Beavercreek day out ...the sequel

[beavercreek]

I hope that this is okay with all you peeps out there but I have begun a new thread to post pictures or a re-enactment of the open day held on Sunday. It is really an excuse for me to use some time off to have a jolly good [strike]play[/strike], sorry a test, all on my own for a few hours, something I have not done for many a moon.
I have tried to make up exactly the same consists as the open day roster with the addition of one or two cars as I have swapped failing couplers and clamped some intemittantly dodgy track joiners that 'played up' on the day.

It was predominately a diesel day but I will make it a steam day later this week to see if they can hit the incline with the force that the diesels showed.

The Pointrock area is almost finished (the stockyard area and populating the township being the last bit to complete). Also there is a new section which will enable the quarry section to at last join the outside world whilst also allowing the Pointrock sawmill to have a service shuttling from the Arrowhead sawmill. Arrowheads redevelopment is on hold for the mo.

Anyway here come the pics!

First up the big freight. GP38 plus 2x Gp30s straining to pull cars up the heavy gradient
Coming down toward beavercreek

Setting off through the Beavercreek interchange

Disappearing from Beavercreek station

Gp 38 head on

Pulling past 'Lorraines Diner

Climbing the gradient up to Arbour Summit

Out of the tunnel

Down from the summit and pulling through Pointrock

Box car detail

More box car detail

 

[steven large]

what a beautiful photo shots of them all.it great! wow, it make me mouth drop! loves all these weatherin on the boxcars.well done..LOVELY layout so far.

 

[Don Gilham]

Great pictures Mike - did you snap that lovely RS-1 by any chance ?

 

[stevedenver]

i think youve done a great job with the weathering
and i enjoyed your pics a great deal-
very busy in a good way
i particularly like beaver creek station platform
theres a nice balance between figures in repose and some moving-nicely done and give the sense of a lively area

also liked the derelict green coach behind the red building-nice intriguing 'what exactly is that ?' detail

 

[beavercreek]

And now the small freight. Some 'older' rolling stock behind a GP9 and a RS-3


Gp 9 head on

Crowded rails the RS-3 sits behind the GP waiting to pull

Freight cars cheek by jowl

Assorted rollingstock

Just another shot of lovely freight

Detail of older style rollingstock

Detail of older style rollingstock

Detail of older style rollingstock

 

[beavercreek]

And now some detail shots of areas around the layout.
First up is Pointrock. This is a township based around a sawmill, furnitire manufacturer and a stockyard. There is stil a bit to do to complete the whole area but it is about 80%


Shawn, the green coach behind the red station building is going to be the diner.

 

[beavercreek]

The last bunch for now.

One of the shots shows the new area under construction that will enable the quarry shuttle to break free and serve the outside world...a great relief for the workers and owners I expect!


Quarry loco receiving some maintenance

Climax looks down on the quarrying

Monolith packing gathers pace as orders flood in

This is a shot of the new area to be constructed to join the quarry to the mainline and also to enable Pointrock sawmill to link up to Arrowhead sawmill which it recently bought out.

Back at Beavercreek they still have not managed to shift that darn caboose with the seized brakes

And the traffic jam seems to be still there as well...patient drivers

A 'Goose' pulls up beside the oil tank but it is not the correct type of fuel so it will not be filling up there!

The shuttle 'local' being pulled by diesel instead of steam passes a broken down 'Goose' No6

Chatter gets drowned out as the freight thunders by.

Cola truck rumbles down the road after dropping off a great load of fizzies

 

[beavercreek]

Apologies if you have seen this already but just in case you didn't........

 

[JRinTawa]

Tremendous set of pictures. Your weathering reallu brings stuff to life

 

[dudley]

great, fab, what more can you say. bit of a secret diesal fan myself. great pictures.

 

[beavercreek]

Tremendous set of pictures. Your weathering reallu brings stuff to life

Many thanks John, the deal now is to take the big intake of breath and weather the whole diesel and Steam fleet. I have done two or three locos in the past (one diesel and two Climax steamers). On two of them I just did 'easy' weathering but I will have to up the game to match the effort going into the rolling stock. What worries me is that if I make a giant c**k up then it is a very expensive one when done to a loco!

 

[beavercreek]

great, fab, what more can you say. bit of a secret diesal fan myself. great pictures.

Many thanks again Dud. I hope that you can make it down next time.


I am going to, if I have enough time today, try to do a steamer run. Because of the slope in the layout, I will have to either run short strings of cars (the steam locos do not have as much welly as the diesels, most of the steramers also do not have traction tyres) or experiemnet with lash-ups and helpers.
My 'motorised helper' cattle cars have had to have a rethink as they used diesel blocks for power and were too high geared for the more sedantary steam jobbies....perhaps a big fat resistor would do the trick!

 

[trammayo]

Well I must say those pictures were very pleasing to look at. Your freight weathering was brilliant! Your structures and "locations" are inspirational. Whilst not a fan of diesels, your motive power has given me food for thought! Good luck with weathering them - I would not be brave enough to attempt to go down that road.

Looking forward to pics of your steam roster too

 

[beavercreek]

Looking forward to pics of your steam roster too

Thanks for the encouragement Mick.
I will be having to swap the dummy front couplers on the steamers for operational ones so that they can be used as helpers or used in a lash-up. This will probably be cause for a bit of kitbashing on some of them.

As to the weathering of the loco roster, I am having great problems overcoming my reluctance to do it. The ones that I have already done are fine but I need to now do more extensive weathering. I think that if I get my cheapest loco and learn my techniques and make all the mistakes on that one then I can do one at a time and see how it goes. If there are some that do not get much weathering at all..they can be considered as just being out of the locoworks as a new paint job!

 

[Tony]

Mike you dont need me to praise your efforts any more than i have. But regarding the weathering of expencive locos, i think you have to put it into some kind of perspective and then you will feel better about it
1, Do you want a mint and boxed loco that you can boast to people how clean it is and never been run
or
2, Is it a Loco you really love watching run and have no intention of selling.

Well in the case of number 2 the value is purly how much you want to leave to your next of kin. Ok there is the "doing it well" enough factor that those that know will think its a mess or think its authentic looking and we have all seen some peoples idea of authentic !!!!!! but the weathering ive seen so far on you line has look original and even to the point of saying i hadnt noticed it wasnt made like that from new
Tony

PS if you do make any cook ups you know il always take it off your hands mate

 

[yb281]

Excellent Mike. Those weathered boxcars look fabulous - so much more realistic than running them straight out of the box.

 

[Kaine]

Waw, loved every picture, amazing,

 

[beavercreek]

Many thanks to you Mel, Eric and again Tony for the very kind comments.

Unfortunately I did not get the chance to do a 'steam' version of the diesel pics due to a sudden amount of work to finish but maybe tomorrow.

Yeah I know that you are right Tony but I have quite a few locos as you know and I can see a time when I will 'thin out' the stable and want to get as decent a price as I can for them.
It is first chosing the ones to weather that I am pretty sure of keeping into perpetuity, and then realising that Imight wipe a whole load of their worth if I am ever forced to sell the chosen ones in the future .
But I will start with a loco that I actually got off you in a swap some time back. It is the old Aristocraft C16 that was painted as a multi-coloured Mexican thingy. It will give me the reaxing feeling that if it ends up hideous then at least it won't have damaged an expensive piece of kit!

The vid of progress on your line was really great to see, as the progress and changes that you have made to the total design are immense!

 

[yb281]

OK, selling a weathered loco to a collector isn't going to happen and a badly weathered loco is going to struggle to sell, but I'm not sure that ALL weathered locos are going to be value less if you decide to sell them - as long as it's well done? After all, look at the number of Hornby and Bachmann 00 locos that are sold in weathered condition. Also, look at how much it costs to get a loco weathered by a proffesional. The collectors want pretty and pristine models on their shelves, but a lot of people want their trains to look realistic.

I'd be pretty confident that if you can weather a loco to the same standard of those boxcars Mike, there would still be a very ready market for it if you ever decided to sell.

 

[Zerogee]

Mike - how about trying out the sort of weathering that this guy has done on the Challenger he's selling on evilBay:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/G-scale-M...=UK_Trains_Railway_Models&hash=item19c779e2ed < Link To http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm...mp;hash=item19c779e2ed

He's used chalks, which he says in the description will clean off if required (though I'm not sure I'd want to try to get every scrap out of all the nooks and crannies on a loco like that!!).
Just a thought, something that might be worth a go? I can see downsides - you probably can't ever run in damp weather, and I reckon you have to be quite careful with handling to avoid fingerprints, but I must admit it looks pretty good in the eBay pics. I know it's a common weathering technique in the smaller indoor scales - anyone here ever used it on G before?

Jon.