InterurbanEra

Building Models & Making Videos

πŸš‹Chill model making videos & railroad history.🚊


✨I'm one of the few people on planet Earth whose day job is building model railroads for a living! It's very fun. ✨


β–Ί Go ahead and PLEASE comment on posts, I want to start great conversations on here!


When I was a kid I watched a shorter version of this video showing off the (then very impressive) flight sim "FLY!" (1999) and got its unusual song stuck in my head which is really snappy late nineties electronic triphop music, reminiscent of the then contemporary album "Psyence Fiction" by UNKLE which came out in 1997. Up to that point I'd never heard anything like it before, growing up with Jazz, Classical, Country, and a singular copy of Brian Eno's "Music for Airprorts."

No credit in the little video included as a game trailer in what must have been Railroad Tycoon II, but the song stuck with me all these years, until today when I had it stuck in my head again, and stumbled on the longer version of the original trailer:

and a comment caught my eye: "Love the Tricerus Asteroid Belt CD theme music from Hellbender playing in the background" and so I went digging even further, and sure enough, after 25 years, I found my white whale. An ear worm I'd had with me since childhood solved. Hopefully I'll sleep restfully tonight.

It sent me down a rabbithole of retro-gaming I totally missed as a kid, the combat space mission game genre, which in retrospect I absolutely would have loved as a kid. Hellbender (and its predecessor, Fury) are almost unwatchable to play with really harshly textured basic polygonal ships. It's not a pretty game, but it does have some sweet cutscenes entering/exiting wormholes and other early 90s 3D animation that's closer to music video for "I can't wait" by Nu Shooz than, say Bethesda's Starfield.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJ1tBVtYOBc

Also, if you haven't heard of UNKLE, they're quite a band. My neighbor introduced me to them a decade ago, my outstanding favorite has to be: "Unreal" off the original album "Psyence Fiction"




This model interurban has been seen by probably tens if not hundreds of thousands of people over the decades at the Richmond California "Golden State Model Railroad Club", usually posed next to Oakland's 16th st. station.

It's an important part of Oakland, Alameda, Berkeley and Albany history, so it's great to get to work on this model. The real Interurban Electric Railway connected all of these cities with the Mole, a huge ferry terminal that took people efficiently to San Francisco on giant steam powered ferries. It ran from 1912-1939, the last couple of years it went over to the Transbay Terminal in SF over the lower deck of the Bay Bridge.

One of the members who built the entire Oakland streetcar network built it decades ago and now it needed to be upgraded to DCC. Fortunately he did a spectacular job with the drivetrain, using a really high end can motor and great quality gears. So the conversion was actually pretty easy. It was a really fun upgrade and hopefully the model will now be seen in operation running automatically between the giant Mole ferry terminal and the depot.

The model itself is 100% scratchbuilt from wood, styrene sheet and brass. It's deeply impressive. I initially thought it was a brass import when it was on the layout but was deeply surprised to find out it was built by hand.

It's always fun to bring old models back to life, especially one that's so widely admired by people who come visit the club museum. Now it'll hopefully bring even more joy to watch it run!



InterurbanEra
@InterurbanEra

Modeler Arved Grass elaborates:

How to paint brass? Here's what works for me:

  1. Disassemble model. Be sure any drivetrain parts (motor, gears, universals) are segregated away from the parts to be painted. Take lots of photos to document what goes where. Especially screws.
  2. Grit blast. I've been using 270 grit Aluminum oxide in a Paasche LAC$3 in an old Harbor Freight grit blasting cabinet. Many have suggested I go to 400 grit.
  3. Scrub clean with an old soft toothbrush and a good degreaser. Simple Green, Dawn Dish Soap... It really doesn't matter. Rinse.
  4. Rinse in ultrasonic cleaner with distilled water.
  5. Final rinse in 90% IPA. It will dry pretty fast. From now until the final coat of paint dries, model is handled with exam gloves.
  6. Prime. I've been airbrushing Floquil Zinc Chromate primer. Since that's no longer available, I'm switching to SEM self etching primer. If you held a gun to my head and told me I had to use a "paint bomb," I'd use Tamiya primer.
  7. I prefer Scalecoat paint on brass. Thankfully I have a stash. Rumor is it's no longer being produced. Get it while you can from dealers with stock (can't help you there - sorry).
  8. Mask with Tamiya and Frog painter's tape. The two seem to be identical. Tamiya comes in small strips handy for edge masking, curves, etc. The Frog tape covers larger areas, or can be cut into smaller bits.
  9. Scalecoat dries glossy, so no clear gloss is required before decaling, but a coat of gloss over the decals will help hide the edges. Do the gloss before your final coat of dull or semi-gloss. Reassemble model in reverse order of disassembly. Refer to the photos you took earlier. test drive to ensure everything is assembled and aligned correctly during assembly. Ditto coupler height. Isolate motor and add DCC/Sound/lighting as desired. during reassembly after mechanism is proven to work smoothly on DC. DCC will never fix a running issue. Now you know why the custom painters charge so much.

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