Video Layout Update #18

 

Just uploaded a new video update to YouTube. You can find it HERE

Layout Work Resumes - Wetherbee's Hardware (Part 1)

With the book in hand and shipping (thanks to everyone who ordered the book!) it's time to turn my attention back to the layout, and to this blog!

You ever get completely overwhelmed by the number of projects you want to complete? My typical reaction when that happens is to start a bunch of stuff that I'll work on for a bit, then put away. OR I just get some sort of overload and can't start or finish ANYTHING! The latter is what happed to me about three weeks ago.  I went downstairs, turned on the layout room lights, looked around, and promptly turned them back off! There seemed like there was so much to do I couldn't come up with a single project to focus on. 

Of course, thinking about this logically I'd remember that no matter how many projects I might want to do, I can only do one thing at a time!

There are too many empty lots in what is supposed be Enosburg Falls - and ideally, I'd like to get the rest of the structures for the town completed in time for the Mid Atlantic RPM meet this fall. I don't know if we'll have an open house this year as part of MARPM, but getting the town looking "done" by mid to late fall seems a reasonable goal. 

Between the CV freight house and the front edge of the layout is a large open area - approximately 7"x18" defined by Archambault Street and Railroad Ave. This is across the street from the implement dealer that I built five or six years ago. I did a nine or ten part series of posts on that build - you can find part 1 HERE.

As I was flipping through the History of Enosburg Falls book I came across this photo of a hardware dealer that, according to the descripition in the caption,

Test fitting walls and windows. Nothing is glued up or square at this point!

Experimenting with different finishes on piece of scrap shingles. 

Shot of the left front facade shows the two different types of siding. 

was located near where I had that blank lot. It was a fairly long, narrow building and I thought while it's in no danger of winning any architectural awards, it was typical enough of the business district of a New England small town that it would make a nice addition to the scene. 

I don't know for certain, but it looks as if this was two older buildings - perhaps a house and a barn? - connected with a "modern" addition connecting them together. Note this is the only picture I have found of this building, so I would have to imagineer the rear and side walls!

The first step was to figure out how to build this thing. My go-to and much preferred material is styrene, but in this case the entire street facing upper floor of the building is shingled. Note these are not shakes - these shingles have flush cut ends with varying widths. I've built a number of BEST Trains laser structure kits and several of them use laser etched wood sheets with the shingle pattern embossed in the wood. Thinking that would be easier than applying individual layers of shingles, I ordered a sheet of the stuff. For the first floor of the street side of the building I opted to use .090" vertical scribed boards. 

I dug through my rather extensive collection of Tichy and Grandt Line door and window castings and came up with close enough matches to what showed in the protoype photo. I did have to shorten the middle section somewhat - meaning I don't have quite as many big shop windows as the prototype - but I doubt anyone will ever realize that unless I tell them!

I will say it's been a long time since I cut window openings out of wood stock - and it's not something I enjoy. At this point I have front walls cut out - and my original plan was to use wood for the entire building, especially for the side wall that looks fairly weathered and worn from the little bit of it that shows in the right edge of the photo. But I'm toying with making the remainder of the building out of styrene. 

Modeling Autumn Scenery

 It's been a whirlwind couple of weeks - after shipping the book off to the printer we thought it would deliver between the 16th and the 21st. But thanks to some much appreciated effort by our rep at the printer, the books actually showed up on our doorstep on April 10th. 

I wasn't planning to go to the Timonium MD show since I didn't think we'd have any books - but since the show was on the 11th and the books were there on the 10th I grabbed a stack of books and headed up the Maryland State Fairgrounds. 

Show attendance seemed a little light, and not many people were buying - perhaps it had something to do with the sunny, beautiful weather. No one really wanted to spend all day at a train show and I think it showed in the sales overall. 

The one good thing that came out of the trip up there was we managed to get Artisan Rail Media into the Craftsman Courtyard area of the National Train Show in Chattanooga this coming July. 

In the meantime we've been shipping books, and decals, all week. We've gotten almost completely caught up with the book orders, except for a half dozen or so (we ran out of envelopes and mailing labels! More are on the way, and based on what the post office tells me, most people who ordered between February and late last week should receive their copy of the book sometime next week. I'm excited, and terrified, to hear what people think!

We also have posted some Southern New England and Central Vermont decals. I'm not surprised the CV decals are selling well, many people have a stash of those resin CV boxcars awaiting decals - but I'm surprised at the reception the SNE decals have received. I have several more CV and SNE sets that I'll be posting this weekend. 

You can find all of these on the web site - HERE 

or https://www.artisanrailmedia.com/

Thanks again for your interest and support - and please order a book! 

Modeling Autumn Scenery book and Artisan Rail Media

 
Wow, I see that I haven't posted anything here since November! Yikes! Well, hope anyone reading this had a wonderful Holiday season - and Happy New Year, albeit a couple of months late!

Our new website - Artisan Rail Media - where you can order our new book! 

I have been posting - occasionally - to my Southern New England Railway Facebook group. And you're more than welcome to join the fun there. But I have an excuse for not posting things here - 

When I really get into a project I tend to dive into it, and things like Facebook and blog post updates don't take priority. In other words, I usually float from one project to another - but when I focs - I get really focused. 

For the last few months I've gotten very serious about finishing my Modeling Autumn Scenery book. I've talked about doing this book for a number of years - and have been thinking about it even longer than that! 

This is one of two possible cover photos for the book. 

I'm pleased to say that it is almost done - - to the point that it should be shipped off to the printer sometime in the next two weeks and be ready to ship shortly after that. I'm trying something new - self publishing this book. I considered doing a print on demand option but have been disappointed with the color and printing quality of that approach. 

One of the page layouts for the book. 

A scenery book - especially an autumn scenery book - where color is everything - needs to have the best looking photos possible. So, Christine and I are taking a risk and having the book printed by a print shop here in the US that specializes in short print runs. The test proofs looked great, so we're very excited about getting the book in our hands, and hopefully a LOT of yours! If nothing else we don't want to end up with a garage full of these things!

What's in the book? Essentially it's everything I've learned that I can remember about modeling autumn scenery. Here's the list of chapters: 

Chapter 1: Fall Colors

Chapter 2: Scene Composition and Planning

Chapter 3: Backdrops

Chapter 4: Landforms

Chapter 5: Vegetation and Ground Cover

Chapter 6: Background Trees

Chapter 7: Foreground Deciduous Trees

Chapter 8: Conifers

Chapter 9: The Colors of Autumn

Chapter 10: Autumn Details

Full color. (I've lost count of how many photos). 

Approx. 100 pages. 

And best of all I've been able to include some photos from other models who depict the fall on their layouts. These give some much needed variety to the book, and show how others model other parts of the fall - from early mostly green season, through the peak colors of fall, all the way to the "dead" season. I'm immensely grateful for these friends who have been so willing to contribute to the book! 

Actually, even if you model the height of summer you should be able to find some useful information in this book - just use a lot more green than I do! 

How can you get a copy? Well, we've set up a little business to sell these things (and some other products, more on that in a moment). You can get the book at the special prepublication price of $24.95 + shipping at our new web site - Artisan Rail Media. 

What about those other products? Well, for starters we have Central Vermont boxcar decals, as well as SNE "modern image" decals that we'll list for sale. But first the book must be done! 

SNE "Modern" Image Lettering

Here's the SNE "New Image" (post 1962) paint scheme as applied to first generation hood units. 

This is two of several sets of locotive lettering we've developed. And when I say "we" I mean it! This started a number of years ago with Mike Confalone's suggestion on how to arrange the "S" "N" and "E" in a link like the CN and CV lettering. 

(In short, don't try too hard - since it's almost impossible - and use the DWP approach to the same problem!) 

Bernard Kempinski and I did some initial back and forth on it - and then I asked Otto Vondrak for his help - back before he was famous and all .... (I told you this project has been going on for years!). 

The basic design is Otto's - although Bill Brilinger at PDC put the finishing touches and tweaked the logo a bit. Bill's also designed boxcar and covered hopper lettering in several different styles.

We also did some lettering for "modern" freight cars (at least more modern than my layout's era!). Here's the covered hopper version. Note the green lettering below is shown on a gray car - but the cars were delivered in yellow with green lettering.

Video Layout Update #16

 

A real short update this time - it's summer so not a lot going on in the basement - but mostly because of a project that I thought would be a piece of cake turned out to be a real menace. 

https://youtu.be/6OZuQ81UK1g

CV Wood Caboose Paint Schemes

Caboose 4012 at Montville, Conn. 

(Photos from Bob's Photos, author's collection, unless otherwise noted). 

From the early 1920s through the 1970s Central Vermont rostered two distinct types of cabooses. I should add that at some points in time and in some areas the term "van" was used to describe a caboose. My understanding is that "van" was more common on the Northern Division of the railroad, which makes some sense since it obviously originated with the Canadian National.  

The first style of caboose consisted of three cars (4050-4052). These were also the first cabooses built for the CV by an outside builder. American Car & Foundry (AC&F) delivered these cars in 1923. They featured a steel underframe with wood bodies. These were very similar in basic dimensions to the "Northeastern" caboose used by a number of railroads such as the Lehigh Valley, LNE, Western Maryland and others. The primary difference was most of this style of caboose had steel bodies, but the CV cars were wood. 

CV 4007, East New London, Conn. (Bob's Photos).

The remaining CV wood cabooses were a total of 28 cars numbered between 4000-4030. The majority of these were rebuilt from previous cabooses or wood boxcars in the St. Albans shops, but they were remarkably similar in appearance and detail. Two exceptions were 4006 and 4021  - I suspect they replaced two previous cars with the same numbers or at the very least they were extensive enough rebuilds of those two cars that the CV Car Classification sheets noted they were "built" in 1951. 

This post is not meant to be a detailed history of CV cabooses - instead I thought I'd share some images that show some of the various paint schemes used on the wooden cars from the early 1920s through the 1970s. The photos will show one or two variations, but essentially there are three different schemes used on CV cabooses. 

Scheme 1: The first was all "brown" or freight car red, with "Central Vermont" spelled out in Roman lettering along the top of the side. 

AC&F Builder's Photo of CV 4050 shows off the early 1920s paint and lettering scheme. 

CV 4013, one of the home built "long" cabooses, shows off her original lettering scheme. 

Scheme 1a: The Central Vermont lettering got smaller and was on the lower portion of the carbody. See photo of 4013 below for an example of the size and placement of the Central Vermont lettering. 

Scheme 1b: Same paint scheme as Scheme 1a with "Rocket" slogan lettering. There were actually at least two different styles of Rocket lettering that I've seen photos of, one of which is shown on 4013 below. The other was a square box type logo that was centered on the car side. 

By 1939 the Central Vermont was still Railroad Roman but had gotten smaller and moved to the lower portion of the side. Some cabooses, like this one, got the flashy "Rocket" lettering. 

Scheme 2: Starting in the early 1940s paint scheme shifted from all brown to a combination of Red #11 underframe and trucks and orange body. This coincided with a shift to the "stacked Gothic" style lettering on its freight cars and cabooses. "Central" and "Vermont" were stacked above one another with the car number below.

CV 4006 shows off her then-new paint scheme of Red underframe and orange body. (Also note how dirty these cabooses got in service!) 

Scheme 2a: Shortly after the introduction of the Canadian National's "Super Continental" paint scheme the CV adopted a Maple Leaf logo. Close comparison will reveal the CV leaf had a slightly different shape than the "standard" CN leaf. The Maple Leaf was added to the cabooses with the words "Central Vermont Railway" spelled out in three lines inside the leaf. The car number also moved to a different position on the car side (usually to the left) with this lettering. 

Here's our old friend, 4013, in the post 1954 or so "Maple Leaf" scheme. By this point 4013 had received the open slat steps. A note for modelers - these are a neat detail to add to your CV caboose fleet! 

CV 4019 at Essex Junction shows how the cars weathered, but you can see tell the underframe and trucks were painted a different color than the car body. 

CV 4050, Scheme 2a (Maple Leaf) scheme. Note the placement of the car number. 

Scheme 3: Orange car bodies with black underframes and intertwined "CV". This would have first appeared in 1963 or so. The CV logo was in roughly the same position below the cupola, with the car numbers (and "CV" initials) along the lower edge of the car. The size of the car numbers on the car side also increased with this paint and lettering scheme over time. 

One note on the roof colors. Although CN vans painted in the orange scheme are documented to have had Red #11 underframes AND roofs, from photos it appears as if the CV cabooses had black roofs. While the walkways may have been orange at one point, there's plenty of photographic evidence that indicates the walks may also have been black. Perhaps it was a case of the walks being orange at first and then being repainted black with the rest of the roof. For modelers, a photo of the specific car you're modeling during your era is of course the best reference!