Saturday, October 31, 2020

BC Rail Hopper

 Well folks I was able to finish the Proto 2000 BC Rail hopper mentioned in the last post. It took me a total of approx 5-6 hours total time and I must say that I enjoyed building the kit. Good to get "back in the groove" I built the kit as per the instructions and once it was completed, I gave the car a lite coat of Dullcoat to dull the finish as well as to hide any small glue marks (nothing worse than seeing a nice kit carelessly assembled and seeing finger prints in dryed glue marks - aka the "glue bomb"!!! The only change I made was to substitute Kadee #148's in place of the plastic Proto 2000 couplers. I always use Kadee couplers when I can. I am going to try assembling one of the "Time Saver" versions of this kit and see what the time difference will be. On the box cover it states "Complete in one hour or less" - We shall see! I will report back once done. Here are some pictures of the completed BC Rail version. Till next time...


Southern Railway of British Columbia MP15DC #151 moving the BC Rail Hopper

BCOL PS2 Hopper #2317


Tuesday, October 27, 2020

I am Back

 Well folks - its been several months since my last post. It was a great summer and early fall here in the part of Canada that I live in and that is the main reason why my modeling was put on a hiatus. You know you have been away too long when even your wife says " You should start doing some modeling again" . Also with the pandemic still going strong across the world ( second wave kicking in), there has been no train shows to get me kick started - So that being said, I thought that in order to easy into it, I would put together a freight car kit from my collection of unbuilt kits. I acquired several Proto 2000 PS2 4427 High Sided Covered Hopper kits several years back. I built a couple in the past when they were first available ( probably approx 20 years ago), so I would expect that once I start, I should be reacquainted with the process relatively quickly. The first one I am going to build is a British Columbia Railways (BCOL) version - I picked this one, as I remember it being one of the ones that I built previously (and later sold off).  It is the full kit version and will take more time. Proto 2000 actually came out with three versions of this - 1) full kit version 2). Time Saver version - still a kit, but some of the subassemblies already assembled and 3) Ready to run version. I have all three (albeit only one of the Ready to Run Versions). From my pervious experience with these cars, I remember the finished kit being pretty nice and like most Proto 2000 freight cars, having a level of detail that holds up well still in comparison to todays Ready to Run freight cars.  Till next time, here are so some pictures of my collection - 


BCOL  kit prior to assembly

Ready to Run Version

Collection of 4427 PS 2 Hopper kits