Little here, Little there

 The heat and humidity found us as soon as July did this year, and it has been well timed with the onset of summer activities.  We had a more busy June than normal, with Susie's promotion to the new school for her upcoming 7th grade year along with the school play and family vacations.  As we get past Independence Day and settle into July, there is time here and there for some smaller layout projects that help to keep momentum on progress.  

I am happy to report that the two CP intermodal flats we started last month are finished and have turned out great.  Rapido really filled a niche in the HO market with these.  

Check out the details here!  What I remember most seeing these in the 90's was the faded CP 'Action Red' paint and the open grating in areas where there were unlikely to be tires.  This saved considerable weight but kept the car safe for personnel and mechanical workers.  It is awesome to see these in HO scale!

 Meanwhile the guys at ScaleTrains continue to impress, with two recent offerings really just continuing to set an extremely high bar for the hobby going forward.  Each of these two are stunning models.

These are stock offerings, all I did was add weathering to these.  They are so beautifully rendered that I had to take some outdoor shots too.

 

Utterly amazing details - look at the lettering on this medallion!  As you can see this unit ended up very clean looking even after weathering, and that is because it is: the Onondaga Cutoff is set in 1994, and this unit was delivered in springtime 1994.   The D&RGW GP30, on the other hand, is more than 30 years old by that point, and is showing more age.

We have discussed that principle here before, but it is a major reason I enjoy weathering so much (especially as the hobby advances and delivers better and better models out of the box) - weathering customizes each model to fit an era and location.  It is part of modeling and is one that as time passes we can get better and better at.  

Speaking of that, too, the 3D printing world is getting to the point where it is hard to believe our fortune.  A well-known Conrail fan purchased an old Conrail hi-rail truck at auction, then had it 3D scanned and now it is available as a kit from a seller on Facebook.  Mine got some paint last night.

Modeling maintenance of way has a lot to do with railroading, and things are so good these days we even have perfect scale model kits of maintenance trucks!  

Can't go wrong these days, everyone.  There is a lot to enjoy now and more to look forward to.