Flat Cars Finished?

With the loads painted, the flat cars are substantially finished. I sprayed the underframes with a dusting of Vallejo “Smoke” so they’d look like they’ve done work if they should ever flip over. The trucks, body and the steel and iron parts received a muddy wash of raw umber and white so they’d look look […]

Painting Wood Loads

I had three flat car loads to experiment upon, and with time running short before the Railway Modellers’ Meet, I got right to work. I had picked up a Vallejo paint pack for wood and leather when I went to Burnaby Hobbies for some primer. The “Dark Sand” in the pack seemed a good starting […]

Lumber Loads

The 3D printer has been busy cranking out loads of lumber for the flat cars as I get ready for this year’s Railway Modellers’ Meet. I’d already printed quite a few loads, some of which are “factory seconds” and good only for experimenting, when I went back and looked at some photos of Canada Atlantic […]

FeatureScript Changes the Game

Speaking of flat cars, what about their loads? Most of the time, these cars would have carried lumber or logs. Without a sawmill on the line, it is unlikely they carried logs in my town, but there is a photo of a flat car of lumber in Pembroke. I’d always imagined I would create lumber […]

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

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 […]