Could Be A While!

Well, our house has been on the market since July and we haven't had much action. It's not just us. Local realtors say things have pretty much come to a halt. The only comfort is that Texas is doing better than most of the country. However, we are blessed to have no timetable, no pressing need to move, unlike those with job transfers, etc.

So in the meantime, I will continue to work away at my Orient Express coach. It's not like working on or operating a layout, to be sure, but under the current circumstances it's about all the model railroading I'll be able to do for a while. Besides, it's fun!

Yesterday I finished cutting out the windows for the inner layer of one car side...the "corridor side" of the car. I than begin adding small styrene strips (really small, around 1/16 inch wide) around the inside of the window openings on the outside layer. These will give the openings a finished look, ever so slightly rounded at the corners.

Thinking ahead, I've been considering roof material. The coach roof is quite round and if styren won't curve that much, I may have to use balsa which, when soaked in a vinegar/water mix, is easily curved. That's a trick my son-in-law Craig, who has scratchbuilt model aircraft, taught me.

Orient Express Coach Progress

At last, as promised, here are photos of work to date on my Orient Express coach. It's a 1930s-era coach and is very similar to the one used in the Murder On The Orient Express (1974) movie starring Albert Finney and a superb cast. I'm building it in S Scale, of course, using passenger trucks I had available that are actually close in appearance to the prototype. While this model will never run on my (future reassembled) layout because the coach is European, I hope it will be a nice bookshelf display piece.

I was, as mentioned previously, very fortunate to find detailed plans of the interior and exterior, as well as color photos. This model coach is on display, I understand, at a railroad museum in Mulhouse, France.

Now, for the photos. In order from the top...

Photo 1: This is a little hard to see in the photo, but I drew out the sides in pencil on a sheet of styrene. Each side was drawn twice to provide an outer and inner layer; acetate "glass" will be sandwiched between.

Photo 2, 3: The interior partitions. Materials include basswood, balsa, and cardstock.

Photo 4: The work so far. One side's windows have been cut out and the second layer of that side is in progress.

I've Been Gone

Just realized I haven't posted here in over a month! Seriously, I had no idea how time had passed. We just returned from a trip to Branson, Missouri, where we enjoyed shows and sightseeing and visiting with Susie's sister and her husband, who had driven down from Des Moines.

It's good to be back in our (so far unsold) home after a 1,500-mile roundtrip drive. Now it's time to resume work on my Orient Express coach. Photos soon...I promise!

Orient Express

I've been working on my 1930's Orient Express coach and have the basic frame and interior partitions about finished. Next job will be interior door detail, painting the interior and then adding detail such as seating, tables, etc. Then it will be back to exterior work...sides, ends, etc. I've been thinking about how to model the European-style draft gear and I think I'll make the buffers out of either styrene or brass and the screw couplings using stiff wire. Photos soon!

Obviously, we're still waiting for our house to sell. We've had some showings, but no offers yet. It's more than an understatement to say the market is slow, though better here in Texas than most places.

I Found It

After searching several packed and well-sealed boxes in our garage, I found my Orient Express car model, paint, and plans, as well as my modeling tools and model wood supply. To prepare our home for sale, the "train room" had been packed up, of course, for real estate "staging" purposes.

Anyway, I resumed work on the model a couple of days ago...it's nice to be back into model building!

While I Am Waiting...

Our house has been on the market a month now and we've had a couple of showings. The real estate market here in Texas, while better than most of the country, is still slow. So it may be a while before we sell. In the meantime, I've been enjoying time with my wife Susie and other family members and am keeping busy with yard work, catching up on my reading, and miscellaneous projects. My model railroad is packed away, along with rolling stock and modeling tools.

However, I am thinking of opening up a box so I can resume work on a scratchbuilding project I started when we lived in Idaho. It's one of those long-term...very long-term...projects that I work on when I'm in the mood. I had one of those, a scratchbuilt wooden passenger coach, that took me years to complete. I enjoyed working on it, especially since I felt no urgency to finish. The work was relaxing and thoroughly enjoyable and while I was happy with the completed model, I did kind of miss having it to work on!

The project I'm thinking of reviving is a model of an Orient Express coach. Now, I have no interest in constructing anything other than an American layout. Except...the Orient Express, particularly as it was in the 1930's, has always intrigued me. And yes, I have read Murder On The Orient Express twice and have seen the 1974 movie several times. I have long thought it would be fun to construct a model of a 1930's Wagon-Lits coach to display on a bookshelf.

So a while back, while still living in Eagle, Idaho, I started doing some research. I was fortunate enough to find a plan that details the interior compartment arrangements, as well as the exterior. And it was easily convertible to S Scale! I also found useful color photos.

So far, I only have a skeleton of the car constructed from balsa and basswood. I've been concentrating on the interior partitions, but now it's time to work on the ends and sides, which I plan to make from sheet styrene. The trucks are extremely close in appearance to four wheel S Scale passenger trucks I'd purchased from American Models, so that's a real piece of luck.

This project will require great care and can't be rushed. And that's exactly what I'm looking for right now!

Still Waiting, Still Planning

While we're waiting for someone to buy our house, I'm continuing to think about adapting my now-disassembled layout to a "new" room. Since it is unlikely the new space will be exactly the same as the old, I have been passing the time by considering possible "re-assembly" scenarios.

Inconvenient closet location: This may cause some problems. The old room, 11' x 13', had the entry door and closet on the same side, with a window opposite. Some homes we've looked at have a similar room arrangement, though with slightly different dimensions, but which would still accommodate the layout sections built so far without a hitch, and which would require only slight modification of the original plan for the unbuilt layout sections.

Others, however, have the entry and closet on different walls. The most difficult case I've seen so far has the entry on one wall, a closet and a door to the outside on yet a different wall, exactly opposite from the inside entry door. From a fire safety standpoint there's no way I would block the exit to the outside, even with a swinging bridge device, etc. The closet was a single-door, spaced about 18" from the wall. A 24" long swinging bridge would probably work; approaching benchwork would have to allow for the closet door to open, and I would definitely want access for storage of modeling supplies and my large magazine collection. An additional possibility to increase layout space would be small "peninsulas" jutting out into the room from the layout ends.

Room used for other purposes: While most houses we've considered have two guest bedrooms, which means one would be exclusively for model railroading, we've seen a couple with only one guest room, which was pretty spacious. The guest room, in our case, would only be in use a few times per year. So I considered a total layout plan revision, a layout on a bookshelf, say 9'6" x 2'...totally arbitrary dimensions, but I had to start somewhere. I could fairly easily use existing track by simply sawing out the white pine roadbed and the strip of particle board baseboard under it, so my previous work wouldn't be wasted. However, in such limited space I would model an industrial area with relatively dense trackage and use building flats against the backdrop for industry sidings. There would also be room for a small pier, so the harbor terminal theme could be salvaged.

I'd also consider raising the layout height from my present 42" to maybe 48".

I don't think this will be the scenario, but it has been fun to see what kind of track plan would fit in such a compact area. The trains.com website (Model Railroader) has some compact track plans. Though they are in HO, they do provide some usable ideas.