The 2023 N Scale convention - Part 2

This is the second installment in my posts about attending the recent N Scale convention in Reno, Nevada.  

Peninsula Ntrak was assigned a 26 ft x 38 ft space for our layout and we ended up using 26 ft x 32 ft.   7 Members of our group brought their modules to the convention plus we used our large club staging yard and 5 of the club's outside corners modules.  We also had several of our members there without modules and they provided extra help with setup, running, and tear down of the layout.

A couple months before the convention, one of our members who is really good with scenery took one of our 30 plus years old corner modules with it's original scenery home for a re-do.  Just before the convention she brought it over to my train room where we completed a few finishing touches.   A total of 6 different members contributed to this project.  Shown here are Julia Jackson and Paul Ingraham.

We displayed this refinished corner module for the first time in our layout at this convention. This photo provided by Mark St Clair.

The layout was setup and running by Thursday afternoon and ran through Saturday afternoon.  Peninsula Ntrak has the flexibility to run DC or DCC on any of the 3 basic Ntrak lines.  We ran this layout using DCC on the red and blue line and DC throttles on the yellow line.  I ran DCC with one train on Friday and another on Saturday.  This was my Saturday train passing through the staging yard on the red line.  It was one of many different trains run by club members and guest operators.  Photo by Mark St Clair.

On Saturday the show was open to the public from 9:00am to 3:30pm and drew a good crowd.   It was a bit of a rush to get everything taken down and packed up by 6:30pm for the convention banquet but we did it.

Next post I'll show something of some of the other layouts that were set up at the convention.

The 2023 N Scale convention - Part 1

Between June 15th and 18th I was able to attend the 2023 N Scale Enthusiast convention in Sparks, Nevada.  This was at the Nugget which is between Union Pacific's Sparks yard and Interstate 80.  In fact the casino extends under the highway. 

My wife and I had a room on the 28th floor with a great view of the yard.  Many attending the convention had a similar view.  It's a really interesting yard with a small intermodal operation going on nearest to the hotel and a number of rail served industries on the other side.  All of the through trains stopped here for crew changes and some manifests had cars to set out or pick up so there was always some action going on.   On my layout I call the western SP staging yard Sparks as it is the next western terminal beyond the west end of the layout.

The NSE conventions offer quite a few things and sometimes one has to pick and choose to fit as much in as possible.  Besides brings modules for a layout, I also had something in the contest room, a couple of items in the live auction, helped present a clinic, and went to the welcome reception on Wednesday, the Ice Cream Social on Friday, the Banquet on Saturday, and the Manufacturers Breakfast on Sunday.  Did not do any of the tours this time.

When attending a convention it's always fun to catch up with people who you've met at other events and for me at this convention there were many.   Doug Gary was just one such example.  He brought his set of Disneyland Ntrak modules from New Mexico as a stand alone layout.  I first met Doug 23 years ago when I was coordinating the Ntrak layout for the 2000 National Train show in San Jose.  Over the years he has returned to shows in San Jose several times as a vendor with his custom painting business.   It was great to see him and his work again.

Another event I attended on the first evening at this convention was an online modelers meet up hosted by George Johnsen.  I was able to meet several people who I have known or followed on various online venues.  One of them was Bob who I have known from his YouTube channel "DaBob's N Scale Man Cave."   Here's Bob as we were checking out the FreemoN layout.

As mentioned above I brought modules to the convention.  In fact, I towed the Peninsula Ntrak club trailer to the event.  It was the first time we've been able to put up a layout since before the pandemic.  Of course we were a bit out of practice with layout setup but everyone pulled together and we had a great layout.  There will be more about ours's and some of the other layouts in an upcoming post.

This shot was taken at the I-80 west bound rest area near Donner Summit on the way home.  This is at 7,200 foot elevation and it's the first time in many years that I've seen any snow on the ground in June.  We had a wet winter and has been a cool spring and summer so far.

To be continued ....

Scrap metal piles

The scrap yard industry I am building on my layout will need some piles of scrap metal as the source for loading rail cars.  The process I used to create a large pile of chopped up scrap steel is similar to how the gondola loads were made.   Because of how large this pile would be I started with a piece of 3/4 inch plywood cut to the desired shape and then shaped further with a belt sander to get what is shown in the photo below.

This wood block was then painted a flat black color which made it look a bit like a pile of coal.

The wood base does not work well with the liquid PlasticWeld so an initial layer of plastic pieces were attached to the wood block with Super Glue.  Additional layers were then added using the Plasticweld.

Once the layers of plastic scrap were finished, the entire pile was brushed with a watered down rail brown paint so it would soak down into the spaces.  If anything is left uncovered the black base of the wood block should make it not so noticeable.   Next the entire pile was given a light spray of rust colored paint.  Once that dried individual pieces of scrap were dry brushed in various dull colors, and the pile was given a coat of Dullcoat.  On this one I also added some weathering powers.

Here is another smaller scrap pile I made using clear plastic from a water bottle.  This was the one I had some trouble with the glue and paint sticking.

Scrap metal loads for the gondolas

One of the products my scrap industry ships by rail is carloads of metal scrap separated by type and grade.  Not having exactly what I wanted in my stash of cast resin loads, I decided to make my own. This load will be for steel scrap that has been chopped up.  I needed some thin plastic and is was suggested that I try plastic bottles as a source.  I tried that first and it looked good but I had trouble with both adhesives and paint sticking to it.  What I have had nice results with is the type of plastic from a food tray like the one shown below.

The load was built on a scrap of clear acrylic plastic cut to fit inside the gondolas.  I drilled a hole in the middle and glued in a cut off roofing nail so the load could be picked up with a magnet.  Gluing a thin piece of steel to the acrylic base would also.

The top surface of the acyrilic was painted flat black.  The black plastic tray material shown in the first photo was cut up into small pieces which were about 2 to 3 scale feet square. This material works well with Plastruct Plastic Weld.  In the photo the process is just started and can be built up to whatever depth is required.  Looking carefully in this photo part of the round head of the roofing nail can be seen.

After building up the scrap to the desired depth, I brushed on a heavy coat of rail brown that was somewhat diluted so it would run down into the small spaces.  After that dried I airbrushed a light coat of rust and after that dried, I dry brushed some lighter colors on some of the individual pieces.   The photo below shows the finished result.

As was envisioned, the load can be easily removed using a magnet without having to remove the car from the track.  In this photo it can be seen that much of the overall thickness of the load is made up from the thickness of the acyrilic base.  This load is about 3 scale feet thick.

Creating a pair of RailGon gondolas - Part 2

It took quite a bit of time to do the decals but then it's something I enjoy doing.  The larger decals had to be carefully manipulated around the pillars.  The decal set came with decals for 2 RailBox box cars but only one set for the RailGon so I used two decal sets.  The stock road number is 310266.  I moved the numbers around on the second set to make the second car's road number 301662.

The floors of the gondolas were brushed with rail brown and then dabbed with a small sponge brush to give it the texture seen here.  The inside walls were given the same treatment only lighter with some of the black showing through.

After a spray of Dullcoat, 310662 got some light weathering and 301266 got a little heavier weathering.

I had some nice low profile metal wheels that fit the Atlas trucks so kept those trucks and their couplers and sprayed the side frames of the trucks with rail brown and installed those metal wheels.  These roll really well and these two gondolas are now ready for service.  These 52 foot cars are just a bit longer then the cast resin loads I have for the Micro-Trains 50 ft gondolas .  So the next project will be to make some scrap metal loads for these.