CNW Hopper Fleet: The First Batch

This week I started preparing a few cars I had lying around for the first batch of CNW hoppers to finish filling out my desired roster. In various stages of disrepair I found an Intermountain 4750, a Precision Masters 4750, and a Trainman Rock Island patch. Also in this batch will be a brand new Micro-Trains 4427.

The Intermountain is in rough shape, some of the roof walks are missing and some of the end frames are broken. This will be the first of 3 more some day. It started life as an ADM blue/white paint job. I contacted Intermountain and they were quite helpful in that they were able to send me replacement roof walks. Note I have already added the horizontal stiffener along the top starting on the 4th vertical rib from each end. Into the alcohol bath it goes.

For the first of two more 4427's a brand new brown BNSF car will be sacrificed. The roof walk bowed up sometime this winter, the humid basement seems to have that effect on them. This one is going right from the package to the tub.

The Precision Masters 4750 is not as pretty as the Intermountain car, but it has a top rib that runs end to end, similar to the Berwick cars. This started out as part of a UP 3 pack that I tested some weathering techniques on with zero success. Into the bath it goes. It looks really warped in this picture, I assure you other than a loose top that is somewhat bowed, it is otherwise true.

Atlas did two different 3 packs of their Trainman Thrall 4750 hoppers a few years ago and I was in for both. They're a little out of my era but I had to have em. One of them is a bankruptcy blue Rock Island patch, though the blue paint is a little thick looking and not really what I think of as being the right color. I tried weathering it but it didn't help. It looks better than the UP car but still pretty terrible, then when trying to remove the weathering most of the lettering wiped off too. I've got an idea for how to fix all this, it's soaking with the others now. Please excuse the gob of putty on the elevator, it's a work in progress too.

CNW Hopper Fleet

This past week I started up a small project to grow my covered hopper fleet a bit. I would imagine I will be doing a couple small batches vs one big lot in the interest of time, money, and, well, time and money. First, a little background on the project.

There are 3 main sources of info for this project. North Western Lines Vol 13, No. 4 (Fall 1986), The Chicago & North Western Final Freight Car Roster, and CNWHS Modeler Vol 3, Issue 2. This issue of NWL contains a 20 page article on the CNW's jumbo hopper fleet as of about 1980. It includes b&w photos, descriptions, some drawings, and a roster with 4000cft and larger hoppers in the fleet. Only available on CD now from CNWHS, but if you shop around you can find paper copies. Probably not the most interesting reading, but certainly a great tool if you're modeling pre DM&E CNW on the prairie (or early DM&E). The Final Freight Car Roster is just plain necessary for any CNW enthusiast, color photos, descriptions, and drawings of every type of car still on the rails in 1995. Referenced frequently at my house anyway. CNWHS Modeler is a maybe quarterly e-pub with some neat articles about various CNW models, one of the regular contributors models about the same stuff as I'm interested in (albeit Horribly Oversize). Vol 3 Issue 2 has an article with some simple math in it for how the author arrived at how many of what type of hopper he should have in his fleet.

Armed with this info at my disposal I evaluated my own hopper fleet and determined I had some work to do. I'm shooting for a total number of around 12. Here's how things break down so far:

• 2x PS 4427 low side, Exact Rail, one green and one ex TDLX Continental Grain patch
• 1x ACF 4650, Intermountain, green
• 1x  FMC 4700, Red Caboose, green
• 1x Thrall 4750, Atlas Trainman, ex ROCK patch
• 1x PS 4750, Intermountain/CNWHS, pea green

There's 9 already, but as you can see only one PS 4750 just won't do. There are also no high side 4427's, and no miscellaneous like the odd ball Berwick and Ingalls cars, cylindrical cars built by Marine Industries or the GATC 4700s from CGW. The GATC might be a tough one, no model exists. That's probably a kit bash project on it's own. The Berwick and Ingalls built cars are as far as I can tell clones of the Pullman 4750 only gray with a black and white herald instead of green with black and yellow. The Marine cylindrical hoppers can easily be done with Intermountain models, and the high side PS 4427's can be done with Micro-Trains models. Given all this, here's what I'd like to ad:

• 2x PS 4427 high side, Micro-Trains, green
• 1x Misc 4750, Intermountain, gray Berwick/Ingalls stand-in
• 3x PS 4750, Intermountain, green
• 2x MI Cylindrical, Intermountain, gray Farmland patch

Hey that's not bad. I was shooting for 12, and hit 14. Those two cylindrical hoppers don't really count though as they are for bulk dry fertilizer service not corn, beans, or wheat. It's maybe not accurate ratio wise, but it will certainly give the impression of a mixed fleet and gives me the satisfaction of having one of everything. It's hard to compress a several thousand car roster into 12. Sorry, no pictures again this time, just words.

Benchwork Planning

After a long hiatus over the summer, I'm getting back to the railroad again. Over the summer I've done alot of thinking about it, just no working on it. I've also been to a few swap meets and such and have done some more research on specific types of freight cars I'm interested in.

First things first I guess, the track needs somewhere to go. The original plan was to use a door, but after looking at all the doors in the house and their rectangular shape, the oval design of the layout creates some odd corners. I thought about putting a farmhouse in one and some trees in another, but those sharp corners still just don't sit right in my mind. The door idea has given way to a traditional open framework design.

The structure will be composed of 1/2" plywood ripped into 3" strips. Portability and light weight will take a hit, but semi-mobility was still be considered. I doubt I'll be dragging it to any events but I'd like to be able to get it out of the house if we move. The legs will be 2"x2" sticks, detachable, mounted to the 4 obvious corners of the inner structure, and braced with more plywood "boards". The whole thing will be topped with pink foam, and wrapped with 1/8" Masonite for a nice clean look. I'm shooting for around a 48"-50" grade height all said and done.

The track plan overlay is roughly scaled to fit, this is the look I was shooting for with the round corners. You can see clearly why the left front corner is still squared off. The route of the spur there may be modified some day to connect to an add on section, or it might just remain straight. We'll cross that road at a later time. I realize the track near the back of the layout is very close to the edge, I do plan to extend the Masonite up 2" or so to contain things around the back side. You may notice the plan has changed... Again. I've been studying the minimalist works of some others and decided to ax much of the track. I also discovered some #6 turnouts in the track box, so the lower left spur and the cross over have been "upgraded".

Fertilizer Hopper Build - Weathering

As much as I preach less is more when it comes to weathering, I always pile it on thick. This car was no exception. Though most of my equipment will fall in the late 70's to early 80's, and the build date on this car is '77 it is showing some serious age already... Starting with some washes made from cheap craft store paint, it got a fade with Vanilla. Next a very light wash of some Licorice on the sides, heavier on the ends and bottom. The rust streaks were over done with Burnt Sienna oil paint, a tiny dollop placed at each roof walk support and then drawn away with a clean brush soaked in paint thinner.

Fertilizer Hopper Build - Decals

Spent another evening on this, tonight the decals got applied. The Oddballs set I used was pretty decent. Not on the level of Microscale, but close. The package said "screen printed" but I always thought Oddballs were done on an Alps like printer? Either way they are crisp and clear. They are also very thin, which makes them pretty much melt into the paint but also makes them super fragile. I messed a couple of them up but was able to salvage them to be passable. Next up will be some real light weathering to add a couple years of age, and I guess I should try and track down some Microscale COTS decals.

Fertilizer Hopper Build Update

Over the past few nights I've been throwing down some ModelMaster Light Gray paint. First on the top and sides, the next night the bottom and ends, and tonight a 2nd light coat on the top, ends, and sides to hit any areas that got missed. The factory gray paint was a little dark for my liking, and this is a little light, but it'll do I guess. If nothing else it's a nice faded gray that will take a little light weathering well.

Fertilizer Hopper Build

I got a couple new things in the mail over the last week or two, meaning I have all the components for a small project. The fertilizer plant on the River Valley Central will receive dry products by rail and ship out local orders by truck. I picked up an MTL ACF hopper wearing Souther Pacific and some Oddballs decals to make a hopper that's not something you can just go buy. Not that there's anything wrong with RTR, but sometimes it's fun to roll your own.

This will hopefully be a quick and easy build, though it got off to a bit of a rough start. Originally the plan was to get any gray MTL ACF hopper, wipe the letters off, decal, weather just a tiny bit, done. I don' t know what's changed since last time I renumbered an MTL car but the pad printing was not coming off without taking the rest of the paint too. Matter of fact, the gray paint wiped off almost instantly when the rubbing alcohol touched it and the black letters didn't budge. Not huge, but I guess I'm not going to decal this thing tonight. Instead the whole thing took a soak in alcohol for about an hour or so. The alcohol stripped that thing naked. I mean totally bare, with only a slight touch from a cheap tooth brush to scrub the end frames a bit. That's all for tonight though, repaint will have to happen another night.