The Little River Rail Road in Doc Tom's Back Yard

[Doctor G]

I have noticed the interest that has developed regarding Troels Kirk's beautiful On30 models. https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Coast-Line-RR-page/127409483958090



I dabble in On30 and have followed Troels' work for some time. His structures are built from Matte Board as used in framing pictures etc. He does not use the more conventional styrene sheet or wood.



This material is relatively inexpensive at Hobby Lobby. Hobby Lobby also has a cheap "Art Board" material that is a pressed paper product that is used as a surface for painting and water colors. Because it is cheap and easy to get a hold of I thought I would give it a try for this build. As you might imagine it holds paint well and is easy to cut. When built up as a laminate it is very strong. It comes in a variety of thicknesses.



Here I have built up the end pieces of the passenger car using parts cut from the Art Board and glued as a laminate that is about 5 mm thick.

I used the MLS plans to cut the pieces using an X-acto knife. The pieces are glued as a laminate using Ailene's tacky glue. The 5mm thick end pieces are spray painted and attached to the underlying frame with small brass screws.



Let me know your thoughts and if you have experiences using Art or Matte Board in the construction of rolling stock. Of course since this a paper product, no way it can be kept out on rainy days.



Doc Tom



Doc Tom and the Little River RR guys in East Tennessee.

This post was edited by Tom Grabenstei

 

[Doctor G]

I poked around on the internet trying to find what color to paint the interior of the combine as it was circa 1910-1920. Best I could come up with was a tan, or a gray or a beige.

I cut the interior walls from the art board and spray painted with a tan that I thought was close to the restoration work pictured above.

The interior walls were attached to the frame and the end walls. The divider between the baggage and coach section was used from the B.mann donor coach and enlarged to fit.

Thanks for looking.



Doc Tom



Doc Tom and the Little River RR guys in East Tennessee.

 

[Doctor G]

A little more work on the 1:20.3 Southern RR Combine. I scrounged around in the junk box and found two doors that were lengthened. I used cut glass microscope slides for their glazing.

The built up doors fit nicely. I kept the baggage end door open.

I wanted to use the baggage compartment to hold my iPhone for future video shots "out the door."

Here is a preliminary i Phone view out the back as the car is backed down grade to the new Fish Camp Store.

Thanks for looking.



Doc Tom



Doc Tom and the Little River RR guys in East Tennessee.

 

[Doctor G]

Temps to 61 are getting the snow out of Clarksville Tennessee. Thought it was a good day to run some trains.



#110 on the point moved a freight train down the line from Elkmont past the new Fish Camp Commisary.

But "drat it" a snow drift blocked all progress at Tremont Logging Camp.

This little rail road on the Little River in Tennessee never had a snow plow like its RR cousins out West and up East. So the boys need to wait for some more warmer weather before moving further down the line.



Doc Tom



Doc Tom and the Little River RR guys in East Tennessee.

 

[Bill Nelson]

Great work Tom! Impressive work on the combine, glad to see you scratchbuilding skills evolve! You could get an old pressed sheetmetal shovel, like the ones that were made to acompany coal hods ( I bought a new shovel ad coal hod at hardware city this year) With a grinder we could re shape the face of the shovel, putting in slots for the rails, and you could use it as a flanger to clear snow of the track , while leaving it undisturbed elsewhere. I will study the concept.


Nelson

 

[Doctor G]

The build of the roof of this large 1:20.3 Passenger Combine was presenting quite a challenge to me. These roofs have all these interesting curves and a clerestory roof. Pretty tricky stuff.



Bachmann has a nice casting of the roof on the donor passenger car I was cannibalizing for parts. So I literally "drawn and quartered" the roof piece using the trusty dremel tool to enlarge it.

I had a lot of "L" channel ABS plastic left over from the previous bridge project and I used this to form a lattice that supported the four corner pieces of the cut down roof.

The "gaps" will be filled in with sheet and strip styrene and hopefully I will have a 40 foot roof in 1:20.3 scale.



Thanks for looking.



Doc Tom



Doc Tom and the Little River RR guys in East Tennessee.

 

[Bill Nelson]

Tom, the mat board is an old school modeling material. many of the old sydam (now alpine division) kits were based on mat bord. I think some of the Clasic miniatures kits used some as well. most of the high end brick building kits back in the late 60's used mat board wall, with cardstock pressed with brick detail laminated on top. I really like the effect you are getting here. if your roof seams show, consider doing a tar paper roof usuing coffie filter material where we used tisue paper in Ho. it is thin enough to close to prototypical thickness, has a fine, even texture, and is thick enough it may help hide the joint lines.


Nelson

 

[Doctor G]

Hi Bill,
Thanks for looking. I like the Matte board (Art Board) as it is cheap. Styrene sheets to build this large model would have been pricey. The walls are built up using three layers. This makes them very strong.

On the side view the window frames are in the "middle layer" of this wall sandwich. I need to cut an mount the outer layer.

I was thinking black tar paper roofs also. This would allow me to skip a tube of squadron green putty. you use up a lot of supplies in these monster builds. I like the coffee filter idea....may use that.

Tom

 

[Doctor G]

Breathing a sigh of relief that the roof with the funky end curves and all the clerestory windows is finished.



Here is an interior shot in the tan brown that the interior of the coach is also painted.

The roof was built up using styrene strip, corner pieces from the donor coach, and sheets of Art Board.

It is in primer paint now and will be painted with red trim. I will put on a black canvas/tar paper type covering. This should hide all the many seams from the plastic surgery.

Learning a lot from this build.



Tom



Doc Tom and the Little River RR guys in East Tennessee.

 

[Bill Nelson]

Looking good Tom, I noticed the moss by the track in the photo, did you have any moss in your back yard befor you imported those mossy rocks from my woods?

 

[Doctor G]

Looking good Tom, I noticed the moss by the track in the photo, did you have any moss in your back yard befor you imported those mossy rocks from my woods?

Thanks Bill. Some of the moss you see was growing there by mother nature. The moss between the ties was transplanted from cracks in our driveway. I like the effects the English Garden RR's achieve with moss all over their track and wanted to give it a try on this backwoods layout.

Tom

 

[Doctor G]

The Southern RR combine car has progressed a little further. I was able to cover the roof and place alternating green and frosted white glass in the clerestory windows up top.

Red siding and window sills have been applied to one of the car sides.

Still to be done:



Build up windows and finish the other side.

Figure out some way to get "quarter round" strip in to the corners of the model.

Thanks for looking.



Doc Tom



Doc Tom and the Little River RR guys in East Tennessee.

 

[Bill Nelson]

to get an odd size quarter round, start with square stock, and shave, file and sand it to the quaerter round you need. not quick or easy, but sometimes it is the only way.

 

[Doctor G]

Boss Crumb loves it when a loaded log train makes its way down from Elkmont.

When it stops at the Fish Camp Commissary, he's real happy.

He knows he's got some customers and sales to make at the company store.

Doc Tom

 

[Bill Nelson]

looks good Tom!

 

[Doctor G]

The fellas out on the Little River RR wanted to model the hard working AH&D Log Loaders that were seen throughout the Smoky Mountains.

So they turned to the 21st century technology of 3D design at Shapeways.com and found a very good 3D modeler Nikita Krutov nik_kru@yahoo.de from across the pond in Germany.



He was able to work with the good ole boys of the LRRR in designing a 1:20.3 model of this hard working beast.



He was able to work with these modern day images of the AH&D loader first built in the very early 20th century:

CASS WEST VIRGINIA

LITTLE RIVER RR MUSEUM, TOWNSEND TENNESSEE

CRADLE OF FORESTRY, PISGAH NF, NORTH CAROLINA



This is the 3 D image he came up with:

Now the fellas will look around for a 3D printer to build this interesting bit of early 20th century technology and move some logs.



Notice the steam engine is not included in the drawing, the intent was to reduce the printing costs and use one of the commercially available modeled steam engines.



Thanks for looking and any and all advice regarding the printing process and how to do it inexpensively.



Doc Tom



Doc Tom and the Little River RR guys in East Tennessee.

 

[Bill Nelson]

The hardest part, whe winches are not there, seems to me the things to concentrate would be the base, the boom, the boiler and the winches, you could build the shelter easily and probably more cheaply from more normal materials. Unless there is mopre detail on the cad image of the boiler, that is probably not worth the cost either. I have the HO Rio grande models kit unbuilt to study from. it looks like a big syringe like I used to use to mix Joey's IV Meds or a feeding syringe I have as well may be close to the boiler size. On one of the HO Surry parkers I built, I made the boiler out of a 10 mm syringe; I think I'm the only one who can trll which boiloer is the scratchbuilt brass one, and wich was mase from the syringe. Unless this guy has a lot of detail on the boiler, likey the cost of printing is not going to be worth it. the boom looks real good, and printing the boom might very well be worthwhile.

It was my intent to work on one of these for you, but my RR project got crazy, should you like to borrow the Rio Grande models kit to measure the parts, and study the machenery tyoe and placement, perhaps some of the Ozark Miniatures winches would be close. should you be ready to start on your own, I'd be hapy to consult, and perhaps make a part or two.

Bill Nelson

 

[Doctor G]

The hardest part, whe winches are not there, seems to me the things to concentrate would be the base, the boom, the boiler and the winches, you could build the shelter easily and probably more cheaply from more normal materials. Unless there is mopre detail on the cad image of the boiler, that is probably not worth the cost either. I have the HO Rio grande models kit unbuilt to study from. it looks like a big syringe like I used to use to mix Joey's IV Meds or a feeding syringe I have as well may be close to the boiler size. On one of the HO Surry parkers I built, I made the boiler out of a 10 mm syringe; I think I'm the only one who can trll which boiloer is the scratchbuilt brass one, and wich was mase from the syringe. Unless this guy has a lot of detail on the boiler, likey the cost of printing is not going to be worth it. the boom looks real good, and printing the boom might very well be worthwhile.

It was my intent to work on one of these for you, but my RR project got crazy, should you like to borrow the Rio Grande models kit to measure the parts, and study the machenery tyoe and placement, perhaps some of the Ozark Miniatures winches would be close. should you be ready to start on your own, I'd be hapy to consult, and perhaps make a part or two.

Bill Nelson

Hi Bill,
Thanks for taking a gander at the 3D beast. Yes, there is rivet detail on the boiler when the image is blown up and a lot of nice detail on the boom as you noted.

I scanned your HO Rio grande models kit plans a while back and saved them. They will be very useful when I get in to rigging etc..

Also the 3D printing business is getting pretty competitive and hopefully I can get a good deal. The 3D plan can be broken down and Nik already did the boom as a separate part. He designed a neat pivot mechanism where the body can turn on the lower pedestal and the boom goes up and down.

This is all new technology for me and is fascinating. Particularly for rare models and hard to find repair parts.

Tom

 

[Doctor G]

My "new" Newqida observation car arrived in the mail today and I thought you all might like to take a look.



It arrived in good shape and I was impressed at its rather large size and heft. One of the trucks was mounted backwards but it was easily remedied with a screw driver.



The model measured 22.75" in overall length.

This scaled out to 38 feet in 1:20.3.

It had these nifty little drop down walkways over the couplers.

Overall it had nice fit and finish. My wife liked the fact that is "was lettered for a doctor........with the big DR." We had a little chat about the German railway system.



Of course I had to try a B&W set up to try and look like the prototype.

I took the safety railings off as Tennesseans are a pretty tough bunch and don't really need all that durn safety stuff.



Overall I am very pleased with this model and feel it was a great find for the $$$.



Doc Tom



Doc Tom and the Little River RR guys in East Tennessee.

 

[Doctor G]

I have started working with another Large Scale modeler on the Large Scale Central site and he has come up with this rendering of my 3D design. You can see the detail of the undercarriage. Hopefully he will have an economical way to print this beast and I might have a new piece of equipment for the Little River RR in the back yard.

Tom