7mm Richards P48 US Thread

richard carr

richard carr

Western Thunderer
Yesterday I started to weather the Soo boxcar.20240127_113854.jpg

This is after attacking the SOO LINE lettering with a fibre glass brush, it's slow but works and the black staining can be washed off with some white spirit.


sooline 1.jpg

This side was attacked with some 1000 grit wet and dry I also treied some 2000 grit, both more effective than the glass fibre brush, but the grit level didn't really make a difference.

sooline3.jpg

Now I have been dry brushing humbrol matt white over the lettering. I'm letting it dry now before I start adding and taking away dirt.

Richard
 
Overseer

Overseer

Western Thunderer
richard carr said:
Yesterday I started to weather the Soo boxcar.View attachment 207809

This is after attacking the SOO LINE lettering with a fibre glass brush, it's slow but works and the black staining can be washed off with some white spirit.


View attachment 207810

This side was attacked with some 1000 grit wet and dry I also treied some 2000 grit, both more effective than the glass fibre brush, but the grit level didn't really make a difference.

View attachment 207819

Now I have been dry brushing humbrol matt white over the lettering. I'm letting it dry now before I start adding and taking away dirt.

Richard
Click to expand...
Looks like fun. One point though, the SOO LINE lettering was usually (always?) 3M black reflective vinyl stuck on so it didn't weather the same way painted/stencilled lettering would. The underlying paint colour is unlikely to show through. The reflective vinyl discoloured and failed in a distinctive way over time. Yorkshire Dave's example in post 323 shows this well. I don't think black reflective film is available in scale thickness. CPRail used 3M reflective vinyl for the CPRail lettering on boxcars which is also hard to replicate in scale in aged condition. But not nearly as unusual as the black reflective lettering used on SOO LINE stock. Must have looked interesting in car headlights at level crossings at night.
 
Jordan

Jordan

Mid-Western Thunderer
Overseer said:
Looks like fun. One point though, the SOO LINE lettering was usually (always?) 3M black reflective vinyl stuck on so it didn't weather the same way painted/stencilled lettering would. The underlying paint colour is unlikely to show through. The reflective vinyl discoloured and failed in a distinctive way over time. Yorkshire Dave's example in post 323 shows this well. I don't think black reflective film is available in scale thickness. CPRail used 3M reflective vinyl for the CPRail lettering on boxcars which is also hard to replicate in scale in aged condition. But not nearly as unusual as the black reflective lettering used on SOO LINE stock. Must have looked interesting in car headlights at level crossings at night.
Click to expand...
The locos did, I've seen a night time photo of a Geep that showed the reflective effect well, although I can't find it now offhand.
But I'm not sure all the rolling stock carried such expensive lettering as well? The Soo was a, shall we say, "frugal" Railroad at times especially when it came to paint - witness the (in)famous ex-MILW 'Bandit' scheme - gallons of flat black paint everywhere!!. The whole point of the red & white loco design was a) to catch the eye from miles away, and b) be a lot cheaper than the old maroon & gold had been, without being as drab as the experimental all-over maroon was (see point 'a'!!)
The boxcar I posted (post #321, page 17) shows all the hallmarks of brush-painted lettering to me.
Here's one that's even worse....
SOO_18892_29332_Calgary_AB_Shane_Kasper_2007_12_09.jpg

Whereas the faded 3M decals on a loco have weathered differently - you can see the outline of dirt around the edges of the letters, for one thing!
FB_IMG_1698389476901.jpg
 
Overseer

Overseer

Western Thunderer
Jordan said:
The locos did, I've seen a night time photo of a Geep that showed the reflective effect well, although I can't find it now offhand.
But I'm not sure all the rolling stock carried such expensive lettering as well? The Soo was a, shall we say, "frugal" Railroad at times especially when it came to paint - witness the (in)famous ex-MILW 'Bandit' scheme - gallons of flat black paint everywhere!!. The whole point of the red & white loco design was a) to catch the eye from miles away, and b) be a lot cheaper than the old maroon & gold had been, without being as drab as the experimental all-over maroon was (see point 'a'!!)
The boxcar I posted (post #321, page 17) shows all the hallmarks of brush-painted lettering to me.
Here's one that's even worse....
View attachment 207825

Whereas the faded 3M decals on a loco have weathered differently - you can see the outline of dirt around the edges of the letters, for one thing!
View attachment 207826
Click to expand...
First rule of weathering. Look at photos.

I am sure I have seen a boxcar lettering diagram with the 3M lettering specified, but obviously plenty were painted.

I wonder how the cost of buying and sticking on the vinyl letters compared with setting out and painting them. It would have taken quite a few hours for a competent painter to paint them. I could think of cheaper paint schemes but they wouldn’t have the same advertising value as they travelled around the country.
 
Jordan

Jordan

Mid-Western Thunderer
Found!!! Two photos, both by Dan Mackey, c/o Railroad Picture Archives website.
SOO GP30 #704, same day (1st August 1987) and location (Superior, Wisconsin), first photo without flash, second photo with - shows the effect of the Scotchlite very well, including that there's some red lurking on the frame sides as well that isn't usually visible in daylight!!
SOO_704.jpg

SOO_704F.jpg

Note between the "early dusk" shot and the "night time" shots, the different ex-MILW units. A couple of SDs that - 2 years into the Soo Line takeover - have still yet to be 'patched' in the first shot, and in the second one, 'patched' Bandit #4502, a GP38-2, which also has reflective cabside name & numbers.

Sorry, Soo Line Bore Mode /OFF.... :oops:
 
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richard carr

richard carr

Western Thunderer
One other job I tackled last weekend was to turn the Atlas NS SD70ACe to P48. These Atlas locos are built just the same as the MTH ones, with lovely split axle pickup on both bogies.

20240127_125607.jpg

It's always worth taking a photo just to remind you how it all goes back together later !

Machining the wheels was easy enough and a couple of hours later they were all done and back in the locomotive.

I then started to play around with the DCC settings, I should really have done this when it was still OW5 but I only have 6 feet of track and it isn;t really enough.

Anyway to cut a long story short, it turned out to be a right PITA, normally I just reduce CVs 53 and 54 to a value around 12 and that slows the acceleration and braking down and the loco runs fine, but not this time. It ran really poorly at slow speed and didn't want to get going after being asked to change direction.

So this time I ended up switching to PWM mode by setting CV52 to 1, CVs 53 and 54 are then ignored and acceleration and braking are controlled by the usual CVs 3 and 4. The initial voltage CV2 also plays a more important part, the default is 16, but now it needed setting to 40. It now runs pretty well.

Test running also revealed that the snow plough is almost touching the rail head and jams against th e rail if there is the slightest change in height, so it has had to come off for now, I should be able to thin it down by a least 1mm if not more to get enough clearance.

I also set about narrowing the bogies, it's very easy to take about 2mm off each side by cutting the lugs on the bogie side frames and then gluing them back on. This photo show this done on the rear and not on the front.


sd70 ns wit up sd90.jpg

I think you can see the difference in the photo its much more obvious in real life

As for the big yellow machine hiding behind it, it's an Overland SD90, it's big


sd70 ns wit up sd90 v2.jpg

It makes the ACe look tiny





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mickoo

mickoo

Western Thunderer
Well I missed them, though a few look to still be on sale at Atlas. I've got an MTH ACe and M2 and comparing my ACe to yours it looks like the same mould. I'll probably pass as I'm edging more toward HO, picked up a nice ScaleTrains rivet counter CN Tier4 GEVO the other day, the detail in HO is still better than anything in O, the only thing that comes close is the OMI 70ACe models.

SD45 will be good for SP, they had one or two of them kicking around ;) Hopefully they'll do the full light packages and notched noses specific to SP or even the L shaped windscreen.
 
Big Train James

Big Train James

Western Thunderer
mickoo said:
SD45 will be good for SP, they had one or two of them kicking around ;) Hopefully they'll do the full light packages and notched noses specific to SP or even the L shaped windscreen.
Click to expand...
Wouldn't count on it.

Atlas Model Railroad Company, Inc. Online Store - O PREMIER SD45 LOCOMOTIVE SOUTHERN PACIFIC "SPEED LETTERING" #8614 (GRAY/SCARLET) - 2RL

The official online store for the Atlas Model Railroad Company, Inc. manufacturer and seller of model trains and track in N, HO, O and Z scales.
shop.atlasrr.com shop.atlasrr.com

Much easier to achieve in HO. ScaleTrains at least has the light package. No "L" window yet, but I'm sure it will happen eventually. In the meantime, there's always Cannon, for a replacement cab kit that does have the "L' window.
 
mickoo

mickoo

Western Thunderer
Big Train James said:
Wouldn't count on it.

Atlas Model Railroad Company, Inc. Online Store - O PREMIER SD45 LOCOMOTIVE SOUTHERN PACIFIC "SPEED LETTERING" #8614 (GRAY/SCARLET) - 2RL

The official online store for the Atlas Model Railroad Company, Inc. manufacturer and seller of model trains and track in N, HO, O and Z scales.
shop.atlasrr.com shop.atlasrr.com

Much easier to achieve in HO. ScaleTrains at least has the light package. No "L" window yet, but I'm sure it will happen eventually. In the meantime, there's always Cannon, for a replacement cab kit that does have the "L' window.
Click to expand...
Normally you'd add parts to a kit to enhance it, not sure that'd apply to fitting a Cannon cab to a ScaleTrains model :p

I've kept well away from SP in HO, focusing much later from say 2000 onward. I'm sure that anorak will come around again and hopefully the planned generic (Cascades) scenery will not look too out of place for the Shasta route if I ever wanted to run retro.
 
richard carr

richard carr

Western Thunderer
The pictures I have seen of the SD45 has no lights package and no L cab window, so I haven't ordered one. That is a shame as the MTH ones do have the lights package but were only available with PS2 electronics so a full strip out job if you want one.

I'm hoping to get the Sunset SD40-2T later this year, they should have the lights package.

Richard
 
richard carr

richard carr

Western Thunderer
I'm now back from Tokyo so a chance to make some more progress on a few of the US projects.

The first is the Overland Dash 8 39B. Fitting some rear headlights was always going to be tricky so I designed a support that RObin has printed for me that should do the job.

20240209_135053.jpg

I probably need to take a few more photos to show how awkward the space is that this needs to fit into.
After a bit of fettling it does, so now I can add the tiny LEDs, these get glued in place with Crystal clear and then the whole thing will be fitted back in and super glued in place.

20240209_135755.jpg

And now with the LEDs

20240209_135904.jpg
 
richard carr

richard carr

Western Thunderer
The second project is the trinity hoppers that were originally in DRGW orange livery. I found I had a bottle of Vallejo light gull grey 71.121, so sprayed one of the hopper with it, I think it works well.

20240208_173949.jpg

This is after one coat applied using my small spray gun running at 30psi.

20240208_173934.jpg

Yes it really was that colour before.

20240208_174035.jpg

This one has had a coat of vallejo gloss varnish so it's ready to have transfer applied.


The final thing is that the parcel from California stuck at Chelmsford parcel force has finally turned with this inside.

20240209_135517.jpg

Just under 2 years from pre order, again it's an Atlas Premier loco with MTH PS3 electronics.

20240209_135525.jpg

It's not an ACe, its an SD70 M2, which I think means it has DC traction motors as opposed to AC ones in the ACe.


20240209_135620.jpg

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