Canute

There are a lot of aftermarket goodies for these, although finding them can be a long process. Part of it is knowing what each piece is called. And these part manufactures are mostly mom & pop kinds of makers, so can go out of business unexpectedly. If one is lucky, the company assets are bought up by another person or company. The model railroad hobby, like many, has morphed into a "ready to run" one. I admire the zeal to do this up, but be prepared for a long haul if you plan to really doll this up.

Yes, they'd hang a canvas screen to keep some of the weather out of the cab. Good idea for an added detail. I guess they may have used some red knobs, but I don't know too much about wood burning steam engines. One detail you should show is the water sight glass. It'd be a vertical clear glass tube, with brass fittings holding it to the firebox face showing the water level of the boiler. Would be about mid boiler face , both vertical and horizontal. It was critical that the water level was monitored. If the crown sheet (between the firebox and the actual boiler) inside the boiler was exposed and then fresh water pumped in, the water would flash over to steam and could cause an explosion. If that happened the crew would be killed or badly scalded. Railroading was pretty dangerous in the 1800s.

OC, you might check Hannants and other sites for aftermarket parts. I'll bet there are those bulged wheels. And I know there is a US company making metal replacement landing gear for many airplanes.

Denis, Mark, the level of detail available is stunning. And as guys get more into 3D printing of parts... The technology is amazing. Some kit makers have such a level of detail, it'll blow your sox off. Boxcars with the oil canning of the sides. Greg Lester is a master doing that on his ships, but it takes time and work. I pulled a resin cast car out of the box and the oil canning is already done. I still have a lot of work on the car, drilling out grab irons, adding brake rigging, putting on doors and running boards, painting and weathering. Denis I will do an actual build soon. I have 3 half finished cars I need to get closer to completion. I'm too far along to get "starting out" pictures. The digital command control we have now is very cool and being able to use the tiny speakers from your cell phone really adds to the effect. The sounds are superb. We have to be very careful with speakers, since the sound systems are in the 2 watt range. Some of the sounds can be corny (station announcements), but I can match the actual air horn sound to the loco I'm running. Find a club in your local area and ask to visit the layout. If it's HO, S or O scale, you'll get the sound effects. The N Scales have sound, it's just tougher to fit all the goodies into their equipment.

The Wooden Wonder, very cool. I'm in, OC.

Yes, that is a great airbrush site. Denis, this is all a cooperate and graduate kind of affair. I learn stuff all over this website. I have played with resins and worked some metal stuff, too. Tapping zamac is an exercise, with using a fluid (I use 3 in oil, because it's handy). Nice and easy does it. Ain't no race. Drawing a bath for Batman and Robin? I'm sure they'll like it. Some guys also rub the resin parts with alcohol wipes. I don't know about that. I would recommend keeping your bare fingers off the freshly washed resin, to prevent finger oils contaminating the bare resin. I'd do the same for styrene plastic.

Brass knobs, Denis. Oh and it's the engine cab, not a booth. Engine is looking good. Good thing this is a wood burner. Some early coal burners from railroads in northeastern PA had very wide fire boxes, to help burn anthracite. They had a shelter of sorts at the back of the locomotive. This was where the fireman kept the water level up and the fire going. The engineer rode in a cab in the mid section of the boiler, right over the drive rods and wheels.

Thanks, J. Much appreciated. And all you folks hitting the react button, too. It's a fun hobby.

Whatever it takes to get the part shaped and glued. Greg, what is the flat round doohickey laying on the surface plate in post #54? Looks like a scraper/shaper tool?

Keith, that's the Tiffany glass I mentioned. One hundred plus years back, the railroads really did themselves proud with fancy work like that. Lou, we run cars around the layout with drone cameras (smaller than GoPros) to give our visitors a view "out of the cab" from one of our locos running around the various sections of the club. Many think we're running videos, until we tell them to wave at the camera car and they see themselves. They eat it up. We ask our engineers to follow their trains to prevent wrecks, but "cornfield meets" can happen. Craig, it is fun. Build up a miniature world and run your trains around in a prototypical manner. Beats working for The graffiti on cars happens when they sit in a yard somewhere for too long a period of time. That big, blue autobox I did was used to haul parts from the parts makers (Delco, etc.) to assembly plants. We had a number of assembly plants in north Jersey (Mahwah - Ford, Linden - GM) It was considered captive service, since those cars were very specialized internal racks for GM or Ford parts. Keeping track of all them needed a slew of clerks, since we weren't into a lot of computerization. Denis, Ambroid and Northeastern kits are available, usually on Fleabay. Interesting kits, although the level of details isn't up to the current capabilities. And they tend to try to make wood look like steel. I have some QualityCraft "steel" cars that show the wood, despite four or five coats of sanding sealer. I have a couple of vinegar and pickle cars (nice wood cars) that I will substitute some styrene parts where they should be steel. There are decals to do graffiti, like Denis says, but I know a few custom painters who study the cars a lot. They tend to take and gather a lot of photos so they can duplicate the real thing. I'm off to a railroad prototype modelers meet tomorrow, down in Savannah, Georgia. A few of those guys may be there, so I'll ask around.. I've got a few kitbashes in the mill, Denis. One is a conversion of a coal hopper to a clay hopper. Chopped the bottom hopper chutes off with my scrollsaw and cleaned up the plastic crumbs. Plumbed the brake lines and started fitting two side channels. Next step is some bottom doors. Another project is a Northeastern stock car with a little modernization of detail parts.

Denis, the tap holes need to be pretty square or it could end up looking like it took a hit from another cannon. And tapping plastic and resins are a heck of a lot easier than metals. And no tapping fluids needed, either. Painting resin? Just need to wash off molding agents, just like cleaning plastics. Dawn dish washing liquid works well. Guess I'm a fan of resins over metals. Gluing these pewter metals are no easier or harder than resin. A good clean mechanical joint, in conjunction with either CA or epoxy, is what I do. Getting a good square joint is where I need to get as tight as possible, otherwise your bonding agent is not effective in holding parts together. Overall, I'd rather work with wood and styrene plastic. And the cannon looks great.

Lou I belong to a good sized club down here: https://www.avmrc.com/ Keeps me busy; plus I am an operations junkie, so we have a number of home layouts we travel to run their layouts like the real railroads did. We really are RC train guys. All our trains run with Digital Command Control. Small computer boards in each loco and a computerized control station to power the layout. I have radio trhottles and can also use my phone as a throttle. This ain't the old Lionel setup with that ZW transformer. Keith, that's a pretty old steel car (large upper sashes over all the windows. May have even had Tiffany glass up there.) Thank you for helping to preserve a small piece of your local railroad history. Hopefully, they've found trucks to put under this car. That's always an issue when folks do "unnatural" things with rail cars and turn them into a cottage or restaurant. My club is preserving a Southern Railway caboose, which was donated some years back. We repainted the interior a few years back and re-stenciled it with correct Southern markings. Our biggest problem of late with it is keeing the graffiti off. Guess we have a few aspiring "artists" around Hootervile.

Probably depends on how old the original design is and their comfort/familiarity with the white metal medium. If a mom and pop kind of operation, they may not want to take the step to newer technologies. I looked at picking up a 3" Ordnance Rifle some time back, since it was the gun used by horse artillery units attached to cavalry troops. The all metal parts turned me off.

Looks good, Sea Hoss. Little boat howitzer turned out nicely.

Love the old 30's aircraft. Out of the doped canvas and into some sheet metal.

I have. Do you have a scale in mind? I'm primarily in HO.

OK, here comes some rolling stock I've been fiddling with since Thanksgiving. All are HO scale (1/87). Blue car in the back is a scale 86' car with extended coupler pockets. It's a little over a foot long. Middle car is a scale 50'. Front one is 36'. Blue car is late 60s, middle car mid 50s and the little one is pre-WWI. Braced the insides and added the coupler boxes on the body. Original coupler mount was a swing arm off the truck (wheel-set at each end). Car needs a huge radius to run. I built it more as a kit-bashing exercise. Added the silvery brake platform down low on the end. It's stainless photo etch and a bear to cut with a hobby knife. I use a Xuron cutter. A few more things to add like air lines and paint here. Same railroad, different paint schemes over the years. Front car is WWI era, middle is around WWII. Back car is post WWII. This is the level of detail in many kits today, although this was built up from many pieces/parts. Careful gluing here. Nowadays, model companies have the Chinese build up the cars and sell them ready to run. Where's the fun in that? This is the brake pipes and rods on the underframe. The cylinder towards the top is an air reservoir, the little collection of box like objects underneath that reservoir is the master valve and the small cylinder on the left with a cone pointing left is the actual brake cylinder. It actuates the rodding to set and release the brakes on the trucks. Simpler early brake equipment. Manufacturers would have you gluing all of this stuff together, but I choose to screw the coupler boxes and truck kingpins, in case they need replacing. (You never know when a car will take a fall off benchwork over a meter off the floor. The resulting crash could dekit the whole car or do significant damage to it) Mostly 2-56 screws, a few 1-72 or 0-80, like on the big auto box. I tap the holes to keep things square, but some of the plastic parts can be done with self tapping screws. The metal details, like the coupler boxes on the 86' car, are pewter, so you have to tap those holes. Same for any zamac or pot metal parts. These and the other cars I've done up are all in need of paint and weathering. And I have a couple of more intense kit bashes, requiring cutting up bodies and under-frames. One hopper and a handful of refrigerator cars.

The first 6 frigates were built to protect US trade in the Med. The rest of the fledgling Navy was primarily coastal craft. Jefferson had a heck of a time convincing Congress to spend the money. Old fears of standing military forces primarily. But the desire for increasing trade finally over rode the nay sayers.

One of the hangars at Lakehurst was used to train the deck handlers for carrier ops. Back in the 50s, traveling down to the Jersey Shore, we'd see blimps floating in and out of the naval air station.

I remember building the Monogram Dauntless way back when. It, along with a lot of other planes, went ? after I went into the AF. Yours looks very good, Jack.

Model Monkey has announced 3d printed cannon and carronades for the Connie. http://members.boardhost.com/Warship/msg/1553205153.html and https://www.model-monkey.com/constitution-96 They've also done up 1/100 HMS Victory cannon and other parts: http://members.boardhost.com/Warship/msg/1553174290.html and https://www.model-monkey.com/victory-100 I'm not connected with Model Monkey, just reporting on some items near and dear to our members.

The action photo could be Coral Sea, the color one looks like Pearl Harbor.

Denis, make sure all 4 wheels in each truck touch the workbench/track evenly. These multipart trucks can be finicky to make square. Good for display models, but tough to operate if one wheel is up in the air. The tender body and headlight look very good. The reflector in the headlight turned out well. Are you lighting it? If so, remember these were kerosene lamps, so they should have an old time yellow orange glow. Just a thought. Do you know anybody with a garden railroad? These garden layouts can be a multitude of scales, from 1/32 to 1/16, but all use the same gauge track. Try and get some pictures of the General on a garden railroad. Hopefully the kit gauge will work with the garden railway gauge. The distance between their rails should be 1.772 inches or 45 mm. That's also the distance from inside one wheel flange to the inside of the opposite flange.

Yeah, the model airplane guys dip their canopies into that stuff and they come out nice and clear.

Take a look at this model railroad car/parts site. There is a .010 wire next to the photoetched eyebolts for comparison: http://www.yarmouthmodelworks.com/index.php/ModelDetailParts/Miscellaneous Eyebolts with and without collars, about halfway down the page.