Made some more progress on the coal mine. The building to the right is not attached as of this post but it will be in the next hour or so. I am trying to get the main building mostly put together tonight that way it can sit all night. Then tomorrow while it's snowing I can get it finished and set up some track on the kitchen table and run a few trains.

Well I have the main building complete. All's that I need to do tomorrow is build the Slack Loading Building, both conveyors, both sets of stairs, and add the two wooden doors. The wooden doors are going to be painted before I even glue them onto the building and the same with the stairs. This is surely the funnest project I have done so far. I am also now on the search for other mines that resemble the other mines served by the C&I.

Matthew:
Do you have a picture of the prototype?

(01-19-2024, 07:32 PM)BR60103 Wrote: [ -> ]Matthew:
Do you have a picture of the prototype?

I found one photo online somewhere and now I can't seem to find it again. My uncle has a bunch of stuff related to the mine and photo's but as of right now I haven't gotten anything from him. Both him and my aunt know that I'm on the search for photo's of the mine. As soon as I find prototype photo's I will post them. I might have to make adjustments to the mine to get it accurate to what the real one looked like, but hey I'm up to the challenge.

Below is what the mine looks like completed. I did have decals that give the rust look so I applied them to the Slack Loader. I am going to get more as I like the realistic look it gives the mine.

Good work so far.

The big buildings are a different breed. I have been working the 11 story Ashmore Hotel. It just took me about 2 hours to get the walls together. I am going to post a status shot in the Weekly Photo thread.

(01-21-2024, 04:56 PM)tompm Wrote: [ -> ]Good work so far.

The big buildings are a different breed. I have been working the 11 story Ashmore Hotel. It just took me about 2 hours to get the walls together. I am going to post a status shot in the Weekly Photo thread.

Thank You Tom. Yes I can agree that the bigger buildings are a different breed. I've added more rust decals to the roof of the mine building itself to give it more of a real look. I am looking into getting another mine but not the same one as above. I'm going to go and check out the weekly thread and see your work Tom.

Trying my hand at applying decals. Crossing my fingers this all works out and if it does, then it should be easy from here on out with the amount of decals I have to put on. First up was my freshly painted C&I Engine.

Well there was a little opps moment after the decals had dried. The circle shrunk a little bit but I was still able to get the rest of the decals applied. Now all that is left to do is to put the hand rails back on and it will be finished. In my opinion I don't think I did to bad for my first time putting decals on a engine. So now it is official, I have my very first C&I Engine. The number I picked was #37. I also started to decal a hopper car I painted awhile back also.

I will say this though, I was nervous doing this and was worried it wasn't going to turn out like I wanted it to but it did and I am very happy with how it turned out. I to have to touch up the paint around the running boards and that isn't going to be to hard to do. That is going to be done later today.

Congrats! Keep trying new things and developing new techniques - it's the special sauce of model railroading.

Good job on the decaling. The loco came out great.

Thank You Guys. The engine is now complete. I put the hand rails back on and its ready to run.

The progress so far on the 2 bay off-set hopper. This one is really testing me to the limits. I might have to take the contacts out and put my glasses lol.

After looking at it and realizing I made a mistake, I had to add just a small amount of water to drag the decals under the numbers down a little bit to get them in the correct position. The one side of the hopper car now has all the decals on it and that will dry for about an hour or so before I start the other side. So here below is what is done as of right now.

Another project completed and on its trucks. The 2 bay off-set hopper is ready to roll down the tracks now. Now onto stripping a B&O Hopper so it can be turned into a C&I hopper.