The Hudson Bay Railway in HO Scale

I painted some of tank hopper models last weekend when it was nice and sunny.  I forgot that acrylic paint dries very quickly when it is too warm.  I stopped painting when I realized that I was getting a rough finish on the cars as it was quite warm (34C or 93F).  1 slab side hopper car and 4 of my recently completed tank hoppers were affected.  %$%$#! I tried a couple of approaches to see if I could fix the issue.  On the slabside I used 1000 grit sandpaper to see if I could remove the roughness.  It worked!  This photo shows the in progress sanding.  The paint is nice and smooth and will work for decalling once a gloss coat is applied.   I tried the same process on one of my tank hoppers but this was the result: So I have stripped the car and will repaint it.  I will repaint it CN grey as a number of these cars were repainted into the grey hopper scheme the rest of the CN covered hopper fleet wore.   I waited a few days to see if the paint cured on the other cars and retried the 1000

I have been scanning a lot of slides lately and have realized I have a LOT of railway photos from around the world.  Instead of cross pollinating this Blog that is supposed to cover building the HO scale Hudson Bay Railway I think it would be better to have a separate blog covering unrelated topics like international railways.   To that end I have started a separate Blog:   https://ageologistchasingtrains.blogspot.com/ . Stop by for a visit.

Look South...way south This is off topic for this blog, but on occasion I will post things like this.  One of my ongoing projects has been to scan my slide and negative collection, both my own work and those I have collected over the years.  Recently I scanned slides from one of my favourite work related trips.   In 1998 I was sent to run an exploration drill program in the Chubut Province of Argentina.  Remote and relatively unknown, it is home to some wonderful things.  Specifically the 75cm gauge "La Trochita" or "Old Patagonian Express" narrow gauge steam railway.  This link:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Trochita  has more details.   I spent over two months in Esquel and area.  I worked the morning shift on the drill as the Argentinian geologist I cross shifted with was not a morning person.  This worked perfectly as I was back in town in time to catch "La Trochita" returning from it's daily run.  Pretty much every day I went to the station to

 

August 13 - final product Over the past several weeks I have been working on a small diorama to serve a couple of purposes: use it for model photography as well as to test some scenery ideas for use on my layout.   I used a piece of plexiglass that I had from an office renovation and used a 2x3 scrap for the roadbed.  I carved up some foam insulation for the embankments and added a ditch as well.  I coated this with foam coat.  Once dry I used dollar store brown, green and black acrylics to paint the base.  My kids had some gaudy green paints that I tried out as pond scum.  I thinned it with water and puddled it on the plexiglass to try and capture stagnant water with algae and other plant growth.   I used Microengineering code 70 weathered flextrack on cork roadbed.  Before I ballasted I painted the ties randomly with various greys, browns and blacks to give some variation.  I used Woodland Scenics fine grey ballast mixed with some very fine crushed ballast from an actual ballast pit