James River Branch: News Archive

Website News Archive: October 2007

27 October 2007

Paint arrived over a week ago and I've barely been able to get anything done. Real life is just so incredibly busy that I'm lucky to have gotten the brown applied to the roof and frame. I also managed to lower the trucks even more than before, which is now affecting coupler height. My plan is to match the height on all of the other rolling stock, since the caboose represents something of a lowest-common-denominator: there is nothing I can possibly do to compensate owing to the platforms at each end, whereas freight cars have opportunities for creative adaptation.

7 October 2007

Although I was unable to complete the project I'd chosen for this weekend (owing to not having the right color of paint on hand), I did make some good headway and also made some exciting chance discoveries in the process of modifying the ride height of a caboose. Most significantly, I found a way to lower the caboose substantially without affecting coupler height. The secret is revealed in a new project page, Reading Caboose—which subsequently inspired a minor reorganization of the Construction page: rolling stock now gets its own heading, as does structures.

4 October 2007

Check out that new homepage photo! Since tracklaying is not yet complete, the train is just sitting on the ties! The low-angle view was achieved by shooting downward at a front-surface mirror.