Starting on the construction company site

Started ground work
     The weather was kinder on Sunday afternoon and yesterday was one out of the box so out to the SFRSD RR to get some work done.
     On Sunday I scraped back some of the old Woodland scenic ground cover and applied a coating of "large cracks poly filler" to the area where the company is to be sited. That dried overnight quite nicely so a quick scrape to remove a few small lumps and a fresh coat was applied yesterday before lunch.
    While that was drying I decided that I needed to weather a few more cars on the roster. So I picked up two of my old Bachmann hoppers, a new BLMA hopper and a two bay Burlington Northern hopper that I purchased at a friends sale. I purchased this knowing it was going to receive some sort of treatment.
     This is how the two bay looked before being attacked.

My apologies for it being slightly out of focus

     I decided that the Burlington logo was to receive a spray of flat white whilst at the same time protecting the reporting number (until I come up with another idea). Once that was completed I then sprayed the whole car with a mixture of flat white, a very small amount of brown and a lot of thinners.
    Once all this was dry the whole car was given a light wash of Van Dyke Brown oil paint. I have not dull coated the car yet so it might look a bit shinny.
    And the result.

 

     As you can see I need to give the underside some weathering, paint the trucks, wheels and couplers but it's getting there.
     I did these as well.

Some masking before spraying to give the effect of a body repair.

And Ditto.

     And to top off the day I applied the first layer of powdered stone dust to the construction company site.

A mix of powdered stone dust and what we call Lilydale toppings was sieved on using an old brass tea strainer.

     The mix dried nice and light overnight so in the days ahead I should be able to make some more progress with the surrounding ground cover.

Thanks again for dropping by.
Rod.

    

Not much happening Part 3

All construction vehicles are now built.
     Well last week I finally got to complete all bar one of my construction vehicles that I intend to put into a construction company yard at the East end of Augusta.
     This has been a drawn out process due to having a cold for almost 4 months and building a new extension to our Budgerigar aviary during our winter season here in Melbourne.
     Spring is now well underway and so as the temperature begins to rise I feel more inclined to venture out into the SFRSD room and get some additional scenery completed.
     The first task will be to construct the company construction site by clearing away the old ground cover that was laid down many years ago. Then prepare the site to add all the bits to hopefully have it look presentable.
     So I hope to take some in progress shots over the coming weeks as I would like to have this completed before the 25th of October which will be the SFRSD 20th birthday.
     The past two years I have held a day ops session stopping for pizza for dinner then allowing the guys to put one of their favorite trains on the RR for a run and some photo run buys.
     Anyway before all this gets underway here are a couple of quick snaps of the gear that is going to be installed. There is some equipment already sitting in the RR room that I have shown on previous posts. the Low Loader, side lifting crane and the crawler bucket crane.

   
     They don't look that good in the plastic containers so I hope they look better by the time they are on the RR.
     Before I log out today I did add some new rolling stock to the SFRSD last Friday before my monthly ops session. I had in my draw a Pacific Western CN hopper that was from their Mystery car range I bid on and won at an N Scale Collectors auction many years ago. As I paid way too much for the car and (thank you Intermountain for re-releasing and dropping its value) I decided it should be on the RR. I also picked up 3 BLMA ATSF hoppers at a good price from M.B.Klein. Picks next time.

That's it for today. Thanks for stopping by.
Rod. 

Not much happening part 2

More construction equipment
     It hasn't been that good weather wise over the past month so I have taken advantage of sitting at our kitchen table assembling more equipment to add to my future construction site on the SFRSD.
     The latest piece is a vehicle that Vic gave me quite a while back. It is one with his etched brass cab, brass chassis along with many added details, like etched grill and bumper, rear mud flaps, tube exhaust pipe and mufflers and safety board behind the cab. It is also fitted with wheels of time wheels and Vics etched side mirrors and sun visor.
     To start painting it I had to strip it completely and once that was done I gave all of the brass bits except the cab a spray of Tamiya Primer Grey followed by Tamiya Bright Orange the same as all the other construction pieces. So paint on the wheels, turntable and back board with Italeri Metal. Flat Steel paint and a wash of panel line paint and that was finished. Oh I forgot the Pan Pastels grey on the tyres.
     At the same time I completed a GHQ grader and still working on a GHQ drag crawler crane.
     An old Atlas LN9000 has also had some treatment to add to the collection. A bit more work needs to be done on the crane and then I will be ready to prepare the area on the RR to accept all of this stuff.
     Here are a few pics of the progress thus far.

     Well that's about it for this post so thanks again for stopping by.
Rod.