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The Muddy River Railroad

13K views 24 replies 7 participants last post by  Pete Chimney 
#1 ·
Hello On30-fans

now the winter has come and it's getting colder in the workshop of my 2"-scale railroad. So I decided to spent the winter break in large scale railroading for a small On30 project. I founded the "Muddy River Railroad", loosly based on the Maine-2-Footers. All rolling stock will be Bachmann, but most converted to match my project.

The last days, I spent some time on track planing and to build the benchwork for my new railroad. The design will be a classic point-to-point operation with a end-of-line station at the left end and a fiddle yard on the other side.







The fiddle yard can be fold down to give access to the guest room. I hope to get the ordered tracks soon to get started in track laying.

Don't worry about the benchwork. It's 100% evenly and straight but the floor, walls and all the other rest of my old house isn't =)

Cheers, Gerd
 
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#3 ·
Hi,

well, it's a modificated Bachmann On30 Shay, but it's not planed to run the Shay on this layout. I'll use a Forney and a rail bus as motive power. The Shay is one of 8 models in my little Shay collection and actually owned by my dad and just a loan for my collection =)
The Shay is my favorite type of steam locomotives.

Bye, Gerd
 
#6 ·
Gerd-

Looks like a good start. But the interesting part, is your layout is very close in size and design of a friend's 0n30 industrial railway that he is building. His railway is set in eastern Tennessee around the 1920s.

We are handlaying code 70 rail and building stub switches, all the rail is secondhand from my father's old layout and is between 40 and 50 years old.

It will be interesting to see your progress!
 
#7 ·
Good morning,

thanks for your comments.
As this little empire will be a simple fun project, I don't stress myself with time eras, prototype situations or absolut finescale stuff.
I'll lay simple Peco On30 rails (code 100) and will use some Plasticville structures I bought on eBay some time ago. But I'll spend some time to repaint or detail all this stuff to get good looking models.

I'm still waiting for the flextracks delivery. I hope the will arrive today to get start with the first feet of track this weekend.

Best regards, Gerd
 
#8 ·
Good morning,

made some progress this weekend. First I build the sector plate style fiddle yard from two layers of 8mm plywood. At the end, I cut a hole in the top layer to hold the turntable.

For the basic landscape, I glued polystyrene plates on top of the benchwork. I used them too to form the rail embankment.



Finally I start with the rails. The rails are fixed with double-sided tape At the joints between the mainline and the sector plate, I set small screws at the end of the rails into the wooden benchwork/sectorplate and soldered the rails on top of this screws. I use the same method on the turntables.





Saddly I couldn't finish the trackwork yesterday, because the last two turnouts haven't arrived yet. As soon as I recieve them, I'll continue with the rails and I hope to make first testruns at last neet weekend.

Bye, Gerd
 
#11 ·
Good morning,

this weekend, I finished the turntable on the fiddle yard =)
As you can see too, I recived the Forney and Caboose right before x-mas.





I also do some prepainting on the Coach and Forney. Both got their roofs painted in oxid red. I also designed the decals to letter the models, but the decal print store has closed for vacation until mid January.

Cheers, Gerd
 
#13 ·
Yes it is. You can fold down the fiddle yard to clear the door to the guest room behind it.



I hope I've some time this evening to start the second turntable =)

Cheers, Gerd
 
#15 ·
Hi,

only small progress was done the last weeks. Actually I finished the station building at Phelps (end of the line) and will start with a small flag stop this week. The station building was assembled from a Bachmann kit (Plasticville) and painted to match the color pattern of MRRR side track structures.



I also repainted the passenger cars and will start detailling the freight cars next. Two flatcars will get pulpwood racks and the boxcars will be redesigned to look more "Maine style".

Finally I replaced the turntable at Phelps by another spur track.

Will be continued.

Cheers, Gerd
 
#17 ·
Hi,

The building has no interior yet... When I can find some good pictures I'll add one some day.
But finally, you won't see much of the interior with the roof on =)

Yesterday, I fabricated the parts for the flag stop building. Maybe I can start assembling this evening.

Here are two pics of the cars. The combine was a yellow one ^^ I try to get the decals ordered today.





Bye, Gerd
 
#18 ·
Hi,

did some progress on the falg stop building yesterday.





The roof will follow today as also the basement and loading deck.

During construction of the shed above, I spend some paint on the freight cars. I painted the truss rods black and the deck planks in weathered wood style. The different is amazing. Next week, I'll get the decals to letter the rolling stock. Open issues are adding pulpwood racks to two flatcars, repainting platforms on caboose, and rebuild one of the boxcars to another look. I hope to get some major progress done on the rolling stock during the next evenings.

Bye, Gerd
 
#21 ·
Well, the flagpost has been finished and turned out to be 125% in size... It seems I've done some mistakes as I made the drawings and never checked them up with some other O-scale stuff... Finally, I've to build a new one. This version would work for 1/35 scale :-(

Here are some examples of finished rolling stock. I've still troubles while applieing decals so I hope that a soft weathering will hide most of the disaster.

Coach #17


Boxcar #35 was rebuild with new positions of the ladders and new endbeams. The second boxcar is "out of the box" style.


All Flatcars got their planks painted in dry brush technique to look like weatherd wood. This includes the gondola and tankcar too.




The caboose also got some paint on the platforms.


Still unfinished are two flatcars who will get pulpwood racks installed. The Forney loco will get a small back-date dress up at last.

Will be continued =)

Gerd
 
#22 ·
Nice rolling stock! The weathered wood, like on the gondola, looks very good!

I've still troubles while applieing decals so I hope that a soft weathering will hide most of the disaster.

I don't know what sort of decals you use. It looks like they are a bit thick and stiff, am I right?
Microcale Set & Sol helps with aplying most decals. It soften the decals a bit and help it to set correct on the surface (and prevents the whitening).

Some links:
http://www.microscale.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=CTGY&Category_Code=FINPROD
http://www.bare-metal.com/Microscale-Model-Finishing-Products.html

Anyway, you allready have the decals on, so this it talking afterwards...

If I had this problem I would try a coat of clear paint (or Future) over it. This to prevent the decals from the washes of paint when you start weathering the cars (for instance the thinned paint flowing under the decals or rapture them by drybrush).
After this coat is applied you can weather it safely. Sometimes the whitening even dissapeares (or is less showing) when using Future (but as I said: sometimes!). Future has an egg gloss, so it has to be matted down again. But that's no problem when you are weathering the cars.
 
#25 ·
Gerd

The whitish background on your decals is known as silvering (silvering, not slivering). Those of us who build model armor/planes, etc know of this, especially on dark background colors.

One way to eliminate the silvering is to put down a coat of gloss medium on the surface to be decaled BEFORE you apply the decals. Future Floor Finish works great and is acrylic. It cleans up with Windex window cleaner.
 
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