new design train model

   Ron Einarson has done it again! Is there no stopping this man? For the sake of the hobby, we hope not! Pictured above is his second of three entries he submitted for the Winnipeg Model Railroad Club's February model display. God bless him, he even provided his own copy on how he built it, saving the blog editor a bit of time and effort!

By Ron Einarson

   The model started out as Old Time Coal Conveyors kit # 933-3520 from Walthers. I painted the parts flat green right on the sprues. I was able to clamp them in an upright position to dry. After trimming the parts from the sprues, I touched up the areas that were missing paint.

   I followed the instructions included in the kit and the construction went well. The only thing I would suggest is to use �Krazy� Gel Glue to put it together, as I found styrene glue took to long to dry. I find �Krazy� Gel Glue sets up faster and harder, and my hand doesn�t cramp holding it in line!

   A couple of days after it had dried, I dusted the pieces with black chalk dust to give it a well used appearance. This new addition will look great with the coal trestle display I constructed and displayed at a recent model display at the WMRC.

   Every once in a while, WMRC blog editor Paul Ullrich contributes a cartoon to The Lantern, the official publication of the club, and to The Fusee, the official publication of the TLR. This cartoon has appeared in the February issue of The Lantern, and will also appear in the next issue of The Fusee (it's supposed to be the spring issue, but who are we kidding?).

    This is definitely a seasonal cartoon, but all you have to do is look out the window, or even (gasp) dare to go outside to know that winter is far from over (and that seems to go for the whole continent).

    There's a wind chill warning in effect in Winnipeg today. Water pipes are bursting all over the city. Everyone's yard is buried in three, four, and even five feet of snow! But it's a great time for model railroaders, so get down to the basement and get working on that model railroad project you've been putting off, because spring isn't happening yet!

South Madisonville Extension

By Ron Einarson

   The South Madisonville Extension was built exactly as the prototype around the 1950's & 60�s, following construction methods at the time and with all the associated equipment and transitions from Madisonville to points south.  The display is typical of those along the L&N lines built during that period.  The display was built with the idea that it was getting towards the time when repairs & painting might be in need.
 
   I started with a 1'x8' pine board and added track, scenery and a line side MOW facility. I added a turnout that connects the mains through town with the single track southbound. The area is set as a rural area with pastures for cattle and some scrub brush land paralleling the right of way. I used a piece of 1'x8' lumber six feet long for this section with a 1'' piece of Styrofoam glued on top that I painted brown. Next I laid the Atlas flex track and one #6 Atlas turnout on top of cork roadbed. I carved out ditches using a cordless Dremel tool, various files and knives. All this was done outside with my Shop Vac handy. I touched up the exposed Styrofoam with brown paint.
 
   Next came some ballast and ground foam glued down with diluted white glue. I used coarse foam and foam clusters to add a rough look to some of the area. On the right side I fenced off an area for cattle, using bamboo skewers stained with my steel wool stain and cut them to size. Next I strung the nylon thread along the fence using fine fishing line, which I stained by dragging a cloth soaked in Polly-S Rust along the line. I added the cattle, an old bathtub with resin water in it for watering the cattle, trees, some junk parts & pieces plus a still.   
   At the turnout I added a shed, vehicle, motorcycle (custom built & painted), Acetylene tanks (hand painted) and a parking area with gravel and added lots of junk parts details and a MOW crew. Telephone poles (bamboo skewers made with RIX cross arms) were added along the right of way as well as trees and bushes. Also added was a gravel country road with a wood board crossing.

   I'll be adding a backdrop created using personal photos I stitched together on the computer to create the 6 foot long rural mural.  I printed it on a colour plotter. I'm going to mount it on a 1' x 6' piece of Masonite and paint it sky blue. Lastly, I added some junk parts and pieces around the area to give it more of a lived in look. Besides the fenced cattle area, I added a forest area with scratchbuilt trees from Spirea & Sedum bushes, dirt from the garden covered with various textures of ground foam (both homemade as well as commercial). I added lots of underbrush details with broken twigs and piles of rocks, etc. to add depth to the area, plus a moonshine still that I built from an old cast metal kit. I crushed up some fine shale I had found along the road at the lake, sprinkled it in one of the ditches to add support to roadbed. I then took some Poge material my daughter Louise had during her younger days and applied about 10 coats to give an appearance of water in the ditch.

   Our good friends at the Canadian Association of Railway Modellers (CARM) are holding their annual convention this year in Thunder Bay, Ontario, from September 30 to October 2. They've always put on a good show (remember the 2005 Golden Rails convention in Winnipeg in 2005?) and they need some help!

    Their looking for clinicians, and when they heard about our most recent Klinic Karnival, they contacted the Powers That Be to see if anyone was interested in conducting clinics there. Being a veteran of any past Klinic Karnival is not a requirement! Past experience in conducting a clinic is always helpful, but the desire to conduct a clinic is much more important.

    The convention is being held at the historic Prince Arthur Waterfront Hotel (which used to be a CN hotel). If you're interested, contact Wiiliam Waithe at wwsd40@hotmail.com. For more information about CARM and their upcoming convention, go to: http://www.caorm.org/

    Thunder Bay is becoming the model railroad convention capital of Canada! In May of 2015, the TLR will be holding their annual convention there as well. Instead of going across the border all the time for some model railroading fun, why not go to both conventions in Thunder Bay instead?
   

Happy Valentine's Day!

   Our February meeting features a presentation by WMRC Vice President Dave Downie. Dave has been very busy digitizing hundreds of 35mm slides and prints that he's taken over the years. He's collected the best of the lot from the past 40 years and he'll be showcasing them at the meeting.

    Dave's name is certainly familiar with the followers of this blog, for he is the author of the very popular four part series about the 1983 NMRA national  convention, "Railway Jamboree", which was held in Winnipeg. Part four will be posted later this week.

   Dave has been rail fanning all of his life. Rumour has it that he started rail fanning even before he could walk! Tales have been told of how his mother used to wheel his baby carriage up the Arlington Street bridge. Dave, dressed in a T-shirt bearing the CP Rail crest and a grey and maroon baby bonnet with yellow trim, would stand on his tip toes in the baby carriage and lean over the railing, taking pictures of passing locomotives with his Kodak Brownie box camera!

   We won't be seeing any of those pictures on Friday night, as he hasn't digitized them yet. But he will take us all the way back to the swinging 70's, so there will be plenty of vintage photos of first and second generation diesel motive power to be seen!

   The meeting starts at 7:30 P.M. at Westworth United Church, 1750 Grosvenor Avenue. Not a member? No problem! Visitors are always welcome!