realworkingsailor

Thanks everyone for the likes and comments! I've had a browse through your log. Your build is looking pretty good too. Best of luck with the planking! That's about all anyone can do, really. I guess I got lucky, she didn't try to eat any of the pieces (unlike poor BE with his Sphynx...) A small update to share. I've decided to deviate a little with the colour scheme. This goes against what I've read about the prototype's possible colour scheme (hopefully I don't get sent to boat-jail for blasphemy🤞). I've gone with a dark blue for the area of the hull between the mouldings: The official name of the colour is Polyscale "C&O Enchantment Blue". I think it compliments well with both the Golden Oak stain as well as the red from the gun ports; Polyscale "NYC Pacemaker Red" (I know, I'm using "railway" colours, but they're what I have on hand). I had thought to return to black for the QD bulwarks, but I've since decided against that, and I think I will leave them as is. I think the black would have muted the dark blue too much. On to paint the port side. Andy

I can't quite remember when exactly I bought this Confederacy kit, probably sometime around 2012 or 2013. It sat for a long time in the closet, virtually untouched, except for the manual. I think I may have the most well read manual out there, (With tongue firmly planted in cheek; I think MS could do a little better job on the binding, it wasn't really designed to stand up to the rigours of repeated readings 🤪). I finally started started picking away at this build some four or five years ago, between other projects. Progress has been largely sporadic, with more than a few backwards steps being taken. On many occasions the self-critic took over and the kit was shelved for months (or most recently for almost two years). For many reasons (of which, the above is just one), I've avoided a build log until now. I'm at a point where I'm satisfied with my progress so far, and I hope that the worst of the back stepping is now over. I have completed the planking from the wales upwards and I'm now in the process of adding the first beaded moulding strips. The starboard side mouldings have been added, and the port side is in progress. If things look a little wonky with the stern light window frames (cills and lintels), it was due to an unfortunate incident involving the large nose of a curious young german shepherd, that decided to investigate the stern, while work was being done on the other end of the ship. The interloping nose went undetected until the work required a shift in position... I'll leave the rest up to your imaginations.. but suffice it to say, it wasn't pretty. Pieces where quickly gathered up, and splintered wood glued back together. Before the time comes to attach the transom, everything will be revisited and correctly re-aligned. I've used Minwax Golden Oak stain for the planking above the wale, with some Polyscale acrylics that I had kicking around, for the black wale and the red gun ports. Andy

If I may suggest, when building with styrene, consider building in layers. Start with a 0.010” or 0.015” outer layer, and work inwards. The thinner stock will make cutting easier and more accurate, the subsequent heavier layers only require more general window openings. Have a look to see how I built my CPR coach: Andy

Most of the ore I’ve seen heading up the lakes out of Port Cartier, Pointe Noire and Sept Iles was pellets. Those mines also ship concentrate ore, but mostly for overseas markets. The concentrate ore can be finicky for SULs, depending on moisture content, but I did get out to the CSL Spirit, when it was involved in the transshipment operation out of Pt Noire, and it seemed to run alright through the gear, no hang ups and not much mess in the tunnel. Algoma holds pretty tight to their contract with Dofasco, who still have cranes at Hamilton, so for them SUL equipment isn’t entirely critical. I wonder if the yard they signed with initially in China hadn’t run into financial difficulties if we’d be seeing more Equinox 740’ SULs by now. Andy

Bulkers need bigger hatches (hence fewer) in order to accommodate shore unloading equipment, as opposed to SULs. If you look at the CSL St. Laurent or the CSL Welland, you’ll see a similar number of hatches to the Equinoxes. Sadly I’m not on any ships anymore (except as a passenger), was forced to give it up because of my eyesight (more specifically, lack thereof). Andy

The Algoma boats use a “Macgregor” style quick acting cleat, along with square section rubber seals (similar in cross section to a 2x4) running in a U channel under the lip of the hatch cover. These seals mate with a compression bar set on the hatch coaming. Very similar to the arrangement found on deep sea ships with hydraulic hatches. This allows for fewer clamps per hatch cover (labour saving!), but does require a more rigid structure. All the CSL new builds retained the now 70 year old system of Kestner clamps and small seals on the hatches. The seals are simply a 3/4” wide by 1” deep strip of rubber, keyhole shaped in cross section, held in a narrow groove in the underside of the hatch cover, these seals mate only to the flat top of the hatch coaming. This system is structurally lighter, and allows for more flexing, but requires more clamps per hatch (about 33% more), hence more labour intensive. In the current corporate drive to control costs (read cut crews), I can’t, for the life of me, figure out why CSL didn’t really do any (major) innovation on the deck arrangement on their ships. Technically, they are well designed ships, efficient engines and cargo handling equipment, but they’re trying to run a 70 year old style deck with less than 25% of the crew (as compared to when the Kestner clamp was the latest and greatest….. circa 1947). Andy

I consider the Lanz bulldog and the British made Field-Marshall "honorary steam tractors". They're also great "party trick" tractors, the Lanz because it can run without the single cylinder engine completing a full revolution, and the Field-Marshall because of the unique method used to start the engine. And just for good measure, some steam: Andy

As near as I can determine... Left to right: J.I. Case model LA (1940-1953) or model 500 (1953-1956) IH model 650 (1956-1958) IH-McCormick Super W6 (1952-1954) Allis-Chalmers styled WC (1938-1948) Massey-Harris possibly model 44 (1947-1953) Andy

Absolutely. Not arguing that it wasn’t an improvement over the older method. Although I thinks there’s an old joke about having a good team of horses and the old farmer could just sit at the end of the field yelling “gee” or “haw” every now and again. I’ve done some ploughing myself, with an IH 384 and an ace bottom plough. No matter what, ploughing is a time consuming (but satisfying) process. Andy

I haven’t yet been able to locate a clip from the BBC series, but I did find these YouTube videos of Fowlers ploughing. You can see how labour intensive, and time consuming this style of ploughing is (as evidenced in the second clip that momentarily jumps to a little bit more modern equipment in the form of a little red Nuffield, and a grey Ford 8N). Andy

I seem to recall an episode in the BBC Historic Farm series (can’t remember which season though, Victorian or Edwardian), where they demonstrated ploughing with one of those. Amazing to watch, but plenty of opportunities for the judicious mechanical removal of misplaced limbs! Andy

Nice Model! You just gotta love steam! Some great steam tractor pulling can be found on Youtube: Andy

I can think of many choice colourful words to describe those miserable FB trolls, but I will refrain from using that sort of language here. You have absolutely nothing to be ashamed of. I have quite enjoying watching your progress to date, especially knowing that the (high) quality of your build efforts is something that I could possibly achieve, had I the resources (read $$, or €€ or ££) to attempt it myself. Chin up, and know that I’m among the people here on MSW that wish to see to see you succeed (even if it’s only in experience, it’s 100% worth it!) Looking forward to your continued progress when you’re ready to resume. Andy

Just spent a little time perusing what was available on the Micromark website. A few different casting metals with different melt points, definitely want to avoid anything containing lead, though...... maybe something to consider looking into in the fall. Out of sheer stubbornness, though, I will have to try to salvage at least one of the castings I received. Andy

Metal casting is a little outside my skill set, unfortunately. About the only type of casting I feel remotely capable of even attempting would be resin, but I’m not sure how strong the resulting parts would be. Andy

So a small package arrived in the mailbox today. All the parts I'd ordered from LaBelle have arrived safely. (Yay-ish). Looks like the replacement queen post castings have similar issues as the one noted in a previous post. I suspect at this point the law of diminishing returns has struck and in all likelihood the casting molds are not in the best shape, since all the queen post castings are consistent in shape. I really can't hold this against LaBelle, if these are the molds they bought off of BCW, it's about as good as I'm going to get, and they have their own product lines to worry about. The other detail parts (vents and tanks) all look ok, though. It looks more promising that I may be able to clean up the queen post castings a bit and with careful filing, and restore them to a shape closer to the older original casting (which I'm now going to have to forsake using as it will be needed as a master reference). Of course all this comes just as the weather has begun to turn summer like, so I've got some time to consider my options. Andy

Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

Nice job on your canoe, and a particularly nice choice in colours for the finish. If I may offer a small suggestion, if you haven't already, get a set of brass stem bands, they'll help protect the bow and stern from bumps, scrapes, abrasions, chips etc. Andy

Hi Denis! Thanks for your generous compliments. The BCW Sparrows Point Kits are modern kits (laser cut components, PE parts, etc). The major assembly is pretty straight forward, and should be reasonably simple for anyone with a modicum of experience. As for trucks, research, especially if photographs are available, is your best friend (along with the Walthers website). Make sure you have a Kadee coupler height gauge too! If you want a suggestion for your diorama, look into getting a couple pieces of styrofoam insulation board (the dense pink of blue stuff, not the pressed white pellet stuff). You can layer and carve it to quickly make 3D scenery (ditches, embankments, hills). Your trains can be shown living IN the scenery rather than simply plonked on top of it. Kalmbach publishing has many inexpensive books on scenery techniques to help get you going. Good luck! Andy

That chonky queen post is basically junk, there’s no saving that bad casting. I used Squadron white putty. It bonds reasonably well enough to wood and very well with plastic and resin. It sands easily, but I recommend having good ventilation and/or a respirator when applying, and be sparing too. Andy

Thanks again, everyone for your kind comments and likes! Work has continued on the car mostly as planned. The truck bolsters are white metal castings that required only minor clean up before glueing to the car floor. Before that step, it is helpful to mark a few reference lines to help with locating other components later on. While the two transverse lines close to the centre of the car are laser etched as part of the kit, the remaining lines I had to add. The obvious longitudinal centre line, as well as lines to help locate the truck bolsters. The other two transverse lines mark the line of the truss rod anchor points. I've had to deviate slightly from the kin instructions, as there is the potential to foul the swing of the trucks, so I marked a line slightly closer to the centre of the car. I've partially assembled the Branchline trucks. There's no point yet adding the remaining detail parts or the middle wheel set until the car is ready for final assembly. Couplers have also been added, and tested for height with a Kadee coupler gauge. For display purposes, a medium shank coupler is just fine (the same goes for the other baggage cars I've built), but for smooth operation, at least one will have to be replaced with a long shank coupler to allow enough clearance between cars. Next up was fitting the roof. This step requires a lot of car and attention in order to get as close and as clean a fit as possible. In my case, for some reason the kit supplied wooden roof section was an end cut, it looked almost like it had been cut by a chain saw. Since I didn't have any replacement pieces on hand, it was time for a little improvisation. After sanding off as much of the rough cut end as I felt comfortable, I was able to shim it back to the correct length with a piece of styrene sheet. Following this, the resin end cap was glued on. A little more sanding and some filler, and the joint looks good. I ran into another difficulty too (I think QC was asleep when they packed this particular kit): Skipping ahead a little bit, I was preparing the centre queen post casting as described in the instructions (the height needs to be shortened slightly and a notch filled in the outer post) and noticed something off. On the photo above, the piece on the left is what the casting should look like (before flash removal). The piece on the right was the one I was working on, and it must have been a bad casting, as it is considerably "chunkier" than the other casting. Part of the parts order I made with LaBelle was for a bunch of these queen post castings, so hopefully a replacement will be on the way soon. In the mean time, it's time for some grab irons and end details (yay!). Andy

The kit notwithstanding, there’s something about wooden passenger car construction that showcases true artistry and craftsmanship. I’ve seen old black and white photographs taken inside the Osgood-Bradley car shops in the waning days of wooden car construction. Not only was the joinery as intricate and precise as you could ever imagine, but the smell of wood chips and sawdust was palpable. I guess the closest anyone can get to that kind of atmosphere is a visit inside a high end wooden furniture shop. Andy

Well, parts have been ordered... we'll see how long or if ever (my credit card has yet to be billed.. so... ). In the interim, a little diversion.... another BCW Sparrows point kit: This kit is based on a small number of baggage cars built by CPR and American Car and Foundry in 1905 and 1913 Most of the cars went to the CPR and a few went to the CPR/NYC joint subsidiary Toronto Hamilton and Buffalo railway. Midway through their careers, they were returned to the CPR, where the last was retired in 1958. Originally they were designed for baggage, mail and express, and thus were built with a third door in the centre of the car that was equipped with a mail catcher and features a small slot to drop off envelopes. There is a great photo of #4190 near the end of its career in the book "From Wood to Steel: Classic Canadian Railway Passenger Cars from 1860 to 1920" By Richard McQuade. A quick look at the contents of the kit: The car sides, floor and trim is all laser cut. The thin scribed sides as well as trim and doors is all thin peel-and-stick backed ply, the floor and sub-sides is laser cut basswood. The car ends as well as the roof end caps are cast resin, and the central roof section is a router carved clerestory section I suspect originates from Northeastern Scale Lumber. The clerestory vents and stirrup steps are PE. The main detailing parts are a mix of laser board, plastic and white metal castings. In this kit, I may have "borrowed" the pintsch gas tank for another project, luckily I had a suitable brass replacement detail part. A selection of brass wire and styrene and wood strips as well as decals by Black Cat Publishing rounds out the contents of the box. Like most, if not all, craftsman style kits, trucks and couplers are not included. For this car, I have a nice set of Branchline Trains six wheeled trucks that will do nicely, as well as my usual go-to Kadee #58 couplers. Assembling the car begins with the car sides: A sharp Exacto knife is all that's required to slice the tiny tabs to release the part. Before removing the peel-and-stick backing, it's always recommended to verify the alignment of the side and sub-side. The peel-and-stick material is very adhesive and you only get one shot to get things right! The two sides are now assembled. Some minor sanding was required, as there are some small discrepancies in the sizing that need to be addressed (again, highlighting the need to verify everything before removing the backing!). This instructions then move on to assembling the car, but I prefer to do a detour and trim the doors first, as it is easier to get things lined up properly with the car sides on a flat surface. The door trim consists of 1/16" quarter round basswood strip. It lands square on the door sill and is mitred around the top. I find that using my Exacto knife in my mitre box produces consistent results. Care has to be taken as there is only slightly more material available in the kit than is needed, be sure to cut the pieces slightly long and file to fit. A little PVA secures the strip to the door opening. Next up the doors are assembled: Similar to the sides, the doors consist of two layers of peel-and-stick backed ply. You only need to remove the backing from the outer trim layer. Just like the sides, check the alignment before removing the backing! In the above photo, the doors are only dry fit, yet. Once the doors are completed for both sides of the car, assembly can begin. In the photos above, you can see the interlocking tabbed construction joint of the car floor and sides, this greatly eases construction by keeping the sides correctly lined up. As well, the adhesive backing does provide a little bit of hold while the glue sets up. A few small sections of square styrene stock helps to secure the joints at a right angle (they're CA'ed into place before gluing the carsides on. The prototype car does not appear to have been ever fitted with a steel centre sill. Other SP car kits included a length of wood to simulate this feature which also had the added benefit of preventing any longitudinal warping of the car kit when painting. In this spirit, I've added a strip of wood down the centre of the inside of the car to hopefully provide the same anti-warping benefit. Once the sides are in place, then ends are now added: Using the roof end caps as a guide, some height adjustment is necessary prior to gluing. The interior side of the end casting has a slight raised section corresponding to the door on the outside. Some careful trimming of the lower part of this raised section is needed to allow the end to sit at the right height. Caution is emphasized as it is very easy to sand/carve your way through the door (and leave an unsightly hole). This is as far as I have gotten on this kit so far. Next up assembling the trucks followed by attaching the bolsters and couplers. Andy

Especially those wooden “survivor” cars. The ones built in the decades immediately before and after the turn of the century, just before the widespread introduction of steel heavyweight construction, that were modified at least once or twice in the teens or twenties, and somehow seeing almost sixty years in revenue service. http://dardpi.ca/wiki/images/R-105.jpg Andy

Thanks everyone for the comments and likes! A small, yet large update. I completed the second car side. Not much to it, really, just a repeat of the first. I may have mentioned in the past, how most craftsman type railway kits like to leave off adding the trucks and couplers until the last or second last step in the instructions. Considering that this process can require a certain amount of "heavy" construction, theres always a risk of damaging fine details, scratching paintwork, or for the particularly less delicate among us, leaving a passable looking model resembling something the dog (or cat) chewed on. My preference is to get this stage taken care of as soon as it is practical to do so, basically as soon as the car floor is completed. In the case of this kit, in order to get the couplers located correctly, both height and depth wise, some wooden shims where needed, and a little bit of shaping and filing, followed be drilling out the hols for the coupler mounting screws. Again, as this is intended to be a working model, a certain degree of robustness and a necessity to plan ahead to make any future maintenance or replacement as easy and as least invasive as possible. So yes, the screws are glaringly over sized, but I maintain that, as a model railroader, if you spend that time staring at the underbodies of your rolling stock, you've got bigger issues to contend with. I recommend doing a google search for a therapist in your area and booking an appointment ASAP. Anyway, after the above rough work was completed, it was time to mount the sides and ends (and test fit the roof). The car ends are from the original kit, with some modifications I had made way back when I first attempted this build. I had to clean up some of the old paint, so the ends were given a quick dunk in Testor's ELO. Not the best chemical to remove acrylic paint, but with careful scrubbing using a toothbrush, the worst of the old paint was removed. The assembled car as it sits now. The light splotches on the roof is filler from where I had drilled holes for the roof vents on the earlier attempt. I was deeply dissatisfied with how they turned out (one of the reasons I abandoned that attempt). For my second try, I figured out a better way to simulate the capped vents, so a little bit of filler and hopefully the roof remains decently salvageable. A quick shot of the underside showing the Central Valley trucks and Kadee #58 semi-scale couplers Finally a quick look at the prototypically close coupling I've managed to achieve. When the time comes to begin running these cars, at least one will have to be fitted with a long shank coupler in order to increase the separation. Otherwise, on tight model curves, the whole thing risks derailing. For now, it is time to begin the detail work. Andy