Southern Pacific's Jefferson Branch

[ratled]

Moving forward

Not much in the way “Ohh and Ahh” progress but things are still moving forward.   Trains are running to find any hidden bugs and the track is still rock solid.  The rolling stock is the weak link but I'm still fixing that as I go with Kadee #148 couplers, Walther's metal wheels, trucks get tuned, and I've started adding some weight to the cars that need it most.  I did add a few cars to the fleet and culled a few stand ins.

Currently doing a lot of testing of techniques, colors, etc.  so when the time comes I can just plug away at the tasks. I made a big bag of saw dust using some of the left over 1x3 from the fascia support and made a few woodchip loads.  I just used some left over pink foam, painted it a yellow/white and the saw dust is glued like ballast in 2 layers.  A lite final layer is sprinkled over glue and then a couple of passes from the tree build hair spray is used.



I'm working on some scrap for the gons at Big Foot Salvage.  I think I'm on the right track.   Sprayed painted some aluminum foil with brown black rust and a hint of white on both sides.  Tore that up, put it in the blender with some water and blended it until I was happy with the final result.   I painted some scrap foam core pieces mostly brown with some rust and black for the load base. Again treated it like ballast to secure it to the foam.   I did a second application to fill in the bare spots.





Both types of loads have washers on the top under the loads so a magnet can be used to help pull them up to transition from a loaded car to an unloaded car.  The wood chip loads have washers on the bottom on the load to keep them from being top heavy when not in the car.

Started working on the wooden trestle that will cross Placer Creek.  It's inspired by these 2 bridges on the CORP. I found these pictures on brain894x4 site





The bents have already been started




Just trying to plug away on it bit by bit......