New Life for an Iron Horse

 

Central Vermont 2-8-0 no. 472 is back in service after seven years sitting in a box! 

I mentioned one of my goals for this weekend was to get CV no. 472 back into service. 

This is an extensively detailed Bachmann Spectrum 2-8-0. It's actually a very, very early example of the model since it was the Model Railroader review sample. After Andy Sperandeo finished reviewing it he gave it to me 

This is how the locomotive looked immediately after being pulled out of storage. 

Iain Rice happened to be visiting Wisconsin at the time and I showed him the model and the drawings of the CV locomotive. We looked it over and noted the wheelbase and overall dimensions were pretty close to a CV N-5-a class engine. Iain mentioned it shouldn't be too difficult to get pretty close to a CV 2-8-0 starting with the Bachmann model. Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, I sent him back to England with the locomotive and a shoebox full of Cal-Scale, Kemptron and Bowser detail parts. 

I think the project was a little more involved than Iain bargained for - the photos here of the unpainted model show just how many details he added, moved, and removed, but it is remarkable how close it looks like a CV 2-8-0. 

Views of the front and rear half of the locomotive show just how much rework and redetailing Iain Rice did to get this engine to capture the look of the CV prototypes. 

During the several months Iain was working on the engine another exciting new product arrived - a Soundtraxx DCC steam sound decoder. After the locomotive arrived back in the U. S., I installed the Soundtraxx decoder before painting, decaling and weathering the locomotive. 

The original Soundtraxx decoder 

Number 472 was in regular service on both the first and second versions of my Southern New England. In 2015 I was getting ready for an op session when I noticed 472 was just not sounding or working right. I even mentioned it in this blog post. 

She was "stored, awaiting disposition" for the next few years while other projects took priority. 

A few weeks ago I dug the engine out the box and put it on the track. Not surprising the poor performance hadn't gone away with age. But I decided to swap out the old decoder and speaker. The nine-pin connectors made the actual decoder swap a simple matter. Swapping out the speaker was a little trickier, mostly because of the custom made baffle that I ended up having to remove to fit the new speaker in place.

I also took the time to dust the locomotive and tender off, and to clean the wheels and the copper pickup tabs on the engine and tender.  

I'm pleased to report that 472 is back in service, looking and sounding better than ever!

Feed Storage Shed for Enosburg Falls

I built this model about a little more than year ago (I think!). I thought I'd described it on the blog but apparently had never posted this! 

After completing the seemingly never ending build of the farm supply dealer I was looking for a simple and quick project - and this feed warehouse kitbash of a couple of cheap plastic kits fit the bill! 

The branch through Enosburg Falls, Vermont featured a string of sheds, warehouses, and the like alongside the track from east of the freight house to the Pleasant Street crossing. 

I know these structures were there since they appear in some early photos of Enosburg Falls, and are included on railroad and Sanborn Maps. In this map the Enosburg Falls freight house is marked "Express" - the building that's the subject of this project is the Feed Store to the right of it. 

As is often the case with non-descript buildings such as these while I know they were there I have no way of knowing what they looked like. 

So, imagine my surprise when I was reviewing an old "Central Vermont Railway in Steam" DVD and saw a shot of the Richford local working Enosburg Falls. This was a short - one or two seconds at best - clip. But I rewound the DVD and took the following photo of the television screen with my iPhone.  

The quick screen capture from a video that inspired this build. (It's all about the sign!)  

One of those warehouses is visible to the left. Of course other than showing the building was wood (well weather clapboard) and had some sort of "tarpaper" or membrane roofing, there's not much to go on to create a detailed model. 

The list of industrial sidings in Enosburg Falls does show a Wirthmore Feeds dealer - and this structure has a bright yellow sign that appears to be the trademark colors and style of lettering of Wirthmore - so it doesn't seem to be much of a leap to figure this must be that building. 

I didn't want to spend a lot of time and effort guessing what the building looked like - only to invest time building a model that was likely going to be wrong. A generic well-weathered clapboard building with that trademark sign on the peak of the roof would let me quickly cross something off the "to do" list.  

That makes this a perfect candidate for a kitbash. 

I started with two Walthers Co-Op Storage Shed kits (part 933-3529). I cut the molded on vertical corner trim from the end of the long walls in one kit, and cutting the long walls in a second kit just slightly longer than half.  The result was a building that just about a little more than 1.5 times the length of original building with three warehouse doors on each side. I  carefully "lifted" a few of the clapboards to give some additional character to the siding. 

I could see from the prototype photo the doors are inset - so I cut some rectangles larger than the door openings from scribed siding. I put the doors aside until they were painted and weathered with the main structure. For variety I used one or two of the doors that came with the kit. Frankly I wish I hadn't - those doors are the worse looking parts in the kit. 

I gave the entire building a dark gray primer coat and drybrushed white and "linen" craft paint in the direction of the clapboards. I gave the doors the same treatment before installing them. 

I made a new subroof from .040" styrene and added tarpaper roofing from the scrap bin (I think it was originally from Branchline). 

The signs started with some Wirthmore artwork I found on the internet. During a Zoom call a few months ago Brett Wiley, who was on the call, took pity on my efforts at creating the sign and in the course of 20 minutes during the call created the rooftop sign for me!

I wanted to have some feed sacks stacked on the loading dock, and perhaps in the bed of a farmer's pickup. I started with Tichy feed sacks, but even after painting them they didn't look right. So I found photos of Wirthmore feed sacks on the internet, reduced them to HO scale (or at least the size of the Tichy feed sacks!) and glued them to the plastic sacks. 

Sanded tile grout for the road, cinder ballast, sifted dirt and tan tile grout for the soil, and some static grass and the scene was basically completed.