The latest project

Here's a quick update on my latest project, my SD9E. Below are a few pics of both the front and the rear of the loco, with the new details mounted. The coupler lift bar, MU hoses, plows and light clusters have now been fitted on both rear and front pilots You may also notice grey cirles, they are the old shell mounting holes that hold the shell to the frame, I've filled them in with putty, and plan to attach the shell to the frame with screws on the couplers instead. There's still several things to do before she goes to the paintshop. These are new ladders, sunshades, roof fans, and fuel tank vent lines. Hopefully I can show that in a next installment of this project :-)

Over 5000 visits!

Just a quick thank you to all visitors to my blog, over 5000 visits within it's first year, so thank you all!
I hope it serves it's purpose, is entertaining and helpful. If there's other things you like to see and read about, please let me know and I'll try to accommodate your requests/questions.

Cheers!

California Northern SD9 no 203

Sometimes I wish I stayed with my old scale N. I used to have a model railroad in N scale in the past, but the nicer detailing option in HO was one of the reasons to switch about 15 years ago. Today I discovered that Atlas makes a CFNR SD9 in N scale, and exactly the SD9 I'm currently building in HO! It is still available from Atlas direct, and probably from your dealer too. Both DCC and DC versions are available.
It looks pretty good, although I'm not sure about the green, it seems to have a slightly blueish tint. The correct colour is  made by Polyscale, sold as Reading Green. There's a few more things wrong with the model. The original is a SD9E, ex sp, it has the full light show, plows, roof beacon and other details that are very noticable for an SD9E compared to an SD9. Therefore, also this Atlas model would need some work done, but it's not a bad starting point at all. :-)

Photo time

Here's a few pictures taken of the area I recently worked on. Base scenery done, as well as track painted.
The roof on the locoshop has been given a primer coat, so I thought I'd test the results through a camera.
It is always good to take pictures, it will show details you may miss when just looking, and I can see from these pictures that I still have some work to do. :-)

CFNR locoshop progress

Here are some pictures of my locoshop build. I've constructed some basic steel frames with styrene profile, and painted them a matt black colour. They still need a second coat, but I've test fitted them inside the building. They will act as roof supports, which I've placed on top of it in the other picture, to see how it fits.
There's a little bit of trimming and sanding needed to get it all to sit properly, but so far so good.

Scenery

As promised, here are two pictures of the base scenery in the same area, after applying a layer of brown latex paint, followed by a sprinkle of a mix of sand and reptile substrate, and some ballast. There are still some small areas to touch up, particularly the ballast along the edge of the roadbed, but I'm showing this so you have a step by step view of how this progresses.

Stripping Paint

For my SD9E project, I've had to strip the paint of the shell. There are various commercial products available that do this , but their effectiveness depends on the kind of paint used, be it acrylic or oil based etc.
Of course, if you painted something yourselves, then you know the brand and type of paint, and in such a case, it's best to use the paint remover that is recommended by the manufacturer of that paint. However sometimes you may want to strip the factory paint of a model, as is the case for me. Many commercial paint strippers don't seem to work with the paint found on older Athearn models, the old 'blue box' series in particular. A bit of research on the net shows that people have varying results with using products like 90% alcohol, or brake-fluid. As I could not find any 90% alcohol , I went for brake-fluid. Brake fluid comes in a few ratings, DOT3 or DOT4, it does not matter which one you use for our paint strip purpose.
Wear gloves when working with it, as if it strips paint, it can also strip your skin/or penetrate it causing health problems in the future. I've submerged my loco shell in the fluid overnight, about 16 hours in total, and then using a toothbrush (use the hardest you can find) scrubbing off the paint. I found it comes off relatively easy.  I used an old cloth to dab off the remaining fluid, and washed the shell in soapy water, while scrubbing some more, and dried it. Below is the result after 5 minutes of scrubbing and washing.
I'm happy with this, and will now proceed to add the details I want to add, before painting it.