Rock Island airslide hopper

Once again, going off on another direction, I'm taking a bit of a break and trying to wrap up another smaller project that I found buried on my workbench after cleaning up from the barn build.  

Delaware Valley released some of these blue Rock airslides in N scale a long time ago, but when BLMA released theirs, the difference in fidelity was night and day difference.  Then when Atlas bought BMLA out, I've been waiting for them to release some in Rock Island, which they have, a stacked block lettering.  Recently I did several up in the 70's speed lettering, but I still wanted a blue car.  

Joe at MTL said they were still planning more of their versions of airslides and would put a request in for a blue version when I asked him recently.  Nothing against Joe or Atlas, but I have waited long enough and with a bit of time to kill due to a snow storm that rolled through here, I have a couple of days off to make something happen.

I started out with a couple of Cotton Belt cars.  I removed the lettering with a toothpick and some 70% alcohol, cleaned them up and dismantled the trucks and couplers.  

I first shot a primer coat using TCP light primer. 

Followed by a coat of  TCP-166 Rock Island Blue.  Once it had dried I gave it a shot of thinned Dullcote so that I can start applying the decals. 

Even though I'm not looking forward to applying all those DATA decals, it should be a fairly easy project.  Easy yes, time consuming, OMG....54 decals per car!

But they're done!

Now Atlas or MTL will release their version...

   

Cupola caboose painting

I've made a little progress on the two cabooses this week.  After getting the holes in the roof plugged and filled I got a coat of TCP light primer shot, followed by the red, then the yellow ends and finally the black roof.  Masking was pretty straight forward on them.

The two little silver stands on both sides of the cupola is what I'm assuming are some sort of vents?  They were made from .040" styrene rods which were heated slightly and flattened.

I still need to paint the handrails white, apply silver around the door windows, you know, the tedious stuff.  I was going to try my hand at drilling out a window on the end to right of each door, but since these are not an exact match for the prototypes, I may just forego this bit of frustration?

 

Cupola Cabooses

Decided to take a little break from JMRI Ops and do a little modeling.  I had planned to work on a few more locomotives, but decided to keep the project a little smaller than what I did with the GP35's and the U33B's.

This is one style of caboose that I have never had in my collections, but recently after watching some old  films turned to video and posted on YouTube of the Montezuma branch, I thought I'd like to add a couple to the fleet.

(Neither of these are my photos.)

So I started out with a couple of Micro Trains standard cabooses like these:

The first thing I needed to do was to remove the roof walks, upper ladder rungs and fill the holes.  Not sure if I'm going to fill in the windows at this point or not?

Instead filling the holes with some sort of putty, I decided to snip off the stems that hold the roof walk in place and then jamb some styrene into the rest of the holes on the roof and try carving them.

It looks a little rough but I'll try to file things down a bit more and then paint should cover the worst of my sins.

The second one is in process.

 

Milwaukee Road airslide hoppers

I've been wanting to replace two of my Milwaukee Road Delaware Valley or Bowser airslide hoppers with some nicer Atlas airslides.  

I started with an Atlas Frisco hopper because it had most of the lettering that I needed and the undercarriage was already painted black.  Which meant I only had to remove the large Frisco lettering, the reporting marks and the car numbers.

This was done using 91% Alcohol applied to the lettering and then using a toothpick I started rubbing it over the lettering.  Within a few seconds the black ink started to let loose.  After about a minute or two of constant rubbing, the lettering was gone.

The alcohol didn't affect the gray base color.

Once I had everything removed, I shot the entire car with a coat of Dullcote and applied the Microscale decals.

Overall a pretty simple job.  Of course, now that these are done, Atlas or Micro Trains will announce their versions.  Oh well...

One is for me and others I did for a friend.

  

Some re-decaled hoppers.

While working with JMRI Ops, I needed to change some numbers as well as change the lettering on a few hoppers I had and I figured this was a good time as any to do this.

Awhile back BLMA released their GA DryFlo hoppers in N scale. I picked up a couple PRR hoppers for cheap that I planned to re-paint or re-letter fodder. These two became a Rock Island and MoPac versions.

I brushed some Walthers Solvaset on the lettering and let it sit for a bit to hopefully soften up.  I started using a pencil eraser, but it was taking a lot of scrubbing so I switched over to using a toothpick which was a little more aggressive. Once the lettering had been removed, the areas were burnished and shiny, so I gave them a quick shot of Dullcote and applied the decals.

Neither of the two are exact copies due to the decals, but they're close enough in my books.  Of course now that I made these, Atlas will release them, which is the way it always goes.

While looking for images of any Rock Island cars, I actually found one image with a tidbit of info.  Rock Island actually had 5 of these cars and at some point were renumbered after entering revenue service.​

I had a good match on the gray plaque, but when it dried it turned a little darker and a touch bluer. Nothing a good dose of weathering won't cure in time.

I actually kind of like the larger logo?