Model Train Journal

Okay, for better, for worse, the faux-tinplate project is done. In hindsight, lots of things I should have done differently, but this was a bit of an experiment (not one likely to be repeated anytime soon).

First the Marklin original:



My 2022 version, made of cardboard, paper, acetate, basswood, a bicycle spoke, a shard of aluminum, a nut/bolt/washer, some carbon-steel guitar "string", and a few stanchions from the model ship parts bin:







Sorry, the photos are a bit "flashed" out by the bright sunlight, but the embossing shows up best with a lot of light on it.

The windows bug me, so I might go back and add a bit of framing...or not. Also, I have a few repro ceramic (plastic) insulators in the parts drawer, so I might try to make a version of that wire structure at the top of the original.

Otherwise, done. Moving onto the Dinky/Corgi pile Sarge and I picked up at the York vintage toy show.

If I hadn't watched this station under construction I would say it was a tinplate station. It looks like you created what you were you trying to accomplish. Nice job. Should fit in real nice with your tinplate trains.

What is the 2 rail track and the red and black engine that is in one of the pictures. ?? Is it Marklin. ??

Thanks, Hondo. From a distance, you might not recognize it as not being embossed tin, but a close inspection would give it up pretty quickly. The biggest problem in using corrugated for this project, or any project, is how to handle exposed edges. I tried a number of things in an effort to fill them, ranging from green putty, spackling, or simply thick paint, but none of those had a good effect. One has to engineer it such that a minimum of exposed edges are presented.

The two-rail track is Marklin. It's made for clockwork trains. Sarge had a pile of it which he had me sell for him at York. When I decided I wanted a few examples of mechanical trains, I reached out to the guy I sold it to to see if he still had it, which he did, and I was able to get it back from him. It was two pieces short of a complete circle, so I had to run down a couple curves. After a few months, I found a guy in the Netherlands that had Marklin track that was willing to sell me just a couple of pieces. Marklin track is pretty neat in that it has built-in track clips that hold the sections together:



The locomotive poking out from the back of the station is a postwar version of the Hornby 101 tank engine. I don't know too much about these things, but I've seen quite a few of these over the years, so they must not be uncommon. These were originally manufactured before WWII, and I believe they were offered in a number of road names (although LMS seems the most common).

I picked up this set, including the 101, a few months back from Ray Ellen of Vienna Station:



I was looking for an example of Hornby and this small set popped up on Ray's list. It cost me a hundred bucks, but I think it was worth it. One coach has a small crease in the side that could likely be pulled out, but I'm going to leave it alone. I've got other more pressing projects requiring unbending tabs

I lettered the station for the depot at Tebay, a stop on the old London & North Western Railway and an affiliate of the LMS. The history of railroading in the UK is pretty interesting, and you find that a lot of the innovation we like to think as having been American actually originated in Britain.

A nice little Youtube video of the toy train The Old Man lusted for nearly his entire life, the Flyer cast aluminum Zephyr:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eBF5vRWCwjo

He never found a nice one, despite years of searching. Many that you see have badly pitted undersides, likely the result of some questionable metallurgy combined with some sort of electrical issue (or at least that's what I've read).

As I've mentioned before, sometime in the early 1990s, he found a nice Consoli Zephyr, much of which was cobbled together from Western Coil NOS acquired years earlier by the Consoli family. The thing is a beast, quite a bit larger than the Flyer version, but it is a nice toy representation of the 1934 train. His is a five-car set, which includes a Vista-Dome car made by Consoli that was never part of the original Western Coil offering. I only ever saw him run it in a three-car consist, which he said was what he remembered as a boy seeing it and the UP's M-10000 at Chicago's "Century of Progress" fair in 1934. We ran the Consoli under the Christmas tree a couple years ago:



The vestibules between the cars are made of silver-painted folded paper and cardboard, a "feature" he disliked. The other was that the motor gets hotter than the surface of the sun after fifteen-to-twenty minutes of run time (something he was unable to figure out). The motor runs smoothly, and it's been kept well lubricated. Even after acquiring this, I don't think he ever stopped looking for the Flyer Zephyr.

Started working on the pile of vintage diecast I picked up at the York toy show last November; I got a bag full for less than twenty bucks. When you see 'em, you'll know why.

First up, a Corgi Mercedes 220SE that the prior owner thought would look better in a brush-coat of Testors silver enamel (originally an off-white). I didn't want to disassemble it, so using a chemical stripper was off the table. Instead, I used a combination of fine sandpaper, steel wool, and a coarse brush in the Dremel to remove as much of the repaint as possible. A couple days working at it and ~ 80-90% of the crud was knocked off. Masked it as best I could, then used some old ModelMaster classic white for a respray. A touch up of the "chrome" bits with some steel enamel, then a buff up of the plastic window glazing, and we end up here:



I had to order a set of rubber for it, as none of the ones I had for Dinky would fit (the hub is much smaller). They don't look to be the right profile, but they are the best I could find. Printed and assembled a box for it from a couple of sheets of cardstock.

Corgi always seemed a premium brand to me as compared to Dinky. This Merc has window glazing, a full interior, an opening trunk, and Glidamatic steering and suspension. It also came with a spare tire, long gone.

Looking at this, I'm realizing the ModelMaster stash is on its last legs.

Funny, I've been working on a few I got at the same show, a gawdawful pink Caddy no doubt made for the Elvis crowd now looking like they mostly did. Black.



Trucolor works well once your Modelmaster is a memory

Hey, I remember you picked up a number of Franklin Mint 1/43 models at that show; is this Caddy one of those? Looks nice. That should fit in with a number of the operating scenarios’ time periods.

There were a few Franklins and several other non-"Happy Days" late fifties diecast in the poke when that show was done, a really useful trip for stuff backdating ops scenarios, yes. I don't think that one was a Franklin, but I'll flip it over to check.

There are so many out there, but the diecast collectors want their fifties cars to be two-tone pastel "Tri-five" Chevs when the most common colour of a '57 Belair was black over black because it was Dad's car you were taking Mary Lou to Necking Point in, hoping to touch her inappropriately, not yours. That Caddy was the most bilious shade of pink to appeal to the Elvis fans. It felt great painting it to its far more appropriate black.

Same goes for the early '70s; the collectors think Muscle was all there was and every Mustang was a ragtop. There might have been ten total muscle-cars and pony-cars in the town where I went to highschool, and that was one of those Upstate NY upscale towns that was "good to be from". The rest of us downstairs crowd bought junk and fixed them for our highschool rides, and those ten or twelve muscle cars were anomalies in a sea of Falcons, Fairlanes, Chev II, and Impalas. And the big station wagon grocery getters!

Both realities are the devil to replicate using the thousands of current diecast out there. I bet I could make a helluva O Scale model of a Barrett Jackson Auction, though! GRIN!

Are those the cabs in the park on Rt 30 my side of Chambersburg, sitting with a relatively fresh restore of a vinegar tank?

sarge wrote:Are those the cabs in the park on Rt 30 my side of Chambersburg, sitting with a relatively fresh restore of a vinegar tank?

Yup; Norlo Park in Fayetteville

Very cool. I've seen those while driving from Gettysburg to Chambersburg. That park looks like it sits on an old rail line, and I wonder which one it is...CVRR or WM (or another)?

I've got an MTH N5 around here somewhere I'm going to commission Sarge for weathering job. Just gotta find it.

This Ives 3252 recently found its way to me:



This looks to be an older restoration, as I've never seen this color before. The brass plates reveal it to be the third and last version of the 3252, in production at the time of Ives' bankruptcy in 1928.

Hard to imagine I would ever cross breed scratch built with Plasticville…..whatever. I’m having fun!

Gregg, you are far from alone. Plasticville bashing in the scale world has a long (and often chequered) history. Some, though, were works of art.

One of my favourite buildings is this creation by a guy out on the west coast by name of Peterson; he was a regular at the O scale shows out there for many years. You might recognise the provenance of this little manufacturing building:

gregj410 wrote:Hard to imagine I would ever cross breed scratch built with Plasticville…..whatever. I’m having fun!

Fun is important and oft times by far too many an overlooked part of this hobby. I am curious as to how this turns out - looks quite interesting.