the next day or […]

Lettering test for 622

After finding that testing the lettering on the flatcars was a worthwhile exercise, I figured I’d better do the same with 622. Here, the lettering had started with careful measurement of each of the surfaces that will receive a decal, and so, I expected everything to line up okay. It did, but it’s better safe […]

Lettering Test

The thing about working on lettering is that there’s not much to show until it’s done. You spend hours squinting at photos, trying to decide if a circle is an oval, or if that’s just the angle, and even more hours deciding if it should be a hair skinnier or taller. Extra opinions help, and […]

Sky high flat cars

The trouble with building a batch is that when you make a mistake, you replicate the mistake for each member of the batch. So, despite passing Saturday morning enjoyably melting tiny pieces of plastic strip into globs that look passably like body bolsters, I now have three flat cars that all sit approximately .030″ (.75mm) […]

Colour separations

My cousin John is a year or so older than I am, and as a kid, I kind of looked up to him. Back then, kids built models the way they play video games today, and on one visit, John showed me a plane he was working on. I was astonished to see that the […]

Cricut lettering: time to admit defeat

I think I’ve taken Cricut masks beyond the tool’s limit. I can likely use the technique to make the large numbers, but the small (1.5mm/.06″) letters, “CANADA ATLANTIC” on the tank collar are simply too small for the knife-cut masks. The best I could achieve was with two masks – one for the largely vertical […]