By Bruce Petty Have you ever wondered how box cars were unloaded at a freight dock?I did a little research on the Internet and found pictures of what are called Forklift Dock Plates. This is a very common item found around prototype loading docks, but never seen until now in […]
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by Bruce Petty Here’s a few freight cars that run on my Los Angeles & San Fernando Valley Railroad. Finished this Wine Tank car 10-21-2011, by modifying an Athearn Chemical Tank Car.The single dome was removed from the tank body, hole filled and sanded smooth.I casted six domes from one […]
By Bruce Petty Nowadays we have highly detailed HO model freight cars being released monthly. They have separate grab irons, thin metal see-through roof walks, better detailed trucks and Kadee style couplers. Nice looking cars, but each car can cost $25.00 or more. So a 20 car freight can cost […]
By Bruce Petty One of my favorite types of Southern Pacific freight trains was the Make-Up-Eugene (MUG) flat car train that ran from Los Angeles, Taylor yard north into Oregon, returning empty flat cars to lumber mills for reloading. I’ve seen this train with what seemed like a hundred flat […]
Another no-cost modeling project. By Bruce Petty Last May the Ash tree in our back yard flowered, then the little flowers fell to the ground. I noticed that these little flowers looked exactly like scale bushes, so I set a few on the layout to see. They looked like prototype […]
By Bruce Petty Eucalyptus trees on my layout are made from dead Manzanita branches and Petite Pines Northern tree matting material. If you live or can visit areas of the west where Manzanita grows, a few hours finding and picking the dead branches will end up being a lot of […]