Legos and Model Railroading

When I'm decaling a car, I find it a little annoying when I have finished one side of the car and I have to wait for the decals to dry before I can decal the other side of the car.  This is not a problem when I am decaling a whole fleet at once, because I can then go and decal the other cars, and by the time I am finished doing that, the first one is ready.  However, with only one or two cars, you are left with some down time between decaling the sides.  I fixed this problem today with legos.

The problem is not that the wet decals will fall off the car if you turn it over, it is that if anything, such as the desk you are working on, touches the wet decals, it can mess them up.  I fixed this by building a device out of legos that touches the car only on the top and bottom edges, which are very unlikely to be decalled, so any decals on that side of the car can dry upside down while you work on the side that is facing up.

This device holds most types of rolling stock.  I built it around a box car, but it can also hold just about anything else.  I wouldn't try putting a flat car in it, and I would be careful with a tank car because there is a chance it might hit the decals on those.

I am not going to go into a long explanation about how to build this.  A similar device could probably be made out of styrene or wood, but I just thought legos would be easiest for this project.  Instead I will share my photos and you can study them to see how it works so you can build your own out of whatever material you like.

A box car in the device.

The walls of the device are high enough to prevent the car from being bumped out.

The device only touches the car's top and bottom edges, making it safe to flip a car over with wet decals to work on the other side.

Detail of the device without a car in it.

Video Tutorial: Sergent Engineering Couplers

Today's post is another video tutorial. In the last one, James showed us how to make working cushioned drawbars on HO scale models with Sergent Engineering couplers. Today I walk you through step-by-step on how to assemble the couplers. It can be tricky at first, but it's an easy process and I usually assemble a whole bunch of them all at once and put them on a bunch of my cars. I still have a ways to go before I've converted my whole fleet, but I made a video as a way to get myself to get some cars done. Anyway, here is the video, I hope you enjoy!

Click here to see a product review of Sergent Engineering couplers and here to go to the Sergent Engineering website.

Tutorial: Cushioned Drawbars

Today I am sharing a video James and I made in July. James figured out a simple way to add working cushioned drawbars to model trains, and this video explains how. It is very easy to do, and adds that much realism to your freight cars. On the real trains, cushioned drawbars help to protect the load in the car by absorbing some of the impact during coupling, so the load doesn't move around as much. A lot of box cars and flat cars are equipped with these.

James and I hope to post videos more often, so be on the lookout for those! If you haven't already, you can subscribe to our YouTube channel and see videos there that we haven't posted here.

Anyways, my rant is over. Enjoy the video!