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General Category => Cars, Trucks, and Other Vehicles => Topic started by: Bill Gill on December 29, 2014, 10:13:15 AM

Title: A few HO trucks & loads
Post by: Bill Gill on December 29, 2014, 10:13:15 AM
After detailing a CMW Ford Woody for the New England Berkshire & Western RR, the club dropped off a handful of trucks and said to try whatever I wanted with them. Here are some results.

This is the Mini Metals 1941-46 Chevy Bell telephone truck right out of the package
Title: Re: A few HO trucks & loads
Post by: Bill Gill on December 29, 2014, 10:21:41 AM
Here is the truck after messing up the closed rear end storage by trying to open one of the back doors to the compartment. The two telephone pole cross arms hanging in the brackets have the pegs for insulators and the galvanized braces already attached as found in a prototype photo of a similar telephone truck rig. The two larger lower tool lockers on this side and one on the other side had the round knobs replaced with rectangular latches cut from a scrap diesel shell.

Title: Re: A few HO trucks & loads
Post by: Bill Gill on December 29, 2014, 10:32:17 AM
Here's the other side. One tool locker was opened and bits of plastic & aluminum were piled in to look like the usual jumble of tools. The two pole tools (gray poles with yellow tips on each end) slung in the brackets under the ladder are shaped bronze wire glued into holes drilled into monofilament fishing line (more resistant to breaking than styrene rod). The silver water cooler on the backend was some scrap casting slightly reshaped and a thin aluminum handle added to it. A hole was drilled below the black strap holding the cooler to its bracket and a nut, bolt, washer casting glued in the hole to look like the spigot. The block & tackle were salvaged from a pirate ship model. A gas filler neck and cap were also added.
Title: Re: A few HO trucks & loads
Post by: Bill Gill on December 29, 2014, 10:41:10 AM
Since the back of the truck was open, some tools and other stuff was tossed in. The taillights were repainted and given a coat of gloss acrylic varnish to look like plastic lenses. Most of these trucks have trailer hitches, so one was added here.
Title: Re: A few HO trucks & loads
Post by: Bill Gill on December 29, 2014, 10:51:43 AM
One more look at the back end. The shovel and pickax (only the ax handle is visible here) were reworked from the scrap box. The tarp in the front left corner is dyed and painted tissue wrapping paper. The cardboard box behind that is Kraft paper and the galvanized nuts and bolts in it are more N,B,W castings with the washers cut off and squares of styrene strip with holes in them to look like the nuts. the trailer hitch is more visible in this view. It is simply a short length of styrene 4x4 with a long shanked N,B,W casting poked up from the bottom. The top of the shank was dipped into thick CA several times to make the ball connector.
Title: Re: A few HO trucks & loads
Post by: Bill Gill on December 29, 2014, 04:35:00 PM
Often little people are the least realistic parts in model photos, but to me they often add a purpose to the other models in the picture, and sometimes are essential to complete the story. The Bell telephone truck is parked beside a newly installed bare pole in the North Creek scene on the NEB&W, so a lineman prepping the pole for the new cross arms on the truck was needed. Here's the scene and also a close up of the lineman, closer than he can be viewed on the layout. His adapted pose and clothes are based on photos, drawings and paintings in old magazine ads for Bell Telephone.

The photo, at North Creek, was taken by Will Gill. The other is a close up of the lineman. His climbing belt, tool belt and leg straps are paper plasticized with CA and painted to look like leather. The D rings on his climbing belt are fine wire, painted dull silver.


Title: Re: A few HO trucks & loads
Post by: Ray Dunakin on December 29, 2014, 05:46:50 PM
Very nice! Excellent job on the lineman, considering how tiny an HO figure is!
Title: Re: A few HO trucks & loads
Post by: Bill Gill on December 29, 2014, 06:10:45 PM
Thanks Ray, I have admired your figures for some time now. Sculpting not only from scratch, but also to create a likeness of family members is quite a talent. I sort of hacked up a couple figures and pasted them back together.
Title: Re: A few HO trucks & loads
Post by: TRAINS1941 on December 31, 2014, 01:40:43 PM
Very nice work Bill.

Looks like Chester has company doing these trucks.

Jerry
Title: Re: A few HO trucks & loads
Post by: Bill Gill on December 31, 2014, 02:54:47 PM
Thanks Jerry! Any mention of these trucks in the same post as Chester's trucks is quite a compliment!
Title: Re: A few HO trucks & loads
Post by: Malachi Constant on January 01, 2015, 11:28:49 AM
Hey Bill --

Great to see you in these parts!  Once again, I'm struck by the amazing detail and realism you put into these teeny-weenie little HO vehicles.  The truck, linesman and pole is an amazing 3-piece scene combo!

Cheers,
Dallas
Title: Re: A few HO trucks & loads
Post by: Bill Gill on January 01, 2015, 01:59:25 PM
Thanks, Dallas. With three you get eggroll.
Title: Re: A few HO trucks & loads
Post by: Bill Gill on January 02, 2015, 01:06:45 PM
Another example where I feel a Little Person helps an overall scene. The driver helps convey the idea that this truck was moving, maybe even racing the train, when the photo was taken rather than parked in the middle of the road. (photo by Will Gill)

Adding the driver was one of the trickiest parts of this project. He had to be glued onto the seat, sans left arm, before the cab could be reassembled and then his arm could be positioned and glued casually resting out the open window and finally the paint touched up - like building a person in an eyedropper

I wonder which convention (LPs or no LPs) most helps the viewer 'believe" in situations like this. There was discussion in the "A Neat Swedish On3 Layout" thread (General Forum) about the noticeably ghostly effect of a lack of engine crew in part of the video. There the locomotive was moving, so the empty cab is even more noticeable. What do others think about this?

Title: Re: A few HO trucks & loads
Post by: Design-HSB on January 02, 2015, 01:40:22 PM
Hi Bill,

I built earlier and HO car models and figures on the scale.
2 I built HO fire trucks I was here (http://www.finescalerr.com/smf/index.php?topic=1448.msg25910#msg25910) before.
But unfortunately this is not both combined.
What I have still not achieved is such a perfect realistic aging as you show here.
Meanwhile I build everything in scale 1: 22.5, and especially since moving vehicles are equipped with staff and also decorate the model accordingly.

To include figures for me absolutely so.
Title: Re: A few HO trucks & loads
Post by: Ray Dunakin on January 02, 2015, 05:51:14 PM
As you've mentioned, moving trains or other vehicles need figures to look "right". The opposite is true when it comes to the figures themselves -- with rare exception, figures look best when they are not frozen in an action pose. As a general rule they should be in a relaxed position of minimal motion.

Figures are kind of a tough thing if you're modeling for realism -- even the best figures don't look completely lifelike, and break the illusion of the rest of the model. Yet in many cases figures are necessary to complete the scene. For instance, a town without figures looks desert. Businesses without figures look closed or abandoned.


Title: Re: A few HO trucks & loads
Post by: Bill Gill on January 02, 2015, 07:17:45 PM
Helmut, Thank you, Sehr gut! for your Jordan firetrucks! Those Jordan kits are a challenge to assemble and yours look very well done and that was all the way back in 1974. I think you were correct not to age them. Any firetrucks I have seen still in service are carefully pampered by the crew at the firehouse. A clean vehicle is much harder to model, every little flaw looks huge. Your models like very good.

Ray, I agree, figures that are in relaxed poses are much better than those frozen in mid-action in perpetuity though big city street scenes need people at least during normal times of the day, and some of them probably ought to be ambling along the sidewalks.

Here's one experiment with a figure poised just before his action. Evaluated strictly as a realistic element in the scene, he is obviously lacking, but I like him. Where he is posed he is either unloading full cans for the morning milk train or retrieving his empties in the afternoon. Either way he adds more information to the scene. I like the anticipation of him getting ready to heft another full can and swing it toward the platform, or conversely catching his breath after plunking a can back down on the tailgate. An empty can weighs around 35 lbs., a full one can be about 110 lbs. He's doing a lot of work there everyday!

I also like the mechanics of this particular figure and milk can. They are not attached to the pickup. The weight of the metal can balances the farmer who is only glued to the handles. That way the can/farmer pair is quickly and easily repositioned if need be to arrange a better pose.

The figure originally had a nondescript blob of miscast styrene for a head. He got a new head, posed to fit his task and his arms were repositioned to grip the handles. He is cleanly attired despite working with dairy cows because he had to be to meet sanitation standards, but he also represents a time when veterinarians wore a suit and tie and hat out to the farm and put on coveralls to do their work. I like trying to represent details like that.

cropped photo by my son, William Gill
Title: Re: A few HO trucks & loads
Post by: finescalerr on January 03, 2015, 12:22:56 AM
The modeling and the photo are quite good. Satisfactory. -- Russ
Title: Re: A few HO trucks & loads
Post by: Hydrostat on January 03, 2015, 02:35:14 AM
Quote from: Bill Gill on January 02, 2015, 07:17:45 PM
Ray, I agree, figures that are in relaxed poses are much better than those frozen in mid-action in perpetuity though big city street scenes need people at least during normal times of the day, and some of them probably ought to be ambling along the sidewalks.

Bill, I like the pose of the figure, and you're surely right with your estimation about relaxed poses. The smaller scale gets, the more difficult it is to have convincing figures. Even in big scale, where people started to experiment with 3D scanning and printing and amazing results still the problem of the pose remains, because none of those scanners is able to catch a person in motion. It always bothered me a bit, that railway modeling is something about running trains, but the environment remains frozen - despite car systems and some more nick-nack. So maybe photography remains the choice to present a model. And then there's the part of playing trains :).

Interesting how coarse the engine in the background looks in it's detailing (e.g. railing) compared to your truck and figures. What I didn't manage to see due to resolution: Is there someone else sitting in the truck's cab?

Volker
Title: Re: A few HO trucks & loads
Post by: Bill Gill on January 03, 2015, 06:18:19 AM
Russ, I'm beginning to feel like a member of the forum, having received my first "satisfactory"! or at least half of one, the other half (at least) goes to my son for his photo. Thanks.

Volker, the engine was new to the layout when this photo was posed and it had been quickly painted & decaled, decoder installed and pressed into service for one of the club's two annual operating sessions. There are other more detailed locomotives on the layout, but there is also the need for their details to not be so delicate that the motive power and rolling stock cannot survive the 'routine' bumps and mishaps encountered during the sessions. Most of the student operators are new to modeling, let alone model railroading and some of the guest operators are usually new to the layout, so there is a learning curve for handling equipment and most of the equipment must be able to survive that phase.

One of the things I like about the club is its goal of introducing students who have never used tools for anything to model making and to going out and examining and photographing the prototypes rather than using other models as references. Some of the scenes on the layout are very good depictions of the actual location. Several graduates have gone on to become (prototype) railroad photographers or working for companies producing highly accurate models.

Yes, the farmer's wife is taking a quick nap in the cab of the truck. If it is morning, they have both just finished milking all their cows and some of their early morning chores before driving the milk to the  railroad platform. If it is afternoon, they have been doing more chores and she is catching a brief break while waiting for the empty cans to be loaded into the truck. It is a small, hardscrabble dairy, partially reflected in the condition of the truck and also partially because they are still using milk cans at a time when the larger dairies are starting to use holding tanks instead.
Title: Re: A few HO trucks & loads
Post by: Bill Gill on March 18, 2015, 08:18:11 PM
Here is another Classic Metal Works pickup truck I detailed. Some of you have seen it before elsewhere, but Joel's post today with his nice boxes of vegetables  http://www.finescalerr.com/smf/index.php?topic=2483.90 reminded me this truck hadn't been posted here. My son, Will, took the photo of the truck waiting at the crossing.

This pickup has a load of McIntosh apples. NY state is the number one grower of macs. They are an early fall apple so the load helps reinforce the New England Berkshire and Western RR's location and its late September time period. I learned a lot from this model. Apples are heavier than I thought. Each box holds one bushel. It's a bushel measured by weight not volume, and the weight varies slightly depending on variety of apple. In this case a bushel is about 42 lbs. There are 24 bushels in the half ton pickup, so it is slightly overloaded and the sagging rear suspension shows that. 24 bushels is about 3500 apples. I cheated. The bottom layer of boxes is a slab of styrene and the bottoms of the top boxes are as thick as half the depth of the boxes, so I only had to make about 1/4 of that apples to fill the truck.

The apple boxes were copied from two prototype styles. They are 0.05 styrene. I thought about using paper for the sides because it would be scale thickness for the boxes, but the vehicles get moved around a lot for photos and layout maintenance, so opted for something a hair stronger.

The apples are Fimo clay. Red yellow and white clay were throughly mixed to a uniform 'mac red' and rolled out into a long skinny snake Another snake of green, yellow and white was mixed and rolled. The two were twisted together and rolled out into a snake about 3 scale inches thick, chopped into bits about 3 scale inches long and individually rolled into apples, poked with a fine needle for the stem end and baked at 225 oF per Fimo instructions. (Serving with brown sugar and cream is optional).

The close up of the back of the truck shows an attempt to represent the small chain that holds up the tailgate when it's lowered. The smallest chain I found was 40 links/inch - far too heavy. This 'chain' is four strands of copper wire from a broken earbud headset. I braided them loosely together and then folded a short length in half to look like the chain when the tailgate is up.
Title: Re: A few HO trucks & loads
Post by: Bill Gill on March 18, 2015, 08:24:56 PM
Here's the Fimo clay. It's a polymer clay similar to Sculpy. I liked being able to mix the colors for the apples without having to paint them all.
Title: Re: A few HO trucks & loads
Post by: finescalerr on March 19, 2015, 12:27:34 AM
Satisfactory. -- Russ
Title: Re: A few HO trucks & loads
Post by: SandiaPaul on March 19, 2015, 04:53:08 AM
Indeed, that looks great!

Paul
Title: Re: A few HO trucks & loads
Post by: Bill Gill on March 19, 2015, 11:03:56 AM
Thanks, Russ & Paul.
Title: Re: A few HO trucks & loads
Post by: Ray Dunakin on March 19, 2015, 07:08:12 PM
Great job! Modeling it with the rear sagging under the load is a nice, often-overlooked touch that greatly heightens the realism.


Title: Re: A few HO trucks & loads
Post by: Bill Gill on March 19, 2015, 09:04:44 PM
Thanks, Ray
Title: Re: A few HO trucks & loads
Post by: Bill Gill on March 21, 2015, 08:57:05 AM
Here's one more pickup truck. It's included because the weathering was inspired by techniques from this forum. The truck was originally yellow. It was given an overall spray of a rusty brown and then the blue (and red) were brush painted in a couple dozen thin 'washes'. The texture is admittedly coarse in the photos, but the visual appearance on the layout is good. The right side view shows attempts at some small scrapes and dents on the front fender and door.
Title: Re: A few HO trucks & loads
Post by: Hydrostat on March 21, 2015, 10:07:09 AM
Bill,

i think both items apples and trucks are made very good and they do show a convincing appearance.

Quote from: Bill Gill on March 21, 2015, 08:57:05 AM
The texture is admittedly coarse in the photos, but the visual appearance on the layout is good.

Macro photography is counterproductive in the small scales, if the surfaces can't match up to the blow-up. Of course those pictures show a lot about your techniques and detailing, but I would be interested in some additional pictures from a rather conventional distance, too.

Cheers,
Volker
Title: Re: A few HO trucks & loads
Post by: Ray Dunakin on March 21, 2015, 11:30:51 AM
I especially like the look of the rusted chrome parts, and the mismatched fender is a nice touch.
Title: Re: A few HO trucks & loads
Post by: finescalerr on March 21, 2015, 11:48:32 AM
The weathering is most satisfactory, especially in light of what you were working with. -- Russ
Title: Re: A few HO trucks & loads
Post by: Bill Gill on March 21, 2015, 12:00:49 PM
Volker, Thank you. Here are views of some of the trucks from a farther distance. The first three each had a sprayed on coat. The last one was only done with a brush.

Ray, Thanks. That truck wound up on my home layout. I like that red fender too.

Russ, Thanks. I appreciate your understanding of how these models are being displayed and used, but I have a long way to go to approach the group here.
Title: Re: A few HO trucks & loads
Post by: Bill Gill on August 20, 2020, 09:53:46 AM
Here is another truck for my layout. It's an HO Mini Metals pickup that was converted to a pulpwood hauler. It's a composite of
3-4 prototype trucks found in online photos from approximately the same time frame. I like the homebuilt look.
There is also a photo of it on my layout here under Modelers at Work:  http://www.finescalerr.com/smf/index.php?topic=3067.0
(You can click on the photo to enlarge it)
Title: Re: A few HO trucks & loads
Post by: finescalerr on August 20, 2020, 12:04:27 PM
It exhibits both credibility and charm. -- Russ
Title: Re: A few HO trucks & loads
Post by: Ray Dunakin on August 20, 2020, 10:13:28 PM
Well done!
Title: Re: A few HO trucks & loads
Post by: Bill Gill on August 21, 2020, 05:11:15 AM
Thank you, Russ & Ray
Title: Re: A few HO trucks & loads
Post by: SandiaPaul on August 21, 2020, 05:21:38 AM
Nice, reminds me of Chester's work.
Title: Re: A few HO trucks & loads
Post by: Bill Gill on August 21, 2020, 11:40:50 AM
SandiaPaul, Thank you! Chester's trucks were very nicely done.