Kit railcars

One thing that seems to have changed, is the "shake the box" car kits seem to have gotten rare.

Here's a list of companies featuring easy car kits.

Scaletrains.com advertises their simple kit line.  As they have just started up, there's only one plug-door box. It looks OK for 1980s to last decade.  19.95 msrp.  I don't know if they will be doing limited runs or not.

A Basic plan

Following the track and layout plan outlined in Lance's post,Here's what I have for a Bill of materials.

1. an 8' by 1' pine board.
2. 8' of floor molding and some panel board (or finishing?) nails
3. Delta Ceramcoat “Mudstone” household paint
4. Micro Engineering track and turnouts.  Two RH turnouts, and about 12' of track.
5. Rustoleum Brown Camouflage paint
6. White Glue
7. Heki 1576 Pasture Green Wildgrass grass fiber
8.  Jefferson Street Radical flats from King Mill

Let's add in some other constraints.  Because, Constraints can focus one.

I. Modern era.  Let's define that as post-2010 at least.
II. Within about an hour of, oh, let's say Portland Union Station.  That limits the geography covered.  I'd like to be able to railfan the prototype without having to plan more than a day ahead.  Trying to model a prototype in San Diego would be less convenient for casual railfanning.

We'll see if there are others that seem reasonable.  Like "No Boxcars"  or something.

I am thinking of some prototype locomotives.  The BNSF yard locos I see in Willbridge Yard when I drive by are sometimes interesting.  A ex-GP-30 that's been upgraded to be a GP-39-2.  GN (Nee BNSF) 3613 still working sometimes.  The parade of PNWR geeps passing by.

Modern rolling stock will be harder to do, at first.  I only have older stuff, so I'd need to replace my IPD Boxes, or my 1950s stuff.  But that's not an obstacle.

I've done some virtual railfanning with google maps, and I don't see any industries that are EXACT matches.  But, The Portland Terminal has a transload facility that is quite similar.  I might proto-freelance a transload that is worked by BNSF.  Or not.  I don't know.

Prototype links

A couple of relevant links about the prototype.

1. BNSF Job 101 Job 101 is the switch job into the Lake industrial district.  I knew there was a reason that GN (Nee BNSF) 3613 was still at Willbridge yard.

http://railfan.com/photoline/photoline_jul2012.php

2.  Spindly Rails around Oregon  Local industrial switching.  A quick overview of places locally that still have active industrial switching going on.

First things first

First Post.

Just a place to jot some notes down.

From Lance Mindheim, a trio of blog posts.

1. A no-nonsense, no-excuses modern small switching layout.  This on is targeted right at modelers like me.  no-skills-no-problem

2. A second of Lance's posts.  A sketch of a tiny tuning fork.  And big-time switching. how-to-play-with-trains

3. A third of lance's posts.  Two hollow core doors, One switch.  Lots of operating potential.   a-one-turnout-layout

4. A fourth of Lance's posts.  How did he know ME so well?modeling-when-you-have-no-free-time

Some prototype thoughts.

A prototype to consider - look at their transload and shop site www.peninsulaterminal.com/

Another possibility is a container company.  Like this one, inland-container

Other modeling thoughts.

MRH - the web magazine. model-railroad-hobbyist.com