Sunday, November 30, 2025

Jordan Spreaders Part 2

I wrapped up some more Jordan Spreaders. The WC ones were for my collection. One went to my friend Grant up in Calgary, and one will likely be headed to England. It looks like I’ll have a couple more to do in the near future.

WC 315, I had to splice together brass all weather windows for this one. I had the decals custom made by Circus City.



WC 310, on this one I did brass handrails, and brass lifting arms out back. My favorite detail is the retailers in their baskets.


SAR 9051 this one is hopefully going to see some service north of the border this winter.

CP 402894, this one was made possible by an older set of MicroScale decals. 



Wednesday, September 24, 2025

Boeing Cars

I completed these years ago, but I guess I forgot to post pics. My friend Lee reminded me when he sent pics of his Boeing train running at a FreemoN event in Boulder City, NV. The kits were from Baldylox, I did all the prep, paint, decals, and weathering. 






I was also lucky enough to see the real TBCX 777009 at the “Depot” in the Boeing Everett plant.


Monday, June 30, 2025

Jordan Spreaders

I didn’t realize I had never posted pics of most of my Jordan Spreaders here. I make these using kits I get from Baldylox Designs on Etsy. I have a few more in the works, but I wanted to get these pics posted here.





Tuesday, May 20, 2025

Weathering Projects

I wrapped up a few random weathering projects. The first two are ballast hoppers for my White Pine layout. I used these two prototype photos by Dan Mackey for reference.




This covered hopper was a project for my friend Harz. He photographed the prototype years ago and found the main decal for me to use on the model.

This boxcar was just a fun weather practices project. 


Monday, April 21, 2025

Pueblo Union Station

I enjoy building things for friend’s layouts. They go through all the work of building a layout for us to come and enjoy for ops sessions, I feel it’s the least I can do to contribute in some small way. I have done a couple of small projects for my friend Rob’s DRGW Tennessee Pass layout. The latest was building a station for his Pueblo yard. I tried keeping it as close to scale as possible. I’m also added some interior scenes as well as lighting. The whole complex measured 34” end to end. Not bad for N scale!



A view of the whole complex on my workbench
The previous work I did for Rob was making the bridge supports for his Canyon Scene


Monday, March 17, 2025

BN Projects

I line up projects so I can spray a lot of the same color at the same time. I knocked out some BN projects for a friend’s layout and one just to see if it could be done. 

BN 631020 was the first done. BN had two of these 8 axle flats, so I figured it would fit in well in Havre Yard.



While looking through Havre pics, I found a shot of this signal maintainers truck. It was pretty easy to make using Showcase Miniatures parts and a scratch built box.

The next truck I found brand new in a hobby shop in California for $1.50. I weathered it and added some details. 


Lastly was the snow dozer. This was a Baldylox kit that heavily upgraded with brass details. I added grab irons, chains, and the front window guards. I painted and lightly weathered it. I think I’ll do a couple more in other paint schemes.



Saturday, January 11, 2025

WC/SOO Boxcars

On the White Pine Sub old SOO 40’ boxcars were repurposed to be braking cars to help assist some of the heavier trains on the steep grades. I built 4 to incorporate into ops on the layout. I started with MicroTrains cars, removed the roof walks, patches those holes, swapped doors, painted, decaled, and weathered them to match prototype photos I found. It took a mix of K4 and MicroScale decals. Matching the prototype font mix was fun!