DME T-Trak Action

Long time no update! Here's a brief video I shot on an old cell phone this evening. It's choppy and fuzzy and there's quite a lot of noise, but it's action!

DME 2nd Hand Diesels: Decals!

I was able to finish the artwork for some custom decals and sent them off to Highball Graphics to be printed. Jim @ Highball was great, he answered a couple questions and the decals arrived about a week later. The print quality was outstanding, the price was very inexpensive (I sent artwork that was more or less ready to go so no setup or design fees). None of it was very complex artwork, mostly just letters and numbers. I'll show you the fun stuff later, but here are the 3 DME units lettered and ready for finishing.

DME 2nd Hand Diesels: 2nd Gen Joins the Roster

This week a 2nd Gen EMD joined my DM&E roster. Received as an undercoated Kato SD40-2, I went right to work on it getting ready to replicate the 6360 City of Mankato.

I started by grinding away the inside of the shell behind the radiator grilles. This is a model car trick to open up the radiator grille, and worked really well here. There was quite a lot of meat on this part of the shell so it should still be plenty strong. Why am I cutting the radiator grille open? Sound of course! I've got an MRC 1806 decoder on order, and the way the shell is designed girding open the radiator grilles to let the sound out made logical sense.

For paint I headed back to the acrylic craft paint aisle and came back with some Craft Smart Dark Yellow and Bright Blue. DM&E used several different shades of blue and gold over the years, these two struck me as close enough for the look of 6360 after a few years of service.

Here is the City of Mankato with it's running mates, all waiting for decals, decoders, and dirt.

Teaching Myself Illustrator (Spoiler Alert)

The past week or so I've been teaching myself Adobe Illustrator for laying out custom decals for the DME 2nd Hand project, and others. Nothing terribly fancy, just learning to use layers and how to have text follow a path. Here's a preview of the sheet I'm working on. Spoiler alert: There are some markings on this sheet for a couple future projects, I figured if I'm going to have decals printed I may as well get a bunch done at once. There is a little more to add yet though, so I'm not spilling the whole thing!

DME 2nd Hand Diesels: Paint Shop

Both units went through the paint shop. I used craft paint sprayed with an airbrush on both, specifically Apple Barrel Pale Daffodil, Kelly Green (with a drip of black), Apricot, and Black (with a drip of Pavement). It went on very smooth and even, I was quite impressed. At less than $1/bottle it was a real bargain. I've just about moved entirely away from "model" paints, there just isn't any value in a $5 teeny jar of paint I have to drive 100 miles round trip for. To get it to blow out the air brush I thinned it just a bit with Windex, until it was about whole milk or maybe chocolate milk consistency. I did forget to give the nose of 555 the 'bandit' treatment, and did the top of 6606's nose with green though it should probably be all yellow. Those should be easy to fix. All in all quite pleased so far!

DME 2nd Hand Diesels: Fiddly Bits

A package of fiddly bits arrived from Fifer Hobby. Inside were BLMA cut levers, MU hoses and snow plows. I'm not sure I'd bother with the cut levers again, they are so thin and dainty compared to the hand rails and other details you almost can't see them. They are also a real bitch to bend and install. The MU hoses are a nice touch though, and the plows essential for these units.

Also arriving from Canada were a pair of Miniatures by Eric winter hatches. These are very nice cast brass pieces with very little flash other than the casting nub. They also came with very fine wire mesh for the openings.

That should about do it, after fighting the cut levers I'm not going to bother with lift rings or grab irons and stuff. My eyes just don't see that stuff when it's rolling around the layout, but my fingers somehow manage to bend and break stuff anyway. I do have horns to go on after painting is over and I'm done man handling them.

DME 2nd Hand Diesels: Chopped and Stacked

Both units needed some attention in the exhaust stack area, the 555 needs two additional stacks and the 6606 needed them moved on top of the dynamic brake housing. I decided to dabble in resin casting and make copies of an exhaust stack on the non-dynamic hood. I used a basic Alumilite Mini Casting Kit. The results are much better than I would have guessed and it was very easy. The biggest lesson learned was that when casting such a tiny part it is nearly impossible to mix a tiny amount of resin correctly, and there is mucho wasteo. If I ever need to duplicate a part again I'll wait until I have several molds to fill.

Both units got their noses chopped and cabs loosely fitted. The gear tower on the Life Like mechanism is very tall and as a result the hoods are about 1mm too high, but at normal viewing distance and angles it is hard to tell so it fits the "good enough" criteria for me.

DME 2nd Hand Diesels

I haven't finished dirtying up the covered hopper fleet yet but I will some day... Until then, I dug out some Life Like SD9's to give some special treatment to. They'll be converted into a tired DM&E SD9 and SD10. This is a project I've wanted to do for quite a while, and the folks over at nscale.net are having a fall kitbashing party so it seemed an appropriate time to start these. Life Like is probably not a good starting point for such a project but it's what I have so it'll have to do.

The SD9 will be number 6606 that had its nose cut down in one of CNW's rebuilding programs. I plan to use an Atlas SD26 low nose cab. For the SD10 I'm taking the easy way out and will be doing 555, A MILW rebuild that was wrecked and rebuilt again with GP35 cab parts. Easy peasy, I happen to have a cab from a busted Kato GP50 shell. The air filter for 555 I'm particularly fond of, I measured a Detail Associates HO air filter and drew it in Sketchup, then uploaded the drawing to Shapeways. It's crude but effective.