78 Miles to Yosemite

Category: Uncategorized

The Ice House – Part 3

Posted on by jkdummler

In part 2 of this series, I said it was now time to get building.  So, let’s get a start!

My first step with the Merced Ice & Cold Storage facility was to determine the footprint.  Using the foam core mockup, I placed it on the drawing of the layout track plan, and adjusted it so that a freight car can just peek out from the side, like in the photo snippet seen in part 2.  Then I marked points on the drawing, and drew in the footprint of the main building.  If you look back to part 1, you’ll see that this rear portion of the facility is ice storage.  However, also looking at my rendition of the plant, we see that the cold storage space is attached to the ice storage, and to the loading platform, but that section of the facility will make the rear of the building larger than the drawing I have, by about a third.

I then drew in what I think is a representative size tor the cold storage area of the facility, and then connected the sections to the edge of the layout.

The overall drawing then gives me an idea of how much styrene I need to order, and logically, I think there would be a door into the ice storage and a separate door into the cold storage, so I need to sort out two sets of dock doors.

I don’t think the facility needs windows on the rear of the building.  The one photo of the side of the building that I know of shows what might be faux window openings on the sides of the building for aesthetic purposes, but the rear wouldn’t likely even have those.  This is the “all business” side, and just plain brick is what I would imagine we would see.  

With graph paper, I now started drawing the building sections.  The main section of the building as taken from the drawings by Jack Burgess works out to 16 1/8” long on paper.  The front of the building has some ornamental brickwork at the top of the walls, but being the back of the building, facing the company property, I decided to dispense with that ornamentation on this side and save the company some money during construction.  The height of the building I set at 7”.  Essentially, my giant graph paper had a big rectangle on it that needed additional details.

I then looked at the photos of the building, and it appears to have a foundation sill of formed concrete that the brickwork is standing on.  This makes some sense to me as the ice storage room is noted in the Sanborn drawings as having a concrete floor.  The drawings show a curb about 2’ hight at the front.  I thought about wrapping that to the rear, but that left me with a problem in look, and a problem for, I assume, the people constructing the original building as well.

Standing next to a freight car, the door height winds up being about 4’ from the ground.  Most loading docks and platforms are aiming to be right about that same height to roll on and roll off.  If anything, the dock can be slitty lower than the door, but not half the height.  I also figured that the doors into the facility would not be super high, so I wanted to set the door sills at about 3’.

That kind of setting would put the building sill, and the dock, somewhat out of wack.  I decided to set the sill at 3’ tall on the rear of the building, as it will form a lip for the brick and a location to rest the loading platform.  This may be a compromise for building, but I have no drawings or photos of the back of the building, and I’m comfortable with the decision as it’s likely to be unseen under the platform.

With that decided, I then located an opening for a double door, using the dimensions of a set of Tichy doors for the dimensions.  This still leaves the building very plain on the rear, but I highly doubt there would have been big windows into the ice storage room at the rear here, and photos of the building show this area had false windows that were bricked in along the public street.

The full size mockup of the building front at the top, and my drawings for the rear at the bottom.

 I then moved on and drew another rectangle, this one 5 1/2” wide and 6” high, to begin to flesh in the cold storage space for food products.  While this isn’t a huge space, and with doors that match the doors on the main ice building, it’s even a little smaller than one might think, judging from the Sanborm map drawings of the facility, the measurements work out to be about right.  I made the structure lower, 6” instead of 7”, as it’s what I imagine being an addition, added to keep food cold, and the buildings like this that I have seen usually are slightly smaller than the building they are attached to.  This will also provide some visual interest as the roofline will drop and change instead of having one giant brick rectangle on the layout.

From here, it was time to place a materials order for at least the core of the building.  I’ve ordered some black Evergreen styrene sheets, .080” thick, that will form the core of the structure.  When those arrive, it’ll be time to get cutting and gluing.

Next time we’ll look at the detail changes to a stock Red Caboose R-30-12-9 PFE reefer, and get the first car started.

-JD

RPM Chicagoland 2019

Posted on by jkdummler

It’s time for RPM Chicagoland 2019 to kick off in just a few hours. I’m looking forward to three days of fantastic clinics and talking with friends, new and old.

My clinic handout for this year, along with the handout for my wife’s clinic on Poultry cars, are both in the clinic handouts section of this site. You’re welcome to take a look.

We hope to see folks here, and hope too that everyone attending has a great time.

-Jeremy

NP Boxcar – 5

Posted on by jkdummler

Inching closer to finished with the NP boxcar build, I sat down last weekend with some new (to me) products from a couple of different weathering product producers, and some old standby products as well to get a start on not only the NP car but also a P&LE 36′ car I’ve been working on at the same time.

The pencils applied wet make sort of puddles where you want the grit and grime.
After brushing with water tome things around and blend, and then using a cotton swab to remove excess material and further blend, the outcome is pleasingly dirty.

First up, I wanted to try some weathering pencils by AK. These are a dry / wet product that can be used to add all sorts of effects. I have three sets that I ordered after seeing a video on YouTube about them, and I wanted to see how they work. While the dry application is really similar to applying Prisma artists pencils, these AK products blend in a little better from my experience when a soft brush is used after applying them dry. Where they really were fantastic, though, was when applied wet. The process is essentially to dip the pencil in water and then apply it to the area you want the color to go. You can add streaks or pools or lines as you see from my photos here. Once the color is applied, you let it sit a minute or two, then come back with a wet brush and move it around. That is followed by a cotton swab used to remove the color, which then leaves just the amount you’re looking for. It takes a little practice, the being water based, they clean off if you make a mistake. Additionally, using more than one color in an area and blending with a brush and with the swab will produce a really nice effect.

Using the same techniques used on the roof, the sides of the cars and some other details received streaking of dust and dirt.

I used the pencils mostly for dirt and dust, but with some of the darker shades of red and brown I changed a couple of boards one the car sides to look like the paint was starting to fail, and around the door hardwire I added rust and grime. I’ll come back with some other products and enhance this look shortly, but the base effect was fantastic. I’ll be using these much more often.

Following the pencils, I airbrushed some dirt and grime lightly onto the under sides and along the sills of the cars using some Ammo “Kursk Soil”. The general grime on these parts stands out nicely. I’ll come back again and add some additional rust and a few other grit colors to finish out the look.

Finally, I turned to the trucks for these two cars. I decided to try using some Mig “Oil Brushers” for the wheels. These were great. The paint is in the container, and so is an applicator. It didn’t take me long to use some rust, and some “Starship Bay Grunge” on the wheel faces to get the base look.

These are just the first layers. I still have a few things to do to enhance things and build up some grime in places, but that will come this weekend. The plan is that by the 19th/20th I’ll be doing final assembly on these cars.

-Jeremy

Getting Organized

Posted on by jkdummler

Goals are good things to have.  I find that list-making and goal setting spurs me on to accomplish tasks in a realistic timeframe, and I feel that accomplishment which then spurs me onward toward the next item on the list, toward the next goal.

I’m now looking at the projects I have started, or would like to start, and thinking about how to order them properly.  In the days when I used to build HO models, I’d build 5 or 6 models all at once.  That’s likely not to happen anymore.  The fact is, the larger equipment is simply space-hungry.  

I have set for myself a goal that I think is reasonable when it comes to kits and cars.  I’m planning to work on one freight car at a time.  Shocking to think about, when many of us have started kits and set them aside and started others.  Seriously, though, one kit car at a time.  I believe it is possible to build one car in 4-6 weeks at the rate I work.  Not super fast, but yet too, enjoyable.  

Here is the list of kit cars that I am planning to build, and the order in which I plan to build them.  Please note, there are more cars in the stash than are listed here.  I only picked the next 12 because that is roughly a year’s worth of work.  Once this list is completed, I’ll prioritize the next set of 12 to build.

  1. PL&E 36’ boxcar
  2. NP 36’ fish belly boxcar
  3. UTLX Van Dyke 6500 gal tank car
  4. PRR X29 Boxcar
  5. SP B-50-15 boxcar
  6. UTLX Van Dyke 6500 gal tank car
  7. PFE R-30-12 reefer
  8. PFE R-40-2 reefer
  9. ATSF Bx-2 boxcar
  10. SP B-50-12 boxcar
  11. MKT 1925 single sheathed boxcar
  12. SP ex-EPSW USRA composite gondola

I initially started cars 1, 2, and 3 from the list.  That has proven to be OK, but I am looking forward to wrapping them up and getting the number of in-progress cars down to 1 at a time.  That isn’t to say that if I get to a spot with a project where I’m waiting on supplies of data or photos that there won’t be a chance that a 2nd project is moving forward.

If I’m building just one kit at a time, or one car at a time, it’s likely that I’m going to need other projects to occupy modeling time and interest while things dry or while I wait for parts.  To that end, I’ve also organized some non-car projects.  A number of structures are going to be needed for the layout and getting those built will fall into the project list.  I plan to only work on one structure at a time, which will make the structures available as a second ongoing project group.  Based on my plans for the layout, I need to build:

  1. Merced Ice & Cold Storage
  2. YV water tank at Merced
  3. YV oil tank at Merced
  4. YPCCo packing house at Merced
  5. Yosemite Lumber box factory at Merced Falls
  6. Yosemite Lumber dry shed at Merced Falls
  7. YV steel water tank at Merced Falls
  8. YV station at Merced Falls

There is also a huge need on this railroad for motive power and home-road cars.  None of the YV cabooses, rock cars, box cars, flat cars, stock cars, MOW cars, passenger cars, or log cars are commercially available at the moment, and few have ever been in O scale. My guess right now is that I’m going to need/want 2 locomotives, 2 cabooses, 6 rock cars, 2 flat cars, 1 stock car, 1 box car, an unknown number of MOW cars, 2 passenger cars, and 6 log cars.  That’s 20-ish cars and 2 locomotives that need to be scratch built.  This group, then comprises the third project group that will be available. 

I have selected the two locomotives that I want to build.  Yosemite Valley 4-4-0 American #23 and Yosemite Valley 2-6-0 Mogul #25 are my targets.  Should a third locomotive ever become a want, I would target YV27 or YV29.  Two locomotives, though, should keep this railroad busy at least for right now with plans for only two towns in the offing.  The rest of the equipment is fairly straight forward.  YV observation car 330 is definitely in the plans as one of the passenger cars.  

Along with these three groups, there will be layout work to complete.  That gives me four more or less separate spheres of projects to tackle.  Group 1: Kit Cars.  Group 2:  Structures.  Group 3: Scratch Builds.  Group 4:  Layout.  They can all run concurrently, but the key is going to be one item from each group at a time.

This is what I’m thinking will work for me right now.  We’ll see how it all comes together.  I used to do this kind of planning in January as a goals for the year kind of look ahead.  It may be coming on to August, but this year the scale change and getting that all under control and plans made for moving forward means I and doing this and you are seeing it here at the end of July.

I’m ready to hit the workbench this week and finish-up the NP boxcar build so it can go to paint.  The plan is to finish that by the end of August.  Books are coming in the mail on how to scratch build locomotives.  I’m excited about that.  We’ll be looking at Merced Ice & Cold Storage shortly as well, and some big plans for layout construction are also on the horizon.

Lots to do, now that I’m organized, it’s time to get it going.

-Jeremy

A Virtual RPM

Posted on by jkdummler

My good friend, Eric, has posted a new “Virtual RPM” with models on display from several modelers. You can access the photos and descriptions on his blog here: http://designbuildop.hansmanns.org/2019/03/03/virtual-rpm-3/

Both my wife and I contributed some of our most recent work to the effort. We hope you enjoy, and I hope too that if you don’t already follow Eric’s blog, that you’ll dive in and explore the amazing resource that he has compiled there.

-Jeremy

2018 RPM Chicagoland Clinic

Posted on by jkdummler

My clinic for RPM Chicagoland is now done and in the “can” as they say.  This year I will be presenting a revised version of the clinic I first gave in 2016 on modeling with low vision.

This year I’ll be discussing the newly revised workshop that we’ve built, some changes in equipment that I use on a regular basis, and more tips for operating and making your layout comfortable for those with low vision to enjoy.

If you haven’t signed up yet, and will be in the Chicago area October 18, 19, 20, please come out to hear me, and other speakers.  You can find registration information at rpmconference.com.

-JD