Grab Iron Posts

By Jeff Moorman

Our next meeting is Thursday, March 1, 2012. Time and place are at the end of this piece. The topic will be CADrail. You’ve seen the ads, now you can see how the software works.

Dennis T did a mini clinic on building N scale Kadee couplers from the kits. Dennis did it this way, instead of buying them ready-built, because he needed a bunch of them for locomotive conversions. There are lots of little pieces, but they all go together just fine, if you take your time and keep referring to the instructions.

Dennis built a little jig (on a big piece of wood) to help with the assembly. The size of the wood was immaterial, but it did make the jig appear more impressive. Basically the jig was a small post to align the parts of the coupler as it is being put together.

There was lots of variety during show and tell. Guest David C brought along some little dioramas with some nice looking evergreen trees. His explanation of building them turned into its own mini clinic.

David uses what he calls the “Low Bucks Railroad” approach. When he started doing the trees the trunks were used chopsticks and the foliage was a fern like moss that grows all over Western Washington, especially near the rain forest. How he whittles the trunks from whatever is handy. He drills tiny holes in the trunks to accept the little moss “branches.”

The trees were over 5 years old and had held up well. David says the fern gets pretty brittle when it gets dry (like in Eastern Washington) but bounces right back when the humidity climbs.

David says that for deciduous trees he has started using maple suckers for the trunk/branch structure.

CJ Riley showed a HO boxcar made with preprinted cardboard car sides like those that used to come in the old NMRA Bulletin. From typical model viewing distances the car still looked pretty good.

Dennis T showed an N scale coal load that he had enhanced with additional real-looking “coal.” Chris F displayed some grain cars he was working on building/painting.

We meet at the Ronald United Methodist Church, 17839 Aurora Avenue North, Shoreline, WA. That is on the west side of Aurora (State Route 99) between 175^th and 185^th Streets and more specifically, between the Cadillac dealer on the south and Deseret Industries to the north. You can no longer make cross-traffic turns on Aurora, so you need to be going southbound (so you can make a right-hand turn into the church driveway immediately after passing the Deseret location).

Meetings are the first Thursday of each month, except July and August. In June we usually do a tour. For regular meetings enter the lower level of the church from the parking lot at the rear. Doors open around 7:00 PM and the program starts about 7:30.

Remember the next meeting is March 1 and the one after that is April 5.  Hope to see you there or at least sometime on down the line.

By Jeff Moorman, Photos by Jeff Moorman

Our next meeting is Thursday, February 2, 2012. Time and place are at the end of this piece.

Robert “Bob” Stafford was our January clinician and the topic was weathering structures. Bob says structures seem to be the last thing modelers weather, yet buildings near real railroads were always pretty dirty. And Bob should know, since he worked for the prototype for many years.

There were lots of little tips in Bob’s presentation. Here are a few from my notes:

• People often add onto a building over time. A little seen trick is to do more weathering on the older parts of a building than on the more recent additions.
• It is always nice to do something different to a kit-built building, so it doesn’t look just like everyone else’s. Bob’s clinic sample was a Walther’s coal dealer’s silo to which he added a roof over the unloading chutes.
• You really don’t always need specific “model railroad” paints for coloring and weathering structures. Spray paint often works well for basic color. Craft paints offer many colors for buildings and scenery, and at a very attractive price. One brand Bob likes is Delta Ceramcoat. Hint: they have a metallic silver that is quite useful as a general color for metal.
• Weathering chalks do wonders to make structures look like they have been out in the real weather. And usually, if you don’t like the results, you can wipe them off and try again.

Bob left us with the observation that structure weathering is not hard, you just have to pitch in and “do it.”

Show and Tell was initiated with a home-built resistance soldering unit, however yours truly failed to get the builder’s name. The workmanship and appearance of the final product was very clean. Apparently the plans for this were the subject of a clinic some years ago.

Michael P showed a watch that once belonged to a street car conductor. Chris F had both a powered and a dummy Athearn GN diesel in the same blue and white color scheme with the same cab number. The number wasn’t so unusual as was the fact that the colors didn’t really match, nor was the lettering applied the same. It would appear that they were from 2 different production runs.

Tom had an un-built Vau-pe cardboard building kit from the late 50’s or early 60’s. He also talked about the evolution of European kits paralleling the rebuilding of their industrial base following WWII.

Dennis T talked about his recent experience doing coupler conversions on some locos he acquired at the clinic mart a couple of months ago. He will expand on this at the next meeting.

We meet at the Ronald United Methodist Church, 17839 Aurora Avenue North, Shoreline, WA. That is on the west side of Aurora (State Route 99) between 175^th and 185^th Streets and more specifically, between the Cadillac dealer on the south and Deseret Industries to the north. You can no longer make cross-traffic turns on Aurora, so you need to be going southbound (so you can make a right-hand turn into the church driveway immediately after passing the Deseret location).

Meetings are the first Thursday of each month, except July and August. In June we usually do a tour. For regular meetings enter the lower level of the church from the parking lot at the rear. Doors open around 7:00 PM and the program starts about 7:30. Hope to see you there or at least sometime on down the line.

Remember the next meeting is February 2 and the one after that is March 1.