And then there were 5

Finally a day off!
We've been in deep dark Ice Age on Ice at the arena for over 2 weeks now. Which has kept me away from the work bench. But now with a partial day off, I've been able to complete this project.
A quintet of SFRD reefers.

Lovely older Sunshine kits. The client provided exact spec sheets for numbers, slogans and other lettering data.
I'm really pleased with how they've turned out.
Given that reefers were generally well maintained and repainted more frequently than run of the mill boxcars, the weathering is a little subdued. I took a little time and perused a number of prototype images to assure myself that the I wanted to avoid over-weathering these cars.
So they all got a light overspray of base car colour, an overspray of greyish grime, the black surfaces were toned down with an overspray of grimy black and finally the ends got a suggestion of wheel spit with rail brown.
Now to box them up and onto the next project.

Can you spell Tedious?

I can now.
While waiting for the paint to cure on a quintet of SFRD reefers, I decided to work on a personal project.
The DT&I 41'-6" Mill gon. In fact 6 of them. Cause nothing succeeds like excess.
Actually, a significant number of these gons were in autoframe service and no doubt many would have traversed the Cayuga Sub, on the way to the factories in NY state, so half a dozen doesn't seem outrageous to me.
This model was a "Shake and Take" project from the Cocoa Beach RPM in 2010. It takes me time to catch up sometimes. The original project called for chopping up an Athearn gon and creating drop door ends. Most of that work has been solved by Frank Hodina and Tom Madden. Frank did the pattern using a Proto 2000 gon and Tom cast up a limited number of car bodies. I believe he's sold out of these now.

Right now the tedious part is bending all the grabs, 96 in total. Of which 72 are drop grabs. I'm having to bend them because I don't have any 24" grabs here and I don't want to wait for them to be delivered. So it really is my own fault.

But I'm well versed in the art of wire bending and the radio is good company. It'll be over soon enough.
With any luck I'll be cobbling up the loading frames for the car frames tomorrow.
Stay tuned.

In an Aylmer state of mind

What do you do when it's stupid hot outside?
You crawl on the floor of the basement and draw out a town for the layout.

I spent a few hours this afternoon sorting out the town of Aylmer, Ont. Not a large town, but in the era I model it was a busy place. A large canning plant, a milk condensing plant, a huge tobacco warehouse, along with the requisite coal dealers, stock pen, feed mills, team tracks, etc.
Not counting the team track there are 8 distinct car destinations/shippers. Should keep the way freight crew busy banging cars around.
I purposely kept the scene as open lengthwise as I could. This scene will be a good 28' long when it's done. Not bad given that the prototype is almost 2 miles long.
What I like about that is that the way freight crews will be covering a lot of distance to get the jobs done, which requires time and will give a sense of accomplishment. And hopefully crews will remember not to leave the brakemen stranded at the other end of the town!
Of course serious compromises have to be made.
Imperial Tobacco is located further north than I can represent it and the spur turns 90 degrees from the main before entering the plant. Instead I have the spur parallel to the main and the plant will be represented with building flats on the wall.
Aylmer Canners should be 1/2 a mile south of the main on it's on spur, but again space limitations require that I make the spur parallel to the main. I'm also going to have to, mirror image the structure and rotate it 90 degrees to get it into the layout. That building is represented in the photo by the block of styrofoam furthest from the camera.
The closer block of foam is Carnation Condensed Milk. It's going to be a busy place. A coal spur for the boilers. and multiple loading spurs for crated product. Daily inbounds of tin cans from Simcoe.
I'm going to leave this on the floor for awhile and stare at it off an on before I make sawdust.
One needs to be sure about these things.

Chipmunk Wars after action report

I'm pleased to report that it has been 5 days since I've heard the pitter-patter of tiny feet on my basement ceiling.
I am declaring victory in this latest skirmish with the little beggars.

And in separate but related incident, we had a chipmunk being overly curious about our garage and it's contents. My wife and I startled it one day while we were in and out of the garage and he scampered down the floor drain.
I was convinced he was on the way to the septic tank.
We finished our business in the garage and closed the doors. 2 days later I came into the garage to discover a chipmunk in the window trying to get out. The little beggar was relieved when I opened the door for him. 2 days without food or water will alter your thinking about investigating garages, I guess.
And, of course, in fine chipmunk fashion, once he got outside, he turned and scolded me as only chipmunks can.

It's Gems like this

That make my work such a pleasure.

This is an O scale Chooch Ultra-scale resin kit all finished and ready to deliver.
The workmanship in the patterns is exquisite. They even went so far as to include the interiors of the ice bunkers. Who does that?!
So has a result the hatches just had to be open.
The kit is full of specifically designed injection molded parts. Ice hatches and hardware, sill steps, ladders, corner brackets, door latch bars, and underside bolt straps. All of which go towards creating a stunning kit.
It's too bad that Chooch has ceased his O scale kit line. I'd happily build stuff of this quality every day.

Chipmunk Wars

One of the surprise appeals of this new home was the discovery, last summer, of a population of chipmunks living in the trees on the property line and under the back deck.

They are impossibly cute and with a little patience can be trained to take nibbles from your hand. And, bonus round, they upset the cat to no end. He doesn't care about the squirrels, or birds, but the chipmunks really get him going.
About a month ago I discovered that one of these little fellows has discovered a path into the basement. For days I've been listening to him scampering around on the ceiling tiles. He's completely ignored the live traps I've placed for him. This seems to be one chipmunk who doesn't care for peanut butter.
Every other day now for weeks, I've been sticking my head up into the ceiling area, trying to determine how the little bugger is getting in. I've done dozens of laps around the house, looking for any holes. I've crawled under the rear deck. All to no avail.
Today I pried up a deck board as a last resort and discovered a potential point of entry. When the current deck was built, the old concrete stoop was left in place and just built over. That left a previously unseen spot where a bump-out for the kitchen comes over the stoop and the underside is inaccessible to humans.
I went back inside and pulled out an insulation batt and discovered a piles of nesting material, feces and chewed insulation. I think I found the point of entry. I've boarded over the joist bay.
Here's hoping.
If I had a shotgun, I'd be replacing ceiling tiles this weekend.

Ready for St Louis

And the official  announcement.
The newest kit from Yarmouth Model Works, the Semet-Solvay AC&F Type 103 tankcar, will be released at the St Louis RPM this coming August.

The kit includes cast resin frame, tank, expansion dome and detail parts, along with etched dome platform, ladders, sill steps, tank anchors and other details. Various wire sizes and plastic details are also included. Custom decals from Black cat Publishing are part of the kit. Truck frames are included, but not wheelsets or couplers.
The kit will retail for $65.00 USD.
Now for the really important bit. This is a limited run kit.  I will be bringing 40 kits to St Louis and selling them there first. If there are any left over I will offer them online.
I will only be making more kits available once those are sold, if I get enough requests and if I can convince my production partners to make more.

See you in St Louis?