We've been workin' on a Railroad...

[healey36]

Hey, I recognize that tobacconist shop...one of the go-to spots for a decent cigar around here:

[up148]

I bought a couple of Sarah's 3D UP tank car kits a few months back.......this kit will not be for the faint of heart, but certainly will produce a great model if done right.

I contacted her about the work she did on her USH Challenger. She made the cab removable (which I don't need anymore) and completely repowered and improved the drive. She's a great modeler from what I've seen of her work.

Her 9000 not only has prototypical improvements it has a very realistic smoke system she installed that puts out three chuffs per driver revolution like the prototype. Way above my abilities but loads of fun to see.

[up148]

[quote="healey36"]Hey, I recognize that tobacconist shop...one of the go-to spots for a decent cigar around here:

Nicely done Healey.

[healey36]

Hey, I recognize that tobacconist shop...one of the go-to spots for a decent cigar around here:

Nicely done Healey.

I wish...Rufus' work from a few years back. Makes everything else on my layout look like rubbish!

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Hey, I recognize that tobacconist shop...one of the go-to spots for a decent cigar around here:

Nicely done Healey.

I wish...Rufus' work from a few years back. Makes everything else on my layout look like rubbish!

That was a fun one. The version prior to the cigar store Indian being planted on it was a page back.

There are 5-6 structures out there in the world that I have had the fun of building for others and in some cases the real fun of dropping it into their hands w/o their knowledge of it being built. Think I've gotten 2-3 guys while are Strasburg - walk by, "Here!", hand it off, and keep walking. Fun!

I might have photos of them?

[healey36]

I'd love to see 'em!

[Rufus T. Firefly]

I'd love to see 'em!

I'll look for them! 1st one was for Joe Foehrkolb and that ended up published in OST a long time ago....think the last one I did was for John Sethian and that one got auctioned off to support the Strasburg Firestation, and should be in O Scale Resource someday,

[sarge]

Butch, it's foamcore board formed up to shape and covered in printed paper. I want to say the print was Pioneer Valley.

Seems to me that I heard of Neville Rossiter doing the same thing!

Nev wrote about cutting up printed 2-d backscenes and laminating the buildings cut from them onto foamcore, then cutting the foamcore out and putting them up against his backscenes, the foamcore giving the cut-outs relief. I do that now, myself, something I learnt from him.

The full depth paper structures bit originally came to me from folks in the UK where card models are more common than here, and Bob Guillette in the US taught me the foam-core box style of large-building construction.

All those folks have had an influence on this layout, and there are a lot of other friends whose structures are featured here; Don Biever, Phil Opielowski, Ben Brown, George Eschbach, John Peterson, even John Armstrong. Nev's big pedestal crane is here and a couple buildings from Rufus.

It ain't just the models on the layout (and the locos and rolling stock), I learned a lot from all these guys over the years.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Nice job, Ruf!

More please?

Here's one from back a ways: Joe's Shop

[up148]

Nice Job Martin! Love structures just no place to keep them or a layout to install them on.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Nice Job Martin!

Thanks! I do have to wonder whatever did happen to this one.

Love structures just no place to keep them or a layout to install them on.

Same problem; many are just stacked up on a shelf now. I was going to take some to Strasburg, but (1) no room in the car due to other priorities and (2) selling structures to 2 rail modelers is hard. The ones I have sold almost exclusively have gone home with 3 rail modelers.

[healey36]

Yes, that is terrific. The anchor bolts on the perimeter of the dock are a good example of the type of things that would never occur to me in building something like this.

Besides the exterior lamps, did you include an interior light?

I'm surprised two-railers don't go for these sorts of things.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Yes, that is terrific. The anchor bolts on the perimeter of the dock are a good example of the type of things that would never occur to me in building something like this.

I go through a lot of nbw castings....maybe too many on a few of my cars, but they look naked w/o them.

Besides the exterior lamps, did you include an interior light?

No. Did no interior stuff on this build -- exterior were set up to work though.

I'm surprised two-railers don't go for these sorts of things.

Well, they will spend $1k for an engine but quibble over a $100 for a building,

[sarge]

I'm surprised two-railers don't go for these sorts of things.

Well, they will spend $1k for an engine but quibble over a $100 for a building,

I have to wonder if the effect is because so many of our generation (the majority of the show attendees at Strasburg, for example) are either collectors or railroad modellers rather than model railroaders.

Bear with me on this one. A railroad modeller is what it says on the tin, the guy who builds or collects models of railroad subjects that interest him; locos, rolling stock, yeah even structures. O scale for my sixty-odd-years in it has been by far and away a railroad modeller's scale (at least in the US). Most I know concentrate on one genre, for example the loco builder, the brass collector, the trains-on-the-wall guy.

A model railroader is the guy who gathers all this up across the spectrum and builds the layout upon which to run or at least display the entire range of models after having enjoyed the railroad modeller's fun of building or collecting them, each genre an element in the whole. He/she builds or buys everything needed for the scene and the scene is the model, not the locomotive or the boxcar. The resulting model in motion is the objective.

The scale (by that I exclude our Cousins of the Superfluous Rail) has been the refuge of the railroad modeller moreso than the model railroader, often expressed as "the craftsman's scale". Yep, the railroad modeller will drop a grand on a loco and not give a whit about even the nicest structure chock full o' character, simply because structures aren't his thing.

I'm not at all surprised that the hirail crowd buys more of them by far and away. I'd not be surprised if you'd knock 'em dead building them in HO either. I'd also not be surprised if the younger generation of O scalers we don't see, the crowd who socialise and do their commerce on the net, would snap 'em up off their venue.

None of the above should be construed as having any negative connotations for I am in both camps, railroad modelling and model railroading, very strongly.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

......our Cousins of the Superfluous Rail

I'm not at all surprised that the hirail crowd buys more of them by far and away. I'd not be surprised if you'd knock 'em dead building them in HO either. I'd also not be surprised if the younger generation of O scalers we don't see, the crowd who socialise and do their commerce on the net, would snap 'em up off their venue.

Most of the buyers of structures at Strasburg are in fact the few significantly younger generation that do manage to get to Strasburg. They rarely quibble of price and are happy to get what they know all too well to be a bargain at the prices I set. I would sell on eBay, etc. but I am very leery of shipping detailed structures - I have done it with success, but remain leery.

Between my eyes and slightly deceasing hand to eye coordination/memory, HO is not realistic for me anymore. I have a handful of HO kits that I will build only to translate into O scale, and then those will be gone and that endeavor terminated