My steers arrived yesterday from the folks at Aspen Modeling Co.

http://www.theaspenmodelingcompany.com/index.html

And they are indeed a good looking bunch of critters. Not only are they actual steers, not cows, but the modeling work is excellent.

I've finished building all the extendable gates that bridge the gap between the chutes and the stock cars. I was originally just going to glue them on but I thought it might be nice to have them swing instead. so I needed to make some small hinges, but how.

The new siding at Jake's is now up and ready to receive stock cars. It's a tad overgrown and the ballast is mostly dirt but it gets the job done. Work has now started on the unloading chutes and stock pens. I've been experimenting with sanded grout for ground cover (that's what the siding is covered in) and when I soak it down with water I don't want the corrals to go all catty-wampus so I'm building them all out of styrene. It's been fun weathering the heck out of them.

Was poking about on the old interweb the other day and ran across a rather informative website about how a slaughter house ships and receives freight by rail.

http://www.atsfrr.net/resources/Sandifer/Clinics/Packing/Index.htm

It made me realize that Jake's, while not a huge mainline kinda' operation definitely needed some extra trackage.

Tony Thompson's article last month on creating more realistic waybills got me inspired to deal with my old waybill situation. I was having some issues with the ebb and flow of traffic on my railway and needed to create some new bills an probably remove others to adjust the traffic flow. I was not looking forward to this, but Tony's article got my juices flowing and I decided that If I'm going to mess with the waybills I might as well make mine more realistic as well.

Had to replace some of the toner cartridges in my laser printer the other day, and while paying 50 bucks a pop for coloured dust leaves me a little cold I was glad I looked over the old cartridges to see what makes 'em tick. They are full of little gears and "castings" After I ripped all the useful parts off them I gave them a spray of silver paint. When the silver was dry I gave them a rusty wash followed by a dark wash and Voila! 

I purchased a MMI K-27 several years ago and have done nothing with it. It is really to big for my railway, but I have a soft spot in my heart for the "Mudhen" ever since a friend and I spent a warm summer night in the cab of one in Chama chatting with the night hostler and his black lab "Baldwin". Ahhh, Chama.