Layout Design with Nelson Moyer, part 6

Layout Design, , ,

The Helix – Around and Around and It Comes Out Here

The eleven car 1952 California Zephyr climbs out of Denver staging Eastward with two E-7s on the point.

Nelson Moyer has been busy building his CB&Q layout. His latest adventure has been building a helix. Here’s Nelson with his tips and techniques. Click on any image here to review a larger size.

Multi-level layouts are becoming more popular as they permit longer runs with more towns, sidings, industries, and thus more switching opportunities in a given footprint. The Burlington-Washington Subdivision of the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy Railroad ran 53 miles Northwest from Burlington to Washington, IA, with trackage rights on the Chicago, Rock Island, & Pacific from Burlington to Mediapolis, IA, and on the former Burlington and Northwestern tracks from Mediapolis to Washington. The branchline passed through seven towns more or less equally spaced along the route. My goal was to model as many of those towns as I could accommodate in a 13 x 16 foot room.

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Royal F and Universal Slack Adjusters

Details,

George Toman returns with a technique to build fairly common underframe details. Here’s George with the scoop. Click on any image here to review a larger size.

Detailing freight car underframes has always been a high priority with me. A couple of common slack adjusters are the Royal F Type and Universal Type. I found these fairly easy to replicate using styrene. My goal was to develop a method to accurately construct these parts using common tools. One can be seen in the lead image mounted behind to the brake cylinder on a Milwaukee Road ribside box car.

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Milwaukee Single-Sheathed box car

Resin Freight Cars, , , ,

Lester Breuer has been busy building more freight cars. He shares his latest work for today’s blog post.

For my unbuilt Sunshine Models kits inventory to someday reach zero, I need to continue to have fun building. Therefore, I pulled this Milwaukee Road single-sheathed box car (Kit 47.3), series 711000 to 711999, for building. The prototype information and photos of this car are in the Prototype Data Sheet #47A provided in the kit which contains the only good photo of the “B” end I could find. Additional prototype images were found in the Steam Era Freight Cars Reference Manual, Vol. 1 (pages 70 and 71), and several color photos are in the Milwaukee Road Color Guide, Vol. 2 (page 7). A diagram of the car is in The Milwaukee Road Freight Cars – Official Employees’ Shop Diagrams for 1937 book (page 16).

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