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.

Glulam Utility Pole

Glulam utility poles are quite common up here in Montana, and are often used in situations where standard round poles don’t work because there isn’t room for guy wires.  I need a few on my layout and decided to try my hand at building one this afternoon.  This pole will be used to make a 90 degree turn in a high voltage phase that bypasses the substation in Denton.  

I started by laying and staining several strips of 2x12 scale lumber that I got from Fast Tracks.  Once the strips were stained I cut them to length.  The main pole will be 72’ tall.  I have three strips at this length, and then each succeeding strip is 10’ shorter to allow the pole to have a taper.

I Glued the strips together with Elmers Wood Glue.  Once the glue dried I used a farrier rasp to file down the tapered side to give it a smooth face.  After sanding, the pole was given one more quick coat of stain.

The insulators are made out of leftover parts from Walthers’ High Voltage Transmission Tower kit.  They were painted with Testors Aluminum paint and glued in place.  I drilled the end of each insulator out so that I can string EZ-Line through them.  

Layout Update - July 2021

Between my job and then working here at home on our farm has kept me pretty busy for the last few months, but I have been able to sneak in some time to work on the layout.  Progress so far includes all of the benchwork being completed, most of the trackwork is in place and have started roughing in some of the scenery.  I've added a few pictures to show the progress so far.

-This picture shows the majority of what will become Denton, MT looking east.  The mainline and the siding that has the six hoppers on it are Micro Engineering code 70 flextrack.  All other track that can be seen is hand laid code 55.  I'm waiting to receive a shipment of rail and ties so that I can finish up the track laying.  The ladder going off to the left side of the main is the lead for the three bay engine house.  You can see a mock up of the engine house right above the turnout lead.  Most of the grain bins on the right side of the tracks wont be used, they are just there for mockup reasons.  The trackwork follows the prototype exactly (except it has been compacted obviously) and is limited in size, which is one of the reasons I opted for this plan.  I enjoy simplicity.  

-The bottom photo is a view of the prototype looking in the same general direction.  It was a lovely smoke filled September afternoon when I took the picture.

-A few of the turnouts that I've hand laid.  My first few attempts at building turnouts took forever to complete and were pretty rough.  But now I've gotten it pretty well down to a science and can build one in less than two hours.  This set of turnouts is used to access the small yard track as well as the industry track from the siding.  The red elevator will be used on the final layout, but the the other bins probably won't.  The red elevator will be painted white and heavily weathered to look abandoned, as it is on the prototype.

-This view shows the location of one of the elevators, known as General Mills-East.  Very little grain is shipped on the CMR today as most farmers haul directly to the shuttle loaders at Moccasin or Fort Benton for better rates.  However, when regular grain service was still a thing (before the Judith River Trestle washout in 2012), this elevator was generally only used once the other General Mills elevator in town reached capacity.  The building footprint in the front of the of the photo will be a division office of Fergus Electric Coop.  This building doesn't exist on the prototype (crews come from Lewistown), but I have way too many power company models to just let them sit and collect dust.

-Heading farther to the east we see where I have started to rough in some scenery.  As you can see I use insulation board for my scenery, and shape it with Stanley Sureform tools and a hot wire knife.  Another tool that works great is a farriers rasp.  I shoe my horses myself, so once I wear a rasp out on their hooves, it gets reassigned to layout service.  The strip of cork that runs to the left of the tracks is a road.  I like to use cork as it gives the road a little bit of elevation which we see in real life.  the white stuff covering the foam is regular old lightweight drywall mud.  This section of the layout will be hay fields and cattle pastures.

-Completed staging tracks.  Most of the staging action will take place on the tracks to the left of the mainline.  I've gone pretty far outside of the prototype's operations in one area.  On my layout, BNSF trains will occasionally come through Denton from Great Falls to simulate track issues on their prototypical Laurel Subdivision.  When the rail was owned by the Milwaukee Road, this was their mainline into Great Falls.  But the tracks were pulled up at Geraldine after the MILW bankruptcy.  The curved track on the left is the swing gate that goes across the door into the layout room.  The wall in the middle of the room was left in place because I need a place to hang a couple of lifesize taxidermy mounts.  It's kind of a pain to work a few of the staging tracks with the wall in the there, but I've gotten used to it.  

-View of the opposite end of the staging yard.  The four tracks on the right will represent Geraldine and Moccasin, MT.  I am going to simulate a unit train shuttle loader in Geraldine at the west end end of the CMR.  Moccasin is the eastern terminus of the CMR and is where the CMR interchanges with BNSF.  

Putting Fire in the Wire

I’ve been pretty busy lately with our spring farm work so the layout has been kind of put on the back burner.  However, I have been sneaking in some small projects here and there.  I plan on having a substation and associated power lines on the layout.  With that said I needed to build some engineered steel power poles that feed the substation.  These style of poles are becoming more and more common across Montana.  I used the Walthers High Voltage Transmission Towers kit to model my two poles.

This pole will be the main feeder into the substation.  The short stacks on the left will carry one HV phase down to feed the substation.  The longer insulators on the right will carry a second HV phase, bypassing the substation, and feeding a rural transmission line.  I painted the main pole with rustoleum red primer.  The insulators are painted with Testors aluminum.

This is the second pole.  The long insulators will carry the second HV phase which bypassed the substation.  That line will then turn 90 degrees and pull straight from the insulators that are coming straight towards the camera.  The short crossarms halfway up the pole will carry a stepped down three phase distribution line coming out of the substation.

First Engine Complete - CMR 1809

I completed my first of the Central Montana Railroad’s 6 GP9s a few weeks again and am finally now posting up a few pictures of it.  this is CMR 1809 and it started out as a Rock Island engine.  I stripped and then repainted the engine.  The decals came from Switchpoint and Microscale sets.  

For a decoder I went with a Soundtraxx Tsunami 2 emd.  I did headlights, numberboard, and ditch lights.  The wiring looks like a rats nest but I’m just glad they all work!  I’m still working on getting the lighting programming figured out.  I used 2 Scale Sound Systems speakers and also made room for a TCS keep alive.  The frame had to be modified heavily to make room for everything.  

All that is left is a light weathering and I still need to paint the end of the handrails white.  I’m pleased with how it came out and hopefully I should get another one done in a few more weeks as long as I don’t get too tied up here at the farm.

Swing Gate

 Having finished laying track and wiring up my staging yard, I needed to build a removable section of track that carries trains in front of the entrance door.  I’ve used lift out sections in this spot on prior layouts and just wasn’t happy with the results.  The track in this area is on a 30” curve and I always seemed to have stability issues with the previous lift outs.  So this time I decided to build a much stabler and sturdier swing gate.  I built the gate out of 3/4” plywood and glued and screwed all of the sections together.  I plan on turning this into the Judith River trestle at some point, which is why the tracks are so far above the base of the swing gate.  I’m really pleased with the performance of the gate so far and have had no issues testing it with my pickiest engines and rolling stock.  

Side Project

I’ve been doing taxidermy on the side for about a decade now and really enjoy.  I took a break over the weekend from layout construction to finish an antelope mount for my sister.  It was her first antelope and she took it back in October of 2019.  I mounted it back in late September, but the head has just been sitting in my shop since, waiting to be finished.

  

Final Trackplan - Central Montana Railorad

After several months of designing different layouts in AnyRail, I finally settled on a plan and prototype that should keep me busy for a while.  My final choice is the Central Montana Railroad, which is a Class III shortline based out of Denton, MT.  The CMR's tracks start at the BNSF interchange in Moccasin, MT and then proceed to the NW going through Denton and ending in Geraldine.  The railroad used to move a large amount of grain, until their operations were brought to a standstill when the massive trestle over the Judith River was damaged in the 2012 spring floods.  The trestle has been repaired but most of the grain traffic has disappeared.  Currently, the CMR's operation's center around storing cars.  I spend alot of time in that part of the state and there is a large number of tank cars currently waiting for a rise in oil prices before returning to service.  Because of the a washout in Arrow Creek Gorge in 2006, the line has effectively ended at Coffee Creek, MT, with trains no longer serving Geraldine.  

I plan to stick fairly close to the prototype when building and operating the railroad, and it will be set in present day (2021).  However, I will deviate from prototype practices in several ways.  First, even though it's 2021, the elevators in Denton are still going to ship grain.  Second, I'm pretending that the tracks are still in service to Geraldine (represented in Staging), and the CMR will service a mythical unit grain elevator there.  Third, the gravel shipper near Ware, MT is still served by rail. 

My last and furthest stretch of the imagination is that the CMR's trackage (which is former Milw. Road) extends past Geraldine and continues into Great Falls (the tracks were pulled up in the 80's).  This will allow me to use my large collection of BNSF engines from time to time.  The line would serve as a backup to the BNSF Laurel Subdivision.  

The main operations of the CMR will center around Denton, MT.  I figure I will use two crews to work the railroad.  The first crew will take loaded/empty cars back to Moccasin for interchange with the BNSF and switch the Montana Gravel Spur.  The second crew will be responsible for switching out the industries in Denton.  I will run an extra for the unit train service to Geraldine.

I’m Back

Not sure if anyone who reads this really cares but I’m back after a long hunting season here in Montana.  Back in April I drew a limited-entry bull tag in the Missouri River Breaks.  Having never set foot in the unit I spent most of the 6 week bow season out there learning the unit.  It was a lot of fun and I had numerous close encounters with bulls. 

Come the start of rifle season things changed drastically.  Tow massive snowstorms pushed the vast majority of elk to private land.  I spent 3 solid weeks in the unit and never got within shooting distance of a decent bull.  I eventually found a rancher who was willing to let me explore his place.  My dad and I spent several days stomping around his land and eventually found a nice bull on Veterans Day.  He is an ancient warrior.  Not sure how old he is, but I sent a tooth to a lab for aging and my guess is he’s is 12+.  Most of his points are broken from fighting and he has mass for days.  Just an awesome looking bull to finish an amazing elk season.

Since I still had a week of hunting season left I decided to take my wife and sisters on a mule deer hunt up on the Canadian border.  We had a blast together and my huntresses managed to each get a nice buck!

Now that hunting season is finally over I can get to planning and building my next railroad empire.  Still not sure what direction I’m gonna go but I have a few plans I hope to upload in the next few days with operational details.

P.S. my truck, trailer, and horses are also glad the season is over!

 

Track Plan - BNSF Fort Benton Subdivision

The BNSF Fort Benton Subdivision is a small 50 mile (approximate) branchline that runs from Great Falls, MT to Fort Benton, MT.  Up until the late 1970's the line ran from Great Falls to Havre.  However, do to unstable soils along the Missouri River, the tracks were pulled up just outside of Fort Benton.  Nowadays, the line no longer runs into Fort Benton.  It stops at the last of three unit-train grain elevators just a few miles south of Fort Benton.  

My plan includes the small town of Carter, MT and two of it's grain elevators.  I left off the unit train loader at Carter.  Once through Carter, trains proceed to the 750,000 bushel EGT Terminal Loader.  After EGT there is a small privately owned elevator at Tunis, before the train arrives in Fort Benton.  My rendition of Fort Benton includes two grain elevator's, a co-op fertilizer dealer, and a team track/ramp.  A reverse loop and 9 total staging tracks are hidden below the main layout and are accessed by a helix in the bottom right hand corner of the plan.  Staging represents Great Falls, MT.

Several types of operations are included with this plan.  Unit grain trains would be needed at the EGT Terminal Loader.  The loader can handle up to 22 covered hoppers and three modern locomotives.  Unit trains would begin in staging and then proceed up the helix to Carter and then onto the Terminal Loader track.  After the unit train is loaded, the engines would cut off from the head end and recouple to the end of the train to take it back down to staging.  The other type of operation of the layout would be a local freight, which would also start in Staging.  The local would then proceed to Carter where it would switch the two grain elevators.  After that the local would run to Fort Benton and switch the four industries there, before returning to staging.  On the return trip the small elevator would be switched at Tunis.  If I just want to run continuous trains, I have included a track that goes behind the helix and reconnects at Carter.  Although not prototypical, I could use this to represent trains running to Havre, MT.  Although the tracks to Havre were pulled up 40 years ago, in my fantasy world the tracks still exist and sometimes serve as a secondary line to reach the Northern Transcon.

I really like this tackplan because it includes my favorite modeling interests; BNSF, grain service, and rural Montana.  However, one of the drawbacks for me is that there is very little scenery or topographic relief along, except where the line drops down into For Benton.  If you've ever driven the highway that parallels the tracks you'll know what I mean.  It's so flat up there, a person can watch their dog run away!  The one drawback is that the trackplan does not have any engine service facilities, which is one of my favorites things to model.

Track Plan - Havre Engine Terminal

Since tearing down my MRL themed layout several months ago, I have have been playing around with a couple designs in AnyRail.  This track plan is the first one that I think is fully complete.  The plan is a fairly close reproduction of the BNSF engine terminal located in Havre, MT.  Instead of modeling the entire yard area (which is huge), I have decided to focus on the engine terminal complex, car shops, and two of the local industries.  The two industries are an oil tank farm and the ADM/CHS Elevator.  The neat thing about the elevator is that it has it's own SW1500 switcher.  So BNSF brings them the empties, pulls loads, and the company switcher moves the empty cars to the loading track.  

The staging area would serve as the unmodeled yard area.  Crews would pickup their engines either from the engine terminal tracks or the ready tracks at the Yard Office.  From there, they would move into staging to get their cars.  To simulate mainline running along the Milk River Subdivision, trains coming out of staging or heading into staging would stop at the mainline fueling area located at the yard office.  

Engine terminal operations would include routine service/fueling, as well as inspections and repair work.  The car shop would also be a source of operations; with a switcher crew pulling cars from staging and taking them to the shops, and vice versa.  The switcher would also be responsible for spotting sand and fuel cars in the terminal.

Due to the size of the real terminal, I made several compressions.  The engine shop has 8 service tracks, and I trimmed it down to 3.  Also, the ADM/CHS elevator is located several miles out if town in the real world, and not located right off the back of the car shops.

I really like how this plan turned out because it allows me to showoff my ever increasing fleet of modern BNSF equipment, while being able to have operations and full mainline trains.  However, the main drawback is that there is very little scenery (other than industrial) or open mainline running.  I have several other trackplans that I'm working on that offer more mainline running.  I hope to get them posted in the next few weeks.

Grain Elevator Scratch Build Pt. 2

I have been slowly plugging along with the grain complex.  I took a break from working on the bins and bridge structures to start on one of the two grain legs.  I need to get the legs and support structures done so I can build the bridge sections that go to the first bins.  I scratchbuilt the leg out of styrene strips and sheets.  The scale dimensions (HO) are 8'x6'x110'.  This leg is used to fill the large storage bins and supply grain to the load out track.

I airbrushed the leg with Testors Dark Blue.  I still need to give it a coat of flat clear.