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 175th and 185th 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.
