I CAN’T BELIEVE IT’S BEEN ANOTHER YEAR…..

 

The three cars in the foreground are all O Scale scratchbuilding projects .  Erie DUNMORE caboose, Penn Central G-38 ore jennie, followed by a G-39.   The cars are constructed of a mix of acrylic, styrene, brass, Polybacker, and 3d resin printed brake gear.  

I’d like to say “time flies when you are having fun”, but the “fun” has been mixed with a difficult year since my last post, incredibly slightly over one year ago.  Despite plenty of available work, navigating a business in the world of Covid, ever increasing commodity prices, and a politically divisive environment has been challenging.   With the vaccination available, the election over, and the weather starting to warm, it seemed like the worst was over, and then we had the resurgence thanks to the Delta variant, and since June, I’ve been having fun with multiple kidney stones.   While not a life-threatening condition, these bastards are painful as heck, and make it impossible to do virtually anything, when they are at their worst.  

At the O-Scale Club, we are under the rules and regulations of our landlord, the Grace Episcopal Church, but have been thankfully allowed to meet again for the past few months.   We had our first open house, since January of 2020, two weekends ago, with two more to come in December, and four in January.  Everyone over 2 years old, regardless of vaccination status, has to be masked in the building. The church received thousands of masks from either the state or US government,  which we are able to make available to the sizable percentage of folks that show up without them, despite our flyers and everywhere else clearly indicating the church’s policy.   So far no morons making a ruckus about this minor inconvenience.  We are also hosting the local NMRA Division meet in January.   We had almost 300 visitors at our first open house - in four hours.    We also just received a donation of a large railroad book collection that we will have out for sale beginning with our December open houses.   It’s a nice collection and includes the complete, six volume Central Vermont history.  If anyone is looking for that rare set, please let me know - we would probably accept a very favorable offer.

My O-Scale freight car scratchbuilding spree continues.  I have over thirty of the PRR/PC/CR  G38/39/39a  ore jennies under various stages of construction, with the ultimate goal of around 50.   Additionally, I am on my third Erie DUNMORE Caboose; mostly have completed six Georgia Pacific 60’ Thrall Pulpwood Racks; tank construction of four Seaboard whale belly Pneumatic Covered Hopper (they were technically tank cars); four liquid phosphate tank cars, per recent RMC plans; and a half dozen various tank cars, including a six axle Monsanto elemental phosphorous whale belly tank.   I will try to update with in-progress posts of these projects more often.   As many of these are being scratchbuilt using digital fabrication, I plan to make some or all available for purchase, as “parts kits”.  I don’t want to get into fancy packaging, or spending many hours writing, editing, and illustrating instructions, but do plan on posting YouTube videos of the construction process of each.  

I am also scratchbuilding an O-Scale ALCO C415 locomotive.  I’ll have more on this too, but suffice to say, the short hood, cab, frame, and power trucks are all complete.  Left are long hood, which is mostly designed in Fusion 360, and then all the railings, fuel tanks, and other details.  The railings are proving to be one of the harder items to work out.  

What about the HO Steel Mill Layout?  Well good new there, especially since this was originally a steel mill modeling blog.  The layout is cleared off of O Scale detritus, and I’ve been running trains on there for the past month, after around four years of dormancy.   I intend to get back working on the structures and layout soon.  Since this was last worked on, my improved digital fabrication equipment, should speed up the process.  The hardest thing for me right now, is what to start on.  

The reason the layout is no longer an O Scale storage shelf,  is the almost completion of my new 20’x8’ model shop - complete enough that I moved in to it.   This shop holds my primary workstation - a 20’x2’ workbench,  a new spray booth, my 3d printers, my laser cutter, my model and real railroad books, magazines, and other research files, some of my collection of railroad and other crap, and eventually, an O Scale, Proto 48 shelf layout.  

The digital fabrication corner - laser cutter, 3d resin and filament printers.  

The already messy new workbench.