getting tanked........

[Mik]

It's been a while since I tried a complete scratchbuild (That the last two board on board projects STILL aren't finished might have something to do with it?) But it's January, and once again time for the New Year's Challenge on another board... sooo.

If I share a few of my shortcuts during the build log, I'm sure you fellows won't mind, will you?

My rail historian buddy Andrew in Cali found this Harrisburg Car Co builder's photo a while back. It's a pre- Pennsy Allegheny Valley tank car (probably mid-late 1860s vintage.)

As usual, I'm taking some liberties with this thing, both to ease construction and for strength. Rather than a standard 6 sill underframe, I made a U shaped center sill for the tank to rest in, AND connect the trucks to each other. Building on waxed paper is an old trick. Most glues won't stick to it.

The tank itself is going to be built from plain old hardware store plastic pipe. (copper would put me waaay over budget)

To me this is the easiest way to fit a dome to a barrel. carve out reliefs then wrap the tube with sandpaper to get the finished shape.

Then I started to shape the upper side.

Aaaaand the first of a gazillion (actually about 800) "rivets", drill hole (or about 15 at a time), insert HO track nail, repeat. a $4 plastic mini hand drill makes the drilling easy... keeping the bit from wandering, even with pilot divots made with a pin vise, not so much.... good thing I'm not building this for a contest or anything, right?

I would love to say that I'm purposely "pacing" myself... more like some days I drill holes until I get bored, other days I just fark off, or do other things.... and several times I've spill the danged tray of "rivets" all over the floor - just for the heck of it...

On Tuesday I milled the angle grooves in the center sills using the deck boards and the taper tip on the B&D motor tool for a guide.... other than making a shredded wood mess, it was actually easy.

This Dremel 1/4" dia mill cutter is one of my favorites for model work, on soft stuff (wood/plastic/whitemetal) - unfortunately , it dulls really quickly if you try shaping anything harder, even many aluminum alloys.

The underside. Even early "boiler" tank cars like this one often didn't have truss rods because the tank itself actually carried all the stresses. I'm still on the fence whether I'm going to fabricate air brakes. The original car may never had them, at least not with this paint scheme, old Adnah may have controlled 1/4 of the oil shipping biz in the mid 1860s, but he was out due to ill health by 1871 (then Grandin & Neyhart was one of those smaller companies ruthlessly sucked up by Standard Oil to exert more leverage on hold-out independent well owners and refineries in 1875)

Anyway, mocked up tonight with the partially drilled tank and dome.... It's starting to look sort of like a tank car.

More photos as it progresses

 

[trammayo]

Its an interesting model - didn't realise they had tanks like this so long ago - and some useful tips too.

I use a pin chuck for most of my tiny drills - the power tools seem to wonder around.

Could I offer you a tip? If you cut a cross-section of pipe (and made sure it was true and square), then cut a slit in it so it would slide over the tanks, it would serve a guide/stop to drill round the tank. Or use a large worm-drive hose clip? Just a thought.

I wouldn't think I had the patience to replicate all the rivet detail anyway!

 

[tramcar trev]

Yes, I'd go with the drilling guide as mentioned by the previous expert. I have bought some of these to detail my tramcars with, I suspect they are more expensive than the track pins though....
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/0-5mm-0-...N&var&hash=item20ce36c84b&_uhb=1#ht_998wt_715 < Link To http://www.ebay.com.au/it...mp;_uhb=1#ht_998wt_715

But its looking good, the old sand paper round the tank trick to scarfe the dome in is very cunning.....
There is also this gizmo available too, it marks the hole centres for rivets....

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/HOBBY-RI...t_US&hash=item53e7cd2d71&_uhb=1#ht_1342wt_934 < Link To http://www.ebay.com.au/it...p;_uhb=1#ht_1342wt_934
Has 4 different "blades" with it but not sure if the spacing would be any good in our scale.
Then I find this from the UK; Fake rivets delivered by a syringe. Now I'm not sure how you would accuratley dispense them to be identical size.. but I'm sure it can be done and the results look quite acceptable....
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/LIQUID-R...s_JN&hash=item2ec501f61a&_uhb=1#ht_1850wt_701 < Link To http://www.ebay.com.au/it...p;_uhb=1#ht_1850wt_701

 

[Mik]

I found these 1898 Westinghouse patent drawings. I'll probably fit this style air brake, even though the car would have been 30+ years old (and likely scrapped) by then. - Only because it will fit in better with the rest of the stuff I run if it has brakes
http://www.google.com/patents?id=bn...=gbs_selected_pages&cad=1#v=onepage&q&f=false

Tip #1 A quick and easy way to get a straight, square line on a cylinder is to wrap it with a sheet of paper. The paper should be big enough to wrap around at least 1-1/2 times (and preferably stiffer than newsprint, I just used it here for contrast)... if the paper is lying flat on the tube surface, and the leading edges line up perfectly, you'll always get a square line.

Tip #2 In cases like this where there is no truck mounting stub, (or even where it's been broken off on a factory car), a bit of 1/4" vinyl aquarium tubing stuck on a wood screw is a low tech, cheap as chips fix. This little trick works with every truck I've tried.

I don't know why the prototype car was fitted with what appears to be swing action trucks, but I simulated them by milling off the coil spring detail and gluing on two bits of 1/8" square styrene. Once they're painted few people will notice.

The obvious parts of those 1898 Westinghouse brake were added. The brake cylinder was cut from a junk Bachmann Big Hauler frame. The clevises are leftover bits from Ozark Miniatures air hoses, cold bent over my thumbnail. I haven't decided whether to add bent wire piping yet, but I won't be adding the truck reach rods because they'll just interfere with the trucks swiveling.

I decided that my car should have the later low slung, narrow gauge stance rather than that high mounted, "ping pong" look of the prototype. Those two middle sills I left out allow it to negotiate r-1 curves with a bit to spare

Back to drilling holes....... and holes..... and yet more holes.

 

[jgallaway81]

Now, the interesting part to model will be those 3D physical letters on the side sill.

 

[Mik]

Now, the interesting part to model will be those 3D physical letters on the side sill.

That's easy peasy.....





..... but you'll just have to wait to see it.

 

[Mik]

One of the things I like to do during these challenges is try out new/different ways of doing stuff. Either it will work, or be a spectacular "Hey, y'all watch this!" type failure. I read someplace last year about an interesting (and cheap!) wood staining technique. Since this car had all that nice bare white wood, it was the perfect opportunity to try it out.

The first step is to make a basic natural stain - (I hope you Brits will forgive me for tea abuse) a teabag worth of tea leaves let steep overnight in about 1/2oz of rubbing alcohol. - This results in a nice tannin rich liquid that you just slop on and let soak in. Don't worry about any stray bits of tea leaves, they'll just brush off when it's dry.... If the color is too light, just keep recoating when dry until you get a hue you like. This is what the deck looked like after 2 coats, almost a warm maple or fruitwood color.

This was coat #4... I let this one set about 5 minutes before I brushed away the leaf bits with a paper towel - because I wanted the wood surface to still be "wet" for the next step...

Second step, after wiping off the excess tea stuff away, I then wiped on a VERY diluted (about 20:1 with water?) black acrylic paint wash (with the same paper towel) and then buffed it away.... after it dried I had this really nice faux walnut/old wood (but not rotten) look. Best that I can 'splain it is the wood, being damp with alcohol, keeps too much of the black from soaking in initially, but then the alcohol absorbs the water and pulls the paint into the grain......

I'd say thie experiment was a moderate success.

Another puzzle I'd been working on turned out to have a real simple solution. You'll notice that the brake staff on the prototype has a cool looking support bracket. I was digging through my detail part sorter for stirrups, when I realized I could just cut away part of an Ozark Miniatures boxcar brake staff mount casting and it'd be "close enough for gubmint work" The lacy plastic D&RG style brakewheel really helps with the period look, too.

back to drilling holes.....

 

[mike]

nicely done.. the colour looks just right..

 

[Mik]

I figured out somewhere after rivet hole #250 that the easiest way to use the dinky hand drill was to turn the crank gear by the edge like it was a water valve rather than foodle around with the little crank handle.... MUCH easier, and actually made it easier to control. Brass pins and HO track nails resulted in this:

I still need to scrounge an o-ring for the dome vent.

The tank ends are wooden, sanded slightly convex. I'll be painting them and the dome separately before assembly (because I'm too lazy to mask?)

This old O-scale set of decals says AVRR, doesn't it?

Tomorrow will only be 40* F and windy. But they're calling for a high of 13* on Tuesday, so I'll have to try light coats.

 

[Mik]

Tank painted, and ends installed. Since the red lettering I have are dry transfer... it now has to sit for about a week for the paint to harden.

While I'm waiting on that I'll work some more on the underframe.

And it's also time to think about weathering.... Remember, this car is 1860s vintage (with an 1890s rebuild). When I do public runs my time period is 1925ish, and the home layout is 1961. I MIGHT get away with calling it a freshly restored "heritage" car in '61, but rusty and grubby is far more likely. The white will have yellowed and the red faded to pink.... and probably lots of spilled oil with moss.

In other words, I'mma gonna "ruin" it.

 

[Mik]

For those who have wondered, drilling all those holes isn't actually hard, just.... boring. That's why this car has 5 vertical seams rather than the prototype's 6 or 7.

This is my super-de-luxe high buck hand drill with the finished dome. If I were to do it over (and I might... someday) I'd add a nice horizontal handle to the bloody thing to make it easier to hold onto (and thereby control). BTW, you have no choice with this thing BUT to "let the tool do the work", if you try to crowd the bit, it jumps teeth....

Trammayo's suggestion using a hose clamp as a drill guide is worth considering... other than possibly dulling the point or snagging and breaking the bit, it might not be a bad solution.

 

[jgallaway81]

Use a big one with large thread slots.

 

[Mik]

In the spirit of a build log that actually helps others be able to reproduce WHAT I'm doing, rather than just being another "Looky what I dun!", I thought I'd make a process, rather than progress post today.

I find it's entirely too easy (and common) for modellers to slop on "weathering" willy nilly (clutter is another thing that's often overdone) , but much harder to get it to actually look natural. So, while waiting for the paint to harden (and mostly trying to ignore Kim's feetball games, since I didn't follow any of those teams all season) I went surfing for grubby tank car photos. I found these and thought I'd share. (I'm claiming "fair use" as an educational tool.) Most of these effects can be reproduced with paints by dry brushing and washes.

Honestly, I wish the search engines returned more stuff you actually wanted, and less stuff that some guy paid to have pushed at you... Even using the 'advanced search' filters it took me about 90 minutes to find just these. Google is one of the worst offenders.

This is part of the reason I started my "someday files". When you find a really useful photo, SAVE IT to disc or hard drive... because the chances of finding it again when you need it is sometimes fairly slim, if you just bookmark it you're taking a chance, too much older net content disappears into an electronic black hole every day. Besides, if you have it in your photo files, it's more likely that you'll actually START building.

 

[trammayo]

Its nice to see some close-ups of the prototype. It puts flesh on the bones and, for someone like myself, it gives a clue as to how things were built in the US.

 

[Mik]

I had trouble with the old stock Woodland's dry transfer lettering I had here. Since I wanted the lettering just as much as the car. I splurged $7 on a set of 3/8" "no need to trim" waterslide decals from a company called Virnex.... Up side is, yes there isn't excess clear film to trim. Down side #1 there is a fairly steep learning curve. I think out of all the letters on both sides, I got 3 on without tearin. Down side #2 they don't have much surface area to hold them down, so the the water gets undaer and the previous letter tries to float away when you apply the next. My personal review is they're pretty good for a one-off car like this, but I'd really hate to letter a fleet with them. The tank straps are copper wire from a short bit of stranded entry cable that a friend was tossing out. Till I straightened it, then tried to rebend it, the stuff was getting pretty work hardened. I'll have to see if I can snug them down better in a day or so.

I lost half a week waiting on the lettering, because I really, really wanted to do this:

NOW I can mess up the purty paint job!

 

[Mik]

Can I take a few minutes to discuss photographing tricks, too? To get that old wet plate sepia look I wanted took just a few simple, built into most modern photo editing software, tricks. Many folks, rightly, think an 'antiqued' sepia photo is a cliche. Mostly because too many folks just flip on the sepia filter, and stop. there. The result LOOKS fake and cheesy, because it IS fake and cheesy. Getting it to look "right" takes about half an hour of tweaking and adjusting... something most folks can't or won't bother with.

The first, of course, was to take the shot from a very low angle and crop it to match the original photo.

Next was to flip on the sepia filrter, and shift the quality a bit more towards brown.

Then I added a very fine "film grain" filter.

Follwed by shifting the saturation to lighten the photo a bit.

Then a little bump on the contrast and the lettering on the frame came out right.

The only thing really missing is the sun reflection on the end of the tank. I could have faked it either with a fill flash when I took the photo, or a spot fade filter in processing. I also could have painted out the weeping cherry trunk.

I was working from memory when I placed the buildings, If I'd have carried a copy of the original along out in the snow I could have matched them better - some things you just spend more time foodling with when you aren't kneeling in the cold wet stuff.

I did a little primer on photographing model trains for newbs a while back. To the old hands, it's probably all old hat, to the new guys there might be something useful in it that I've glossed over here. ... http://www.the-ashpit.com/mik/photography.html

Just like building the model, the more time and care you put in, the better results you get out.

 

[Mik]

I warned everybody that I was going to really mess up the pretty paint on this car..... I'm not quite done, even yet. I didn't take pix of the intermediate steps, so those who are curious will have to settle for a talk through.

On the tank:
Step#1 was to paint on a really nasty oil spill
Step#2 was to make that spill, and the paint look "old" via my usual 3 step overspray process. See: http://www.the-ashpit.com/mik/weathering.html
Step #3 Then I gave it a wash of black.
Step #4 Next was to paint yet MORE "spillage", much of it right over the "old" spill areas, but with different runoff tracks.
Step #5 I drew in small "rivulets" with an extra fine Sharpie
Step #6 will be to add some fresh "rust" areas, mostly along seams and rivets.

On the frame:
Step #1 was to use the same black wash I used on the tank on both sides near the center of the car where spillage would have been likley to have soaked into the planks.
Step #2 was subjecting it to the same overspray when I painted the tank.
Step#3 Will be to add "tarry" blobs and "moss", mostly along the joints, via paints.
--Oh, and I found a set of plastic stirrups in a box, so they got added, too.

The trucks got "old grease" creep around the journals, and some lighter brown "dry rust" highlights to bring out the details. They'll get some tar blobs and moss as well.

I also apologize to those who expect "natural light" photos at this point. We've had mostly liquid sunshine all day.

Just for the sake of showing scale, I put the car next to a Kalamazoo tanker. While some may think it looks "too small", it actually pretty accurately reflects how tank cars evolved between 1870 and the mid 1880s.

 

[trammayo]

That's really great - looks as though it has earned its keep

Wish I had the skills to weather stock (or locos)!

 

[Mik]

Mick, about 80% of weathering is getting up the courage to screw up a perfectly good paint job.

The rest is mostly just reproducing how things got grungy in real life. (Find an old "in service" photo of a similar car/loco to work from, and play around until you get it right - practice on jumble sale toys if you're really worried)

You Brits might have it harder, your railway men had pride in the appearance of their equipment MUCH longer than ours. "Decrepit" is actually easier to reproduce than just a little road dirt.....

For a few day's worth of grime, I'd probably use chalks then seal it with matte fixative.

 

[trammayo]

There's two screws in that for me - plucking up the courage, and then actually screwing up the weathering. One day! Just need that mental jolt (kick up the ass!).

Enjoyed your thread Mik.