Kentucky River Poplar Company

[EZnKY]

I'd love to Ray, but I don't have a layout or anything.  I mostly enjoy rolling stock, and at this point, everything needs to fit on bookshelves.  I'm not too far from retirement, so who knows what will happen at that point.

There were actually two large sawmills at Valley View, Kentucky, plus a major railroad bridge, plus a US Government-operated lock and dam. And on top of all of that, a ferry across the Kentucky River.  This ferry is still in operation and is Kentucky's oldest continuously operating business.  The ferry boat flies the flag of the state of Virginia because the charter was issued when Kentucky was still part of Virginia.  (Before 1792.)

It's an amazing place because so many different forms of transportation converge in one place.  I've attached some more images of the area.  Two of the images are blow-ups of a postcard.

[EZnKY]

I was in Boston last week for the national architect's convention, so no progress to report.  I did run across this photo in a Facebook group on pre-1895 modeling, and it makes me feel better about my up-scaled 1:24 car in a 1:20.3 world.  There's a prototype for everything I guess...

[EZnKY]

I had some time last week to work on some more details on the car body.  I added a small loading door on one end.  The white parts are resin castings I made from some of the white metal castings in the original kit.  The door is non-operational since there's no interior in the car.

[EZnKY]

I also added a platform on the B end of the car, matching early cars built by the Ohio Falls Car Company and others.  (The builder's photo shows a Cincinnati, New Orleans & Texas Pacific furniture car.)

[Chuck Doan]

Looking good!

[finescalerr]

Flawless. -- Russ

[Ray Dunakin]

Very nice!

I love the photo of the mismatched box cars.

[EZnKY]

I had some time to work on the boxcar over the weekend.  At this point fabrication and assembly is basically finished, with the exception of the running boards on the rooftop.  (I'll add those after the roof is painted.)

I mostly worked on the trucks, starting by adding brake gear and the brake beams.  The car I'm modeling would have had body-hung brake beams, but these are too fiddly for a car that could some day run, so I'm compromising and supporting the brake beams from each truck.  You can see the brass rods supporting the brake beams in the photo.  I've also had to epoxy a brass washer on the bolster to get the couple height correct on the car body.  Most of the truck parts are from the original Hartford kit, but I've replaced some of the brake gear parts with the correct 1:20.3 equivalents.  I can't remember if the new parts are from Hartford, Ozark, or someone else.

[EZnKY]

For the wheelsets, I added sheet brass overlays for the raised lettering and the faux ribs on the backside of the wheels.  (I described this process in one of my earlier threads - these are just home-made photoetch parts made out of brass shim stock.) 

I started painting the wheelsets with a base coat of MIG-2006 Rust Primer applied with an air brush, followed by sponge painted layers of MIG-042 Old Rust and MIG-041 Dark Rust.  I did a bit of drybrushing with MIG-040 Medium Rust to pick out the details, especially the lettering.

Once that was dry, I did multiple layers of pin washes, starting with MIG-1002 Tracks Wash.  This is an enamel, and it reminded me of how much I hate working with enamels.  For the next washes I switched to oils, using Abt 502 125 Light Mud, Abt 502 006 Burnt Umber, and Abt 502 093 Raw Sienna.  I used a hair dryer to speed up the drying between washes.

[EZnKY]

For the truck frames, I blackened the cast parts with MIG-2020 Burnishing Fluid, and painted the brass parts with Tamiya Metal Primer.  Wood parts were first stained with Builders In Scale Silver Wood, and then brush painted with Vallejo 70.950 Black. Once the paint had dried, I sanded the surfaces with 220 grit to remove some of the paint and expose the wood underneath.

I brush painted most of the details with Vallejo 70.994 Dark Gray once everything was assembled, and then drybrushed everything with Tamiya XF-66 Light Gray.  I added some black pigment underneath the journal lids  for texture to represent dried grease.  And finally I did a series of pin washes using a variety of Abt 502 oil paints.  The sequence was black first, followed by raw umber, light mud, a rust-colored concoction, black again, finishing with a little more rust in select locations.  There's no science to any of this - I just kept adding layers until the trucks looked something like a couple of reference photos. 

And here's where I ended up...

[finescalerr]

It must have taken a couple of hours to detail and weather the wheels. -- Russ

[Bill Gill]

Eric,
Your 28 ft boxcar model is looking super! It helps me believe that the broken 28 Ft Mantua Civil War boxcar I salvaged to deliver lumber to a lumberyard on my layout is at least 'plausible' because it also has a small lumber door on the end.

And I like how you added the brakes to the trucks. Although this boxcar has more modern trucks and safety gear, I contrived a sort of similar way to add brakes to one truck on a mantua Civil War gondola for a friend. That was an interesting challenge as yours appears to have been too. Good stuff there.

[EZnKY]

That looks great Bill!  I assume 1:87 scale?

[EZnKY]

I sent some updates via email while the forum was down, so I'm going to catch this thread up based on the emails. 
Below is a progress shot from 7/13.  The graphics are finished, and most of the painting is done on the car body.  I still have some details to add like the roof boards.

[EZnKY]

I got some questions about the graphics after sending that last photo:

"I've made the transfers from scratch, and it's been hard fought.  As I said at the beginning of the thread on the forum, this project is an experiment in painting and finishing, so I'm trying lots of different methods for everything.  The full color car numbers are decals I made using a color laser printer and clear decal film from Micromark.  Nothing special about that.  On one side of the car I applied the decal over a glossier surface, and the other one more satin, just to see how the Microscale solutions would handle the surface texture.  One the white background I couldn't tell much of a difference. 

The white numbers on the car ends are Woodland Scenic dry transfers, but I applied them on clear decal film to see if it would be easier to align the individual characters on the bench rather than trying to apply them directly on the end of the car body.  It was much easier, but I really hate working with decals.  I got quite a bit of silvering on the dark red background on the satin surfaces.  Hopefully I can remedy this weathering.    For all of the decals I cut the decals at each joint in the siding once they had dried a bit, and then reapplied the setting solution."