Monthly Archives: October 2015

Layouts

Site seeing – October 12 – The Mike Keiran thanks edition

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Today’s post is all thanks To Mike Keiran who prompted me about the Kendallville Terminal Railroad. This shortline is 1.1 miles long and serves the Kraft Marshmallow plant in Kendallville, Indiana.

Site 1: The Kendallville Terminal Railway Co

I’ve finished a long running article on the KTR and put it up on this site under the ‘Layout Ideas’ section, and moved that up to the main menu to get it out from under other sections for clarity.

Hope that you enjoy the article and let me know if you have any further information on this wonderful ‘short’ Shortline.

Site seeing, Web

Site seeing: 04 October – A very sad day edition

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It is with great sadness that I pass along the following information from the Model Railroader site.

Andy Sperandeo, who has been a part of our lives at Model Railroader magazine for more than 30 years, has died.

As some of you know, Andy had been fighting cancer and other ailments, and the combination finally caught up with him earlier today.

Andy started work at Model Railroader in 1979, becoming editor in 1993. In time he became executive editor and upon retirement a few years ago became a contributing editor. Readers today are most familiar with Andy through his monthly The Operators column.

You can follow the official post on the MRR site by clicking this link.

On a personal note I talked with Andy several times while I lived in the US; I found him to be a very helpful, wise and thoughtful person, always ready to lend a hand, a thought, an idea when he asked for it.

I never met him, but I am sure going to miss his humanity, his love of model railroading and his passion for our craft.

Vale Andy. You’ll be missed greatly mate.

1:48 (US O Scale 1/4"), O Scale, Proto 48

Site seeing: October 03

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I love the size, and the presence that O scale models have. While cruising around on the MRH forum the other day I came across the blog of Jack from France (SVJRR) whose modelling is just outstanding. And so onto today’s site.

Site 1: O scale – Updating some Atlas/Roco cars

Image 1: Jack’s completed rebuild and respray of the Atlas/Roco 1970s Boxcar

Jack, whose English is very good for those who might be worried, steps you through a tutorial on how he updated some of the 1970’s Atlas O Scale cars (actually made by Roco in Europe) into modern-day equivalents.

As I have around 10 of these cars sitting quietly in my stash his tutorial came about at exactly the right time. The work is simple (and not surprisingly mirrors the work I am doing on the Gondola build at the moment.

I know that the cars are not exact matches for specific prototypes, although they are very close, but they allow you to get up and running quickly with little effort beyond grabs, steps and a repaint.

HO Scale, Tools

Site seeing: 02 October – the pigs ear from a silk purse edition

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EDIT: Not sure what happened to all the text in this post, the problem was on my end obviously! Here’s take two of this post.

Site 1: Athearn BlueBox Gondola Build

I posted back on August 30th about the new models I bought at the Caulfield Exhibition – found in the bargains bin. I found going through the three models that one of them had, after being stored poorly, suffered some pretty nasty damage. There was a wicked bend throughout one side of the casting, and the other side had been sheared fromthe base along most of its length.

But for $10.00AU I am not complaining and aimed to instead see what could be made from the remains of the kit, or if it could be saved (somewhat) and made serviceable.

If you head on over to the build’s main page tomorrow (AEST time) you’ll be able to see part 1 of the build process.