Cartoon Wednesday

 

Cartoon Wednesday

 

Mount Blue Model Co - On30 22' Boxcar

I have been doing a lot of fanciful doodling with railroad plans roughly based on space, potentially, available in the family room. I found that I was suffering from some fairly serious grandiose designs. So I added a couple of parameters to make things actually fit in the space available. 

It has to be portable, best case I should be able to put it up, take it down and move it on my own. I decided I would use a 36"x 80". This means that my widest curve radius can only be 16" which is pretty darn tight. I know that all my On30 engines can be modified to run this tight a curve, although the 2-8-0s might look a little odd. All my current equipment is either 30' (freight cars) or 40' (passenger cars). I'm not sure how those are going to look on this sharp curve so I went looking for some of the shorter kits out there. Mount Blue Model Co has a nice boxcar kit that's 22' long so I ordered two to build and have them ready when I start to do some tests with the curvature.

I haven't built a freight car kit in years and this laser kit is very different from what I'm use to. It practically falls together and has more detail that those older kits I used to build.

 

The Roger Malinowski Tribute Part 3 - The Market Finished Finally

2025 has not been the greatest year for us. Dealing with the estate of a loved once can be grueling especially one as complicated as my Mom's. I found this particular kit to be a difficult build, the thin plywood didn't leave a lot of surface area for glue and a number of the sub structures were a bit fragile until assembled. I made the two roofs removable, this will definitely be a foreground building and with those large windows will need some serious interior detailing. I finished the inside walls and floors from textures I bought from Clever Models.

I have only lightly weathered the building at this point, more weathering will happen when it actually gets installed on the layout. As with the other buildings the base is only temporary at this point. I have no idea how these will fit into the scene yet so I at least wanted a finished base to protect the model until it gets to the layout.

There were a lot of mistakes made on this build, some of which were pretty basic and I became quite frustrated with it. At least once I considered just junking the whole kit and seeing if I could find another one out there. In addition there were a couple of missing frames which included the corbels from the front ( I have some on order but they haven't arrived yet) and the base for the front porch. I also managed to install some clapboard upside down and fogged windows with the CA. I would like to build it again, but Stoney Creek kits are a bit on the rare side.

Once again, I 'm using my 28mm Prospector from Reaper Miniatures to provide a little sense of scale.

Cartoon Wednesday

 

The Roger Malinowski Tribute Part 2 - The Boot Shop - Finished

I realized that I never showed off the finished pictures of the Boot Shop. Now a guided tour lead by your favorite prospector: 

The Roger Malinowski Tribute Part 3 - The Market

I have snuck in fifteen minutes here, fifteen minutes there working on this particular kit. This is the Market, part of the Stoney Creek Designs Crossroads Collection, a series of kits that were not part of his limited edition line of kits. This one is obviously based on the bakery in Silver Plume Colorado. However, the door way is squared off rather than the angled door on the original. Other than that its pretty darn close, by the way Banta Modelworks makes a version of this particular building as well.

I have run into a lot of issues with this kit, several self-inflicted, some by actually following the instructions. Because of that I'm doing a lot more dry fitting and trying to make sure everything actually fits. I think the biggest gripe with these kits is the 1/16th inch thick plywood that makes up the basic shell. Its really quite fragile during the construction phase. And those windows, they are huge! And I really messed them up, enough so that I think I'm going to try and find another unbuilt kit and try it again.

Obviously this one is not done, but since I can't seem to actually post anything I thought I would get something out there.

Family Heirloom - Pocket Watch

My Mom gave me this old family pocket watch sometime ago. Over the weekend I had acquired another pocket watch and since I had some tools out I decided to see what I could learn about this one.

The first observation is pretty obvious, right on the face is the manufacturer's name. In this case the Elgin National Watch Co. Next step was to see if it still worked at all. I could set the hands without a problem but it definitely wasn't winding properly which puts it in the non-working category.

Next step, open it up. I unscrewed the bezel pulled the stem and pulled the stem all the way out. This disengages the stem from the interior works. The inner case then swings out on a hinge which allows you to get to the back of the watch. On the back we see a repeat of the company name, the serial number and usually the number of jewels. In this case the number of jewels is not listed. I think what amazes me about these watch is that they used serial numbers. On top of that there are extensive databases online where these numbers are listed.

This particular watch's serial number is 2639357. The key points to take away are this is a Grade 96 (quality and type of movement), Model 4 (factory model group) and was produced around 1888 and it has 7 Jewels (basically the more jewels the better). They made approximately 566,000 copies of this watch over the years! From a production standpoint that makes this a pretty common pocket watch. None the less now I need to sit down with Mom and see if she remembers who it belonged to.

I'm still in search of a military, particularly navigation, pocket watches, although I have a lead on that now. There are plenty out there its just about how much money you want to part with.

Cartoon Wednesday

 

Cartoon Wednesday

 

Donor Boiler

I managed to acquire a Bachmann On30 4-6-0 off of eBay last week. As I pulled it from the box I saw all the things wrong with it; missing pilot, broken front coupler, broken and missing hatch on the cab roof and the tender is missing two sets of wheels. The truck is there but the wheels are missing.

Initially I was a bit put out that I hadn't read the description carefully enough beyond it was a good runner. Then it hit me, I don't care if its missing those parts, I just need the boiler! This is the donor locomotive to convert the Bachmann On30 2-8-0 to represent a Colorado & Northwestern 2-8-0 which means I don't care about the broken details. I'm going to strip the boiler down of all its components and fit it to the Bachmann On30 2-8-0, now I just need to find some detail parts, new steam dome, new sand dome and a few other pieces for my first locomotive conversion.

Cartoon Wednesday

 

The Roger Malinowski Tribute Part 2 - The Boot Shop

This is another building from Crossroads Collection, Roger Malinowski's effort to have a line of basic kits that he would always have in stock as part of the Stoney Creek lineup. Like the Gun shop this one features a couple of different types of construction and weathering techniques. 

Like the Gun Shop my intention is to have interior details and lighting to be added later, but that means that there are changes the need to made to the building itself to accomodate those things. The major change on my part will be the roof which needs to be removable.

The most unusual feature of this kit is the use of thin walnut for the side and rear walls. These walls are built up board by board on an inner carcass of 1/16" plywood. This includes adding on battens to cover the gap between the boards. Tedious but worth the effort in the end. The issue I had was with the "painting". In this case with oil pastels. It looks good but the difference between the walnut wall and the basswood batten is pretty dramatic, mostly because instead of going with the as built white I went with red.

Progress has been steady, so here are a few photos of the progress:

The side and rear walls, battens applied on two of them and the third I'm getting ready to start.

Cartoon Wednesday

 

Cartoon Wednesday

 

The Colorado & Northwestern in On30

I really enjoyed working on the D&RGW switching plan (Warehouse Row) in 3D. Since I "completed" that model I have been contemplating doing it again. When I decided to do the Malinowski tribute kit builds I thought it would be an opportunity to do it again this time for the On30 layout. 

While I would love to have a layout the does the Colorado & Northwestern justice I don't have the space and I don't want a second switching layout. I envisioned a figure 8 layout with a few places to switch cars but the emphasis on scenery, good sight lines for photography and letting the trains just roll.

There are a couple of parameters. It has to be less than 4' wide and breakdown in to at least two sections so it can be moved and stored easily. Being able to make it come apart definitely adds complications to the build but I'm not going to worry about that for the model. Scenery needs to be lightweight and relatively tough so the bulk of it is going to be carved out of pink/blue. The C&N, like many Colorado railroads, ran along stream banks so a stream, and the opportunity to build a few bridges, are required features.

Looking at a few maps and a lot of pictures I decided that the little mining town of Salina would fit the bill (other than the figure 8) for the location. The station is a bit separated from the town itself and the town kind of straggles up the gulch with at least one of the mines, the Black Cloud, dominating the gulch and the town. Plus the switching is more extensive than a lot of other spots on the C&N and practically everything is on a curve.

 With that in mind I started doodling around with the compass and curve radii. I settled on 20" radius which, in theory, should accomodate the 2-8-0s that I finally managed to acquire. However, the problem with the radius is it really shortens up the passing siding to the point of making it almost useless if I limit myself to an 8' length. To combat that I stretched from 8' to 10'. The compromise is to break the layout down into three pieces, instead of the 2 pieces I was hoping for; 1 6' long and 2 2' long. For the width I needed 40" to accomodate th radius plus a couple of inches on either side which brings us to 44" wide. I'm not sure that only saving 4" from the less than 4' requirement is actually worth it and maybe in the end I'll just go all the way out to 4'.

I went through 5 or 6 iterations before I arrived at one that, mostly, fit the bill. Here are a few pictures to illustrate.

The "final" iteration of the track plan

I photocopied it so I wouldn't mess up the original when I glued it down to a sheet of PVC.

I used some contact cement to glue the paper down to the PVC and cut the whole thing out. This actually didn't work out very well. The paper started to peal away from the PVC pretty quickly as I started to cut it out. The happy accident was that the contact cement actually transferred the track plan right to the PVC so when the paper pealed away the drawing was still on the PVC.

I then cut a piece of Gatorboard to serve as the "tabletop". Its 1/4" thick so I'll have to add some more foam, of some kind, so I can really carve down below the track level.

I glued down the areas that would be elevation 0" that establishes my baseline level.

I then added some risers for the grades. The issue is I need to go from 0" to 5" in about 8' so the grades are steep. However, the C&N averaged about a 4% grade and in the area of Salina there was a section that was close to 7% (not for a long stretch but its still quite the obstacle).

A look from the side.

A closer look at the bridge crossing and the spot where I "cut in" another switch. Originally the train was to enter from the right side, but that created an awkward spot with the grades. By cutting in the switch on the 0" elevation I got around the grade issue on the right.

Now I just need to find some foam to cut up to make create a bit of scenery.

Cartoon Wednesday

 

The Roger Malinowski Tribute Part 1 - The Gunshop

I have been missing in action for the better part of the month, not intentionally but sometimes the days just fly by. I have been slowly working through a couple of projects so things have been happening but life just got in the way of actually blogging about anything. I couldn't even keep up with Cartoon Wednesday! On the plus side the garden is in and we didn't have a hail storm right after we finished like last year. It did take a lot of time though.

So recently I discovered that Roger Malinowski had passed away from cancer all the way back in November of 2022. I only found out when I visited the website for Stoney Creek Designs to see if there was anything new. I have been slowly accumulating his kits for years and have about a dozen in the cupboard waiting to be built and my intent has always been to build them not collect and resell them. There are still 3 or 4 that I would like to acquire but the prices have gone through the roof if they come up for sale at all.

That leads into my decade + fascination with On30 and the search for the Bachmann 2-8-0. Recently I have managed to acquire not 1 but 2 of these engines and have been scribbling designs for a small (ish) On30 layout to run them on. This would not replace the D&RGW HO layout (which is set in the late '50s) but would share the same basic space so it has to be something I can take down and store away when I need to scratch the HO scale itch. At this point this layout will, primarily, showcase the Stoney Creek Design kits so I anticipate operations being somewhat limited with a focus more on scenes and photography those scenes.

I figured I could, at least, go ahead and start putting together the kits on hand so I opted to start with one of the "easier" kits; The Gunstore from the Crossroads Collection. This series of four kits were not limited editions like his regular line of limited edition kits and his intent was to keep them in stock. I didn't really take a lot of pictures of this build so I'm just presenting everything that I have in somewhat the correct order.

I used Clever Creek Model texture files for the floor and walls on the inside.

The basic building finished and the roofs being test fitted.

Shingles!

Tar paper on the back addition

The finished building sections. The white door is the interior door from Grande Line (now owned by San Juan)

A look inside. Since all the models will be up very much in the foreground I want to be able to detail the interior. That required modifying both roofs to be removable. I also plan on adding lighting.

From the front. The miniature is a prospector figure from Reaper Miniatures. Despite being a 28mm Heroic sized miniature he is still on the short side maybe 5’4” or 5”

The base is a piece of gatorboard. It’s about 1/2” wide all around the building and only has some basic scenery completed. The front porch is scratch built from coffee stir sticks.