What’s on your Workbench?

[sarge]

Those look really nice! I remember seeing an LNE covered hopper in the Ma & Pa yard at Towson. Standard two -bay, grey, with a red circle logo, I think.

You mean this guy?

[bob turner]

Yes. Exactly that. 1955, I think. They (Ma & Pa) were still using four wheel cabeese, and one 0-6-0 still moved around a bit under its own power.

[bob turner]

I was just looking through my Shutterfly account - I have loaded, and presumably posted here, hundreds of photos. Shutterfly seems to know when they were taken, so I can get a quick look at how long ago I did what. That is scary - some of my models haven't been touched for two decades, yet it seems like I was just messing with them.

I did almost finish that All Nation 4-4-2 converted to a Ten-Wheeler - I think it needs driver springs, then a trip to the display shelf. I could add non-lifting injectors, but just thinking about that. I did make a new smokebox front. I need some stirrups and a ladder on the tender, and a nice set of Monarch couplers to finish the thing up. I shall hold up on a final photo until those things are done.

In the queue - a three-truck electric, a Saginaw G5 with homemade main frame, and maybe a Hines Lines heavy Mike. I have a Bi-Polar to two-rail, but hate to disassemble it - in is such a gorgeous piece. And maybe a couple of orange and maroon passenger cars need assembling and painting.

Speaking of painting - all my Scale Coat has died due to old age except one can of black given to me by Jay. Getting Scale Coat is now rumored to be chancy at best - a lead time of three months?

There really is a sense of freedom, being booted off the NK forum - but you will suffer here, because after all, I have to post somewhere to avoid any serious reading or building.

[Chris Webster]

There really is a sense of freedom, being booted off the NK forum

I just spent a few minutes looking at OGR to see if I could figure out where you had gone wrong. The only thing I saw was your posting a model airplane photo - I'm pretty sure you have to be forum sponsor to do that!

[Jay Criswell]

Bob,

I have no problems getting SC paint. Yes, it takes a while so I order it well in advance. If Shawn has it in stock he ships fairly quickly.

I have some that's well over 30 years old and is still fine while other bottles started to cure after a short period of time. As I recall, this has always been an issue with SC. It's an enamel and cures, does not dry by evaporation, like lacquer.

SC will probably be my go to for brass models forever. Having said that, I really like True Color but it's more like a lacquer and has it place.

My point in all of this? I dunno...maybe it's, I like Scale Coat I.

Jay

[bob turner]

Me, too. Always use Scale Coat thinner. Always bake. Primer doesn't hurt, but does not seem to be needed.

On my expulsion - I suppose they got uptight when I campaigned against the use of the "reply with quote" button for endless repetition of photos. I did use the word "moderator" in a sentence, but it was mostly complimentary.

But here's the deal - much as I like yakking about trains on fora, why on earth would I want to go somewhere where I am neither wanted nor appreciated? Now if we could just get the good guys to drift over here . . .

[ScaleCraft]

But here's the deal - much as I like yakking about trains on fora, why on earth would I want to go somewhere where I am neither wanted nor appreciated?

Yup. That's why I have basically one forum I participate in any more.

Politics, idiots spouting nonsense, promulgating erroneous information, moderators who wanna be a "big fish in a little pond"....not interested.


I recall a British Car Forum I participated in for over 10 years.

Bureau of Land Management came along, protests, riots, burning of buildings....I asked about how they (forum members) were dealing with it all.
ONE idiot took offense, they blocked the thread, got a semi-nastygram from owner, and suddenly all references to them disappeared from my computer (took me a while to get it out of the backups).

THEN Rhody found out that BS visited a town near him.

Never even LOOKED at that forum again.

[bob turner]

Oh, I shall look. Carey and Erik, among others, post there and not here, and always have worthwhile posts. I just have to realize that my posts will not be missed by a large percentage of those folks.

Do you know they allow cat memorials?

[sarge]

I'm becoming very fond of Trucolor after having used it for a while now.

Scalecoat is very nice for brass because brass can be baked, a necessity with SC unless you want to let it air-cure until it passes the sniff-test, which could be a month or so. I'm not limited to brass as my sole modelling medium, so I find Trucolor the better choice for the broader range of materials, much as I did Floquil (curses upon the craft-women who killed Floquil and, more recently, Modelmaster at Testors).

I never could wrap my head around acrylics; OK for brushing on wood I suppose but pretty useless in an old snot-slinger like a Binks Wren. I could buy all new gear that is engineered for it, I suppose. The IPMS crowd does amazing stuff shooting their modern acrylics through the current technology of airbrushes.

As long as I have a decent range of solvent based paints and my old guns I'm comfortable with, I'm good.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

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[Rufus T. Firefly]

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[sarge]

I have to admit a real loathing for them as far as "control". For me very unpredictable on non-porous material (which is what I end up using the most of) and they just don't fill some void left by solvent paints that requires me to keep both types to hand. They do nothing solvent paints cannot do as well or better so have not earned the space here, I'm afraid.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

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[sarge]

Getting back to the workbench, this old warhorse came to me this weekend at our ops session. It was one of the very first run undec SWs bought and painted by a good friend now passed. He ran the piss out of it, so very much in need of a good clean and tidy.

Pulled the mech apart, cleaned and relubed, fixed one of the heralds that was put on upside down (I don't think anyone but me ever noticed), put a set of flexicoil sideframes on (that were way off in the future back when he painted it), and quite a bit of repair to handrails, paint, &c.

It tarted up really well, now as a proper SW1200RS, and seemed to enjoy the attention. Last thing to do is apply a Hancock air-whistle once the castings show in the post.

I really like working with these; the SW and MP series switchers were by far the best all-arounder that Atlas ever did.

[healey36]

Another example of learning something around here; I never knew/realized there was a road switcher version of these things. One wonders if any of these remain in service in the current day.

A lovely model, for sure. I look forward to seeing more of it.