I’ve always envied modelers that have an endless supply of kits and supplies.  They always have something to work on.  Unfortunately some of them are just collectors of kits and never build anything.  Still, I’m in awe when I see stacks of unbuilt kits and drawers full of detail bits in someone’s work area.

I haven’t gotten to that point yet, but I do have a drawer or two in an old dresser that have several unbuilt items.   I’ve been looking through those drawers quite often lately in my exercise to have the layout “done” for the MFMR Convention in May.  I need structures! Chappellton hardly looks like a town and it’s supposed to be a city.  I need buildings – short and tall, fat and wide.  Brown buildings, red buildings, purple buildings – I don’t care!

Oh, and I need trees too.  Lots and lots of trees.  I doubt if I’ll get time to make any before Convention so I’ll have to make do.

So, what’s my next build?  Why, a tug boat of course!

I heard a while ago that Frenchman River Model Works had released a 92′ Railway Tug.  When I was asked to review it for Scratchbuilder’s Guild I nearly flipped.  The little 45′ Tug I reviewed for them last year just wasn’t cutting it in Chappellton.  The poor little thing was severely overworked!  So I jumped at the chance to build the “big brother”.

It arrived today and I hope to get started this evening.  I’ll make a post here when the review is complete and available at Scratchbuilder’s Guild.  After taking this photo I realize I have some barge building to do as well.

I haven’t opened the box yet.  I’ll leave that for this evening.

Scott

After a long break this project is back off the shelf.  I spent some time the other evening putting some signs on the sides of the building.  Visit Scratchbuilder’s Guild to see the process I used to make and apply the signs.

The next step will be to install the “glass” and figure out some way to make a decent looking interior without actually modeling an interior.  I think that computer graphics software will play a key role once again.

This building will be a nice addition to the city scene I imagine being in Chappellton.  Only about 2-1/2 months before it has to be ready for the MFMR Convention open house I’m hosting.  There’s a lot of work to do!

Must get back to work…

Scott

Ok, so we’ve had some problems with our sound decoders since we installed them a few weeks ago.  If you missed that post – here it is.

Anyway, Derwin’s loco lost all engine noise, but other sounds like horn and bell worked.  Both of mine were fine until Derwin ran one of them during an operating session.  The result was no engine noise, but bell and horn would work.  The commone denominator – Derwin – as usual!   HA!

I reprogrammed my loco (thank God for DecoderPro) and it worked fine.  The same fix didn’t work for Derwin unfortunately.  Then I got an email from Daniel Watkins thanking me for my post on installing these decoders.  After an exchange of a few emails we discovered his loco had a very similar problem.

So, the power of the public press came to the rescue.  I sent an email to MRC on Saturday.  I did not expect a reply until Monday or Tuesday.  However, when I turned on my computer Monday morning there was an email from Frank waiting for me.  Wow – I was impressed.  Here is Frank’s response…

Scott,

if you have horn and bell sounds but nothing else it is possible you inadvertently shut off the prime mover sounds

did you try double clicking the headlight button, [F0] as we use this as a mute, and also F12 is the sound on/off mute or try playing with CV # 49 to see if you can get the sounds back onif all eles fails send me the decoder, [no money] and i’ll check it out for you.

Frank