Hoppers

All of my ops sessions to this point have been the same basic session. I have a group of waybills I created years ago for testing, and a number have been lost along the way. Thing is, this hasn't really been noticeable during a session, at least not as far as I can tell. Even from the same starting point, the operators handle the movements differently each time.

Part of me has wanted to compile a "full" list of potential sources and destinations for each car I own, and also a variety of waybills for each one so that they'll never be running the same route more than once. The reality is, this largely isn't necessary.

This process started due to an entirely different project. When I was looking to order some parts from Bowser, I noticed they were selling coal loads for hoppers made by a variety of manufacturers. So I decided to order a few to see how they looked. In the meantime, I decided to start adding real coal on top of the plastic loads that came with a bunch of hoppers. I also modified those loads to they would sit deeper into the hopper and the new coal wouldn't sit too high. I found I could modify Kadee loads to fit the Intermountain hoppers. It also led to an assessment of what cars I still wanted to acquire. As a result, I now have the complete hopper roster I'd like, but quite a few are still in kit form.

New Britain Yard looks a lot like I'm modeling coal country here. This is about half the roster. I need to finish the resin kits, lettering the MTH USRA hoppers, and modifying the Bowser "fishbelly" hoppers. Until then, the mix is a bit off.

The Bowser loads are real coal, and look like an anthracite load to me. That's great, because the majority of the retail coal should be anthracite. But for the industries I wanted the bituminous loads to look different. I have some real coal (I think) that came from Scenic Express years ago. That looks shiny like anthracite. I also had some Smith & Sons cinders left (which I love), and that looked more dusty, like bituminous. I found some old Highball coal but it's a bit more grey than I'd like. I also think it's too clean.  Bituminous is very dusty compared to anthracite. 

In this photo, the Bowser load is the lower left. One of my anthracite loads is the upper left.

The lower right is the Smith & Sons (I'd love one more bottle, I'm out).

The upper right is Highball Coal. 

So for the waybills, I need to identify sources and match them to industries in New Britain. I hunted down a lot of industry publications, like the Pennsylvania Anthracite or Bituminous Annual Reports published annually during that era by the state, along with railroad shipping guides and other similar documents. I started by looking at the retail brands sold in New Britain and locating the largest collieries for those brands. I also looked for the largest non-branded ones for additional suppliers.

Because the waybills will only be handled by the agent at a desk, I'm making them full sized. As much as a huge spreadsheet and loads of waybills might be interesting, I really only one per car to start. So that's what I'm doing, creating one bill for each car that I have in service. Not all will be used every session.

I currently have 39 hoppers ready for service.

Anthracite

1 - D&H (Kadee)

5 - Erie (Broadway Limited, Intermountain, JJL)

2 - Reading (Kadee)

Bituminous

6 - B&O (Broadway Limited, MTH, Proto 2000)

1 - Berwind (Rapido)

1 - C&I (Intermountain)

3 - C&O (Intermountain, MTH)

1 - CRR (Intermountain)

1 - Montour (Intermountain)

1 - N&W (Broadway Limited)

1 - O&W (Rapido)

Either

5 - NYC (Broadway Limited, Kadee, Tichy/Intermountain)

11 - PRR (MTH, Rapido)

The Tichy/Intermountain NYC hopper is incorrectly painted black, though...

In theory, any of the hoppers could be carrying any type of coal. But I'm assuming that most will be loaded on their home road, or close, so I'm basing the probable loads on that.

On-Layout Industries in New Britain receiving Anthracite

• Berson Brothers
• City Coal & Wood
• D&K Coal
• Household Fuel
• Shurberg & Sons
• Stanley Svea

On-Layout Industries in New Britain receiving Bituminous

• Landers, Frary & Clark
• New Britain Gas Light Co
• P&F Corbin
• Parkmeadow Lofts
• Russell & Erwin
• Stanley Works

That's twelve industries.  Many of these will receive more than one load at a time, plus there will be a number empties on-layout to pull. So I suspect I'll need 20-30 during a session, although not every car will necessarily move. During a session where there are multiple through trains (up to six) I will need a few more.

Can I Buy You A Beer?

Here's a little project I finished up recently. Greenway Models is a company that has produced a lot of custom painted Athearn models. I learned that they made a model for Cremo Brewery when I saw one at the New Britain Industrial Museum. One finally turned up and, even better, it was still in kit form. So I decided to upgrade it to my layout standards.

The sides are separate pieces, with a cutout above the door.  The roof and ends are molded as a single part, and snap into that location. So that needs to be addressed. I also wanted to replace the molded on parts, and conveniently the paint scheme doesn't have any lettering in those locations.

My initial approach was simply to shave them off. But I also needed to determine what I would use to kitbash it. Looking for a potential donor in my stash I decided to go with the Branchline reefer. I did some test fitting, and found it was nearly a perfect match in height and length for the sides. The sides were slightly thinner. 

It occurred to me that I could cut the sides just inside the ladder and grab irons, and splice the end portions of the Branchline sides. This included the mounting pins. This also meant that I'd gain the strap braces that secure the ends on the prototype, and the mounting locations for the ladders. I also filled in the missing portion above the door with strip styrene. In hindsight, I should have scribed deeper boards in the Branchline portions to more closely match the Athearn side. 

The rest of the model is the Branchline kit as designed. I touched up the sides with a blend of Vallejo white and off-white and the rest of the car is painted using Stynylrez black primer. This matched the scheme of the Greenway model, although I didn't paint the sill yellow.

It's a fictional car, but a fun addition to the roster. I couldn't fit the brewery on the layout, but operationally it was served out of Whiting St. Yard by one of the Holyoke freights. So it can be dropped off overnight or in the morning, to be taken back off the layout in the afternoon. 

Cremo Brewery closed in 1955, but Alvarium Brewery in New Britain has resurrected the brand.  I think I'll have one.

A quick post

 

More to come (relatively) soon, but here are a couple of quick photos with some previews.

These are of the incredible work Chris Adams did weathering one of my 44-tonners. Look for an article in RMC in the near future from Chris. He weathered his first, but needed new pictures so needed to do another one. 

Hmmm.... something else new is underway in this photo crossing Elm St.

Here's a little patch of further ballast/ground cover experiments at Whiting St.

It helps to have a piece of weathered equipment to see how it actually looks. Most of the layout will be cinders and it has been a challenge finding the right approach, but I think I have finally found it.

More to come, but I couldn't be happier to have a model on the layout that Chris did. It looks incredible, and his Facebook and blog posts (and forthcoming RMC article) will be my go-to references for my weathering process. I've already been picking up some supplies that he uses that I didn't have. I have five in progress, along with two S-1s that are also ready for lettering and weathering. Hoping to complete them all before the end of the year.

It's a primary locomotive for the 1953 operating sessions that are my initial focus. I wonder who will be the first engineer?

Assembling the Rapido 44-tonner

It should come as no surprise that I have several of the Rapido 44-tonners.  This includes a couple of the decorated ones, along with four (for now) undecorated ones that I'll be doing in other paint schemes.  It was also a nice surprise to find I was mentioned in the manual (in French too!). (It should also come as no surprise that I started this post on November 18...).  

 

Like many undecorated locomotives, these are unassembled. Most of the assembly is pretty straightforward, but since instructions aren't included I thought I'd mention a few things.  First, there are details that need to be installed on the running boards, but holes have not been pre-drilled. But there are dimples underneath for that purpose, you just need to figure out which ones are needed, since not all are used for every phase.

Looking at the picture below, here are what the holes are for (on the NH models, anyway):

• Blue - bell. There's a hole at the other end of tanks too, which may be used for the bell on other roads.
• Green - steps for Phase Ic models. The one closer to the edge is also the alignment for the skirt. You need to drill the hole in the semi-circular portion closer to the center of the model.
• Yellow - steps/curved portion of the cab for Phase III model. This probably applies to the Phase IV models too, but I don't have one to verify.

The side frames that come preinstalled are the later version, for the Phase III and Phase IV models. They need to be replaced for the Phase Ic version. I did this the hard way, not realizing that they trucks themselves are easily removed (I hadn't read the portion of the manual regarding removing the coupler, since I wasn't planning on doing that...).

You do need to remove the pickup contact strips to install on the other side frames. It appears they attached them using heat to melt the plastic pins. It's easy enough to pry the strips off the plastic sideframes.

To install them on the new sideframes I didn't want to use heat.  Instead, I applied a liberal amount of styrene cement and used the flat end of a pair of tweezers to mash them down.

I won't bother to explain the process I had to use to reinstall the trucks since you all know now that you can simply pull and turn to remove the entire truck assembly.

As for other details, note that the New Haven units used one of two horns.  The Phase Ic units had Wabco AA-2 horns.  The A-2 horn was produced in short and long bell versions. The AA-2 has the short stacked on top of the long.

The phase III and IV units used the long bell A-2.

Fiddling

Progress is one of those things that I think we all struggle with from time to time.  Tom Jacobs has his "hour a day" mantra and Chris Adams has "do one thing." Similar approaches are great ways to keep things moving.

My approach is similar, but in an ADHD bent rather than an OCD sort of way.  What's the difference? Chris and Tom get more things completed.

Rather than try to force myself to do those things that I should be doing, I've gone back to doing whatever I gravitate to instead. Lately that has been fiddling around with freight car kits. Cleaning flash off resin kits, drilling holes, etc. are great mindless things when my brain has had enough, but I want to keep busy. That has led to assembling some bodies and doing some of the detail work when a particular kit captures my interest. 

This leads to lots of projects in progress, but my theory is that they will all get finished eventually.  Progress is progress, after all. There is a bit of method to my madness, though.  When I start doing a particular task, such as cleaning flash or drilling holes, it's easy to just keep moving forward with that task.  Thus, pulling several kits (often with a theme) and completing the process on several.

In addition to getting to see the cool kits I've picked out over the years as important to my layout, right now it's a better approach for me.  Changes in work has left me more mentally fatigued than short on time. These more mindless tasks are good distractions, but also let me give my brain a rest.  The reality is, for me anyway, that my brain becomes more productive and finds solutions best when I don't think about them. So this approach ends up being helpful for my work and my modeling. The apparent chaos can be a good thing.

The big thing here is that, as a hobby, it's supposed to not only be fun, but engaging. It's a distraction from the rest of life, and a better one (at least for me) than just watching TV or videos online (I've done way too much of that already).  It's also a way of accomplishing things that are uniquely you.  Leaning into my nature has already made me far more productive, and I have already found solutions to some of the things that have been holding me back on those things that I should do.  As a result, I do want to complete a number of these works in progress, and get to a few critical things to get the layout fully operational again, and set up in a way that I can be prepared for regular sessions. And scenery.

So what have I been working on?

Rapido 44-tonners

Various Box Car Mini-kits and Kitbashes

Ballast and Cinders experiments

Painting and Weathering Ties Experiments

Resin Gondola Kits

Resin Reefer Kits

Reorganizing