New Kings Port & Western Power

Hi all,

A recent chance glance at eBay revealed an auction for a never-been-used, undecorated Athearn "Super F7" (with the large heavy weight) which I ended up winning at an excellent price.   The unit quickly arrived after purchase.  I was originally going to paint it Penn Central black but then decided my freelanced Kings Port & Western needed more road power.

I have a pair of F7's that I painted for the KP&W a long time ago and have since found that the paint color I used is no longer available.   I ran into this when looking for colors for the RS3 unit I recently added to the KP&W roster.  The old F7s are lighter than the new RS3.

My plan was to paint the loco shell the same blue as the RS3 but to experiment with orange stripe decals as  away of further decorating the engine instead of attempting to mask and paint a stripe myself.  Looking over MicroScale's catalog it seemed that their C&O passenger car  decal set might have the sort of stripes I was looking for so I purchased a set at my LHS to give it a try.  While at the store I also noticed an F7B shell for $4.00 which I purchased, thinking to make a matched consist with the new F7A.  
I have an Athearn Penn Central B unit and figured I could interchange the shells as I wished for each road.   

I started with the B unit and achieved decent results.  The orange stripe is more yellow than the stripe on my other KP&W F7s but I figured I could live with it.   I liked how easily the decal made adding a stripe compared to masking and painting.

I added the road name decals I had made by RailGraphics.

 

My attempt to add stripes to the F7A, however was a disaster.  The remaining stripes on the decal sheet immediately disintegrated on contact with the loco shell and had to be quickly wiped off.  A friend suggests the decal sheet may have been old, leading to the decals becoming fragile to the point of uselessness.

So, I went back to the drawing board and decided to mask and paint a stripe using a light color of orange I had on had used on my KP&W boxcar fleet.

 After the first application I realized that it was a poor match for the C&O decal stripe and wasn't anywhere near close the orange on the early F7s I custom painted years ago.  I'd have THREE different shades of orange striping on the layout.  I decided that was unacceptable and ended up re-doing the entire project, using the orange and blue I used on the RS3 unit.  Here is how the new F7 A&B consist came out.

Here is the new F7A&B consist in front of the older pair of F7A's along with the RS3.  There is now more uniformity among the fleet.  It has been suggested that the lighter units underwent some fading after being exposed to the elements, much like the Penn Central Red P's fading to pink or the Yellow on the PC FL9's fading to white.  I can go with that idea,  From now on, however, any additional KP&W locos will sport the blue and orange matching the new F7A&B consist and the RS3.

The F7A still need headlights, window glass, and horns.  These were not included in the box with the unit, which probably accounted, in part, for its low sales price. I  also plan to add some grab bars on the roof just behind the windshield.

So, that's the convoluted account of the Kings Port & Western's latest power.  The new F7 runs great, by the way!

Removing roof walks/running boards

Hi all!

I'm switching gears with this topic.  A while ago, a viewer of one of my YouTube videos commented about the roof walks on my Penn Central boxcars, noting that they would have been removed during my layout's era.    Frankly I hadn't thought about that but the feedback motivated me to take a closer look at videos of Penn Central trains (The Green Frog series I own and other films found online) to check that out.  I noticed that the Penn Central boxcars in most trains indeed did not have roof walks while many of the cars from other roads still sported them.  Many of the Penn Central cars looked more modern than the 40 foot cars from some other roads and appeared to never have had a roof walk.   I have ONE car like that on my roster!  (seen below)

Conversations with fellow modelers and some research online yielded impressions, if not primary source information, about the removal of roof walks (also apparently known as running boards) from boxcars in American railroading.   It seems, according to several sources, that the ICC ruled that boxcars ordered after April 1966 and/or delivered after October 1966 were no longer to be fitted with roof walks.  Hand brakes had to be set low so crewmen no longer needed to access the roof to brake a car.  Ladders were cut shorter (as in the photo above).   Presumably this was a movement in the industry to reduce the risk of injuries to crewmen on the car roofs.

 A number of sources noted that there had been a 1974 cut off date for when all roof walks were to be removed, but it was extended beyond the Penn Central era.

So, based on this information I decided to remove some of the roof walks from many of my PC boxcars to reflect the prototype practice of attempting to comply with the new safety reg.   A lot of my PC boxcar fleet are Tyco and Bachmann cars that I upgraded with Kaydee couplers and metal wheelsets.  Most had roof walks that were removable but others are molded on which, of course, makes them impossible to remove w/o damaging the car.   

Examples of removable:

Molded example:

Here's how I worked with the cars that had removable roof walks.   It is easy to pry the roof walks from the top of the car.  Doing so leaves the roof with four holes that accommodated the roof walk installation pegs.   These holes need to be filled in and disguised.  Tools for the job included Green Putty, needle files, some fine grade sandpaper (not pictured), and weathering chalks.

After filling the holes with putty, allowing it to dry, and doing some initial sanding and filing, the now roofwalkless (is that a word!?) cars await more detailed care.

Sanding wore away some of the factory paint on the models, creating black streaks on the roofs that actually look like road-weary weathering to me.    The Green Putty is clearly visible since it is a lighter shade than PC Jade Green.  It couldn't be that easy, of course!

I continued light sanding and filing to remove as much of the putty as possible without re-opening the holes.  I then brushed on rust colored and black artist chalk powder to blend the putty with the roofs.  I don't usually seal chalk weathering with a matte finish spray since that tends to virtually obliterate most of the effects, but I did with these cars and it seemed to turn out OK. 

I'm especially pleased with the way this Bachmann car turned out

 

This was a relatively easy project that yielded satisfying results.  I still run some PC cars that have molded roof walks but I'm content with the idea that the Penn Central just hasn't yet gotten around to removing those yet.  The company certainly had a lot of other issues to worry about!  

Thanks for taking a look!

Operations 4: FINALLY! A video about the car cards!

I've finally completed and uploaded a YouTube video about the use of the Penn Central Car Movement Cards.   Hope this is helpful in describing how I'm using them to run ops on the layout.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QdNXt97AFo