Weathering Projects

With the arrival of our newborn, my time in the layout room has been fairly limited.  However, I have been able to weather some cars that I can bring in and work on in the house.  I tried the color transition fade process using acrylic and water-soluble oil paints for the first time on these cars and am fairly happy with how they turned out.  I also used the reflective yellow strips from Smokebox Graphics and love how they turned out.

BNSF 432191

This was the first car I worked on.  I think the car is an Athearn rtr model.  I started out by fading the paint to a terra-cotta color by mixing various acrylic paints.  After that I used several coats of water-soluble oils to add dirt and grime.  

BN 458302

This is an old Athearn Bluebox model that has been sitting in a box collecting dust since Bush was in office.  I lightened the green with acrylics and and then again used the oils for heavy grime and dirt.  I added the Microscale graffiti decals before doing a final coat of dirt and grime.  To add some variety I added a few hatch’s that were printed with gray primer.  I’m not quite as happy with the final results of this model as you can see brush strokes and tide marks in the final finish.  Additionally, the dullcoat was applied too heavily.  

BNSF 488491

This is a Scaletrains Operator Series hopper car.  I wanted it to still look fairly new so I didn’t fade the paint color.  All that I did to this car was add several Microscale decals (to match the prototype) and then gave it a light coat of dirt and grime.  

Update

Just thought I’d give a quick update.  Very little has gone on on the layout for the last several months.  My wife and I were expecting our firstborn this fall.  She was supposed to come in early December, but decided to cause us all a bunch of stress by coming in October.  My wife spent several weeks in the hospital over in Missoula before finally giving birth.  Our little girl ended up coming 6 weeks early and had to spend several weeks in the NICU before we finally got to bring her home in late November.  Momma and baby are both doing great but it’s was pretty terrifying at the time.  Between now being a dad, work, and the never ending chore of feeding cows, I’ve had very little time to work on the railroad.  

I have been able to sneak in a few small projects here and there.  Theses projects mainly entail weathering rolling stock, working on my next engine, CMR 1810 and installing a few switch machines.  

On a sadder  note, the small farming community of Denton, MT which is the main area of my layout was devastated by a wild fire in early December.  20+ homes, several rail and highway bridges, and three of the grain elevators were destroyed in the fire.  The state of MT has banded together to help this small town rebuild and I have faith that they will see through this time.  I had originally planned on modeling all the elevators in town but without adequate reference to do so, it will be a tough task. 

After the devastation of the fire, I’m not sure if I will continue down the path of modeling the CMR or switch back to the Montana Rail Link as I have a mountain of rolling stock and engines for it.  So if you’re reading this, please keep Denton, a small slice of heaven in your thoughts and prayers.

-Matt

Just Ranching

I had to go back to the ranch over the weekend to help with weaning and start bringing my cows home that I run up there all summer.  Weaning is when we separate the calves from the mother cows.  At weaning each calf gets weighed, vaccine boosters and then separated into pens based on their weight and sex. 

We contract our calves at a certain pound and if they come in above or below that point then we get penalized.  So heavy calves go into a pen that receives a bit less feed per day.  And light calves get the opposite treatment. Typically we just feed alfalfa/grass hay with some ground barley mixed in.  Also, heifer calves are sorted and we pick our replacements that will go back into the breeding herd.  The mother cows go out to the fall pastures.  It takes about 4 days to get through all of our herds and we have nicer facilities at certain places and old run down chutes at other places.  

This is a crummy photo, but (no pun intended) this is the business end view of a heifer calf heading down the chute to the scale.  This is at the original family homestead.  We don’t run a lot of cows through this setup so the chutes aren’t the fanciest like at the home place.

 

Alfalfa Field

 I have kind of jumped the gun a little bit lately and have started working on some scenery.  I had planned on putting an alfalfa field just to the east of Denton.  

I started out by painting the foam with a brown latex paint.  Before the paint has a chance to dry, I sprinkle on some very fine sifted dirt.  The dark brown dirt is where the alfalfa field is going to be.  The dirt came from one of my irrigation ditches in my hay fields.  The lighter dirt in the background will represent dryland cattle pastures and the area around a house.  That dirt come from the side of my road.  The very light spot in the upper middle of the first photo is where a house is going to go.  To apply the dirt, I use the lid from a can of spray paint and then put part of a nylon over it.  It works very well and allows for a very even coverage.  The second photo shows how fine the dirt layer is.

To represent the alfalfa, I mixed several different shades and heights of Silflor Static Grass.  I use the Woodland Scenics applicator and it seems to do a good job.  For my glue, I just use thinned Elmers glue and apply it with a spray bottle from Home Depot.  

I masked off my tracks, edge of road, and fascia before apply the glue.  It took only a minute or two to apply the static grass.  I let it dry for a little bit, and then went over it with a shop-vac to suck up any loose pieces and help stand all the fibers upright.

To finish off the alfalfa I used a fine sifter to apply some lavender highlights from Scenic Express.  I use hairspray to hold it all together.  Alfalfa in our part of MT is generally harvested when it gets about 10-20% bloom.  So if this was a real field, it would be ready to go.  I think the bottom right corner of the field is a little too ripe!  Oops!  

I'm not sure how happy I am with the results, so I may end up cutting it with an old bear trimmer and then throw a few round bales on it to call it good.  Also, like I said earlier, I jumped the gun by starting scenery and I'm sure that this will end up getting destroyed as a I still have a lot of foam shaping to finish.