Scattered Thoughts . . .

W hen we arrived back from Saratoga on Sunday, the new couplers for the trolley had arrived so I immediately opened the package to see whether I could make these new couplers work on my trolley.  I'm sort of mixing and matching here with this coupler project. I had to do some adapting to make these new couplers work but I think they are okay.  If I'm going to nitpick, I'd say I need to move the couplers a little deeper into the gearboxes but they should work fine as they are now.  I also should blend the paint between the couplers and the gearboxes a bit better.   These new couplers are offset couplers that are made to drop the height of the coupler down a bit.  The straight couplers I had installed last week were too high to couple with other trains.  Now these couplers match the height of my other trains.  The ridiculousness of this is that I'll probably never couple another train car to my trolley.   I've been feeling so lousy that a ...

A fter building and installing new front and rear bumpers on my large scale trolley, I felt that these new bumpers were a bit bare for being so large so I went on a search for detail parts that would make sense in this situation and fit on these bumpers. The first thing I knew I should add is an air tank on the rear bumper.  This would be an air tank (or auxiliary air tank) for the brakes so it would make sense that it would be located on the rear bumper.  Many small switching diesels (Plymouths) had rear mounted air tanks so that was the logical place to put one on my trolley.   Unfortunately, it turns out that finding a tank in the size I needed was a problem.   I wasn't finding anything in F scale which is what I needed.  Since I needed only a small tank, I tried finding a tank in smaller scales.  Unfortunately, I didn't find any G scale tanks that would look right.  I tried O scale but most of those would be ridiculously small.  I ev...

I put together a few comparison "before and after" photos of my large scale trolley and my large scale steam locomotive.  I've been wanting to do this for awhile but never got around to it.  Having just working on the trolley again, I figured it was a good time to capture some "after" photos and then compose "before and after" comparisons. In each comparison photo, the top photo is the train in its stock condition from the factory before I did any work on it while the bottom photo shows the same train after I rebuilt it, repainted it and added details. So, this first comparison photo below is of the trolley.  I purchased the trolley a little over a year ago and immediately started planning for an upgrade and rebuild.  It was not running well when it arrived at my door because the motor had a split gear.  I immediately replaced the motor with Bachmann's replacement drive but, disappointingly and unexpectedly, the brand new assembly still ran quite ...

T his morning, I made quick work of rounding down some sharp edges on the newly installed wood bumpers for my large scale trolley.  Then I put a quick coat of charcoal-ish colored stain.  It is looking much better now! I thought I had blown off all the dust I created by filing and sanding down edges but, clearly, I missed a bunch of dust! I added the bottom step and the triangular-shaped support holding up one end of the bottom step.  I did this on all four of the entries to the trolley.   Maybe tomorrow morning I'll attempt to make four grab bars for next to each of the sets of steps.   I'm waiting on some detail parts for this little detailing project to arrive.  I ordered an air tank for the rear bumper but it might be too large.  If so, I'll need to find a smaller one.  I'm also waiting on a horn and coupler gearboxes.  The coupler gearboxes will fit in well on these new bumpers.  I'm still not sure where to place the horn ...

I did some more work on my large scale trolley yesterday and today.  This is the same trolley we have on our mantle for Christmas.  I've never really been happy with the rounded front and rear bumpers that this trolley ships with and I felt the trolley was missing a step for passengers stepping up from the street so I went about trying to resolve those problems today.   First, I started making the front and rear bumpers to replace the rather toy-like bumpers.  Well, actually, I started by cutting off the front and rear rounded bumpers.  The original front bumper can be seen in the first photo below.  Then I designed a new bumper to be made using wood.  I wanted a chunkier narrow gauge look so I used wood for this.  Anyway, the photo below shows the front rounded, hollow bumper that I cut off... Below, is a photo of the new bumpers being glued up... Below is a photo of the front end after I cut off the manufactured front bumper.  I could...

I n my previous blog entry, I wrote about my custom designed, homebuilt truss bridge that I have been working on lately for my little garden railroad.  I had applied far too many coats of paint in varying colors and shades in an attempt to get the color I had envisioned.  I eventually landed on a pale olive color for this bridge like many truss bridges in real life. After writing that previous blog entry, I also applied additional shades of green to this bridge to add some tonal depth to this paint job.  The single shade of green was a bit "flat".  I'm not referring to the finish of the paint...  ie, gloss, satin, matte, flat...  but referring to the tonal depth of the paint job.  I had applied one or two more shades of green lightly with a dry brushing technique to add some tonal depth.  Today, I applied some reddish washes very lightly to give the impression of rust developing on the bridge. In this photo, below, my locomotive is just departing ...

A s with most of my projects, I had thought that painting my homebuilt truss bridge would be a quick and easy job.  It hasn't been difficult but it has not be the least bit quick. This paint job is becoming a very long process.   First, I primed it with a spray can or two.  Then I spray painted an Anvil Gray spray paint and it was far too blue.  I wouldn't even call it a gray.  It really was a very dark blackish-blue and I didn't care for the color at all.  Once I started spraying this color, I realized that I had been fooled by the name of this color once before when I was painting my steam locomotive.  It was far too blue for that project too and ended up wasting a few days while I searched for a more appropriate color.   Then I sprayed a can of something named Deep Gray.  One would think this would be a gray that is into the darker shades of gray but, on the contrary, it was a rather light shade of gray.  This paint also had...

S o, the other day, I built a retaining wall for the front side of our little garden railroad and wrote about it here  in this blog previously.  That new "model" retaining wall looks great and I have to say it was a brilliant idea to add this detail.  Today, I started working on building a truss bridge for the back side of the garden railroad.   I've been sketching different ideas over the past couple of months because I always knew I wanted one of these bridges on this garden railroad but I finally decided on a plan this morning.  Once I had the plan sketched and figured out all the dimensions of each of the parts, I immediately headed outside to start cutting lumber and building a truss bridge.  My civil engineering days are long behind me but, if I remember correctly, this would be a Warren Truss bridge due to the equilateral triangles across each side of the bridge. Designing this bridge required me to test my geometry and trigonometry skills (and ...