Understanding PFE involves far more than its refrigerator cars. The way the company did business, the ways it managed its many facilities, including shops and ice plants, and the ways refrigerator cars were built, serviced, repaired and operated, all form a complex and interesting story. Both for the historian and for the modeler, this presentation provides a detailed and inclusive view of these matters, along with some car fleet information.
Over the last decade I have been building and operating a medium sized garage layout based on the 1958-1960 Northwestern Pacific in Northern California. Several previous clinics covered the design philosophy of producing an operating, not static, representation of this prototype. This clinic extends the discussion to specific areas, largely equipment and scenic issues, where special effort was required to achieve this goal.
This clinic will focus on realistic weathering for those you can't or don't have the time to spend many hours per car when it comes to weathering a freight car fleet. I will be showing time-saving techniques for achieving good looking, realistic results using a variety of mediums. Some highlights to include weathering an entire 18-car, HO scale unit coal train in a handful of hours. Paint fading without an airbrush. Underbody weathering and many other miscellaneous time-saving tips.
This clinic describes the layout, purpose, and operation of a truck-to-rail pulpwood transfer yard operated by International Paper during the 1990s in the US Southeast. This yard was one of many such yards in operation. Structures, machinery, trucks, and special-purpose railcars will be examined, and modeling suggestions will be presented.
Join Jim as he relates his adventures over the last 9 years working to recreate the 2 foot gauge Sandy River & Rangeley Lakes in his backyard in a combination of scale and gauge that has him scratchbuilding or kitbashing almost everything.
My friends and I made several trips to the Westside Lumber Company before and after the mill closed. Finally we built our own powered railcar and travelled the entire length of the line from Tuolumne to Camp 45 and Camp 40. We took over 1000 photos.
A discussion of the elements that go into making our models and scenes more realistic. Simple, high impact ideas will be addressed. Emphasis on color treatment and scene composition.
For the modeler who's tried to capture fall colors on a layout but found the results less than convincing. Although the focus is on Eastern US and Canada autumn scenery, many of the techniques and materials apply to any season or region of the country. Clinic will cover the importance of a believable overall color tone, modeling fields and pasture land by effectively blending static and other grasses to avoid a "golf course" look, background trees, and foreground trees "two ways."
This clinic addresses the prototype practices of railroading and livestock. It will cover the distinctive features of stock cars, stockyard structures (corrals and loading chutes), special conditions and railroad rules for stock-handling (feeding, watering, rest stops), stock days and stock extras, seasonal movements, the large stockyards (Chicago, Omaha, Milwaukee, etc.) and stock selling and buying. The clinic climaxes with tips on modeling the stock traffic and industry.
Model Railroad Planning editor Tony Koester recently completed a lot of scenery, including various types of farm crops, and structures for his 1954-era HO railroad in preparation for the December 2014 MR feature on his railroad and a follow-up MR Video Plus shoot. He'll discuss recent enhancements such as automated interchanges with 'foreign' railroads, automated 'Interlocking in a Box,' more realistic but easy-to-use waybills, timetable and train-order operations, digital-photo backdrops, and weathering with PanPastels.
