Some interesting general freight to consider

Ok, so locating boxcars used on the FUS was not a problem and both the 50' and 40' are well documented. The 50' car I found was a run of the mill PS2 boxcar with 8' doors...Kadee will do nicely there.  40's are a bit more problematic in that the ones I can find photo's of were built in mexico and are different then any currently on the market.  If you are like me, a Kadee 40' PS will work, but there is a nice write up on Mexilist that walks you through kit bashing them that I will post later.  It might be a good subject for a casting write up.  F&S resin models makes several boxcars that were used down south and I will reference them later as well.

I wanted to post two pictures of some general freight cars that will visit my layout.  NdeM was the government owned railroad starting in 1909 through the 1990's and early on it was called the Mexican Government Railway System or MGRS.  I had a difficult time locating anything on the markings until I came across the Canadian Freight Railcar Gallery ( http://freight.railfan.ca/ )  web site that has a nice listing of Mexican Railroads.  They just happen to feature two builders photos of a gondola and a covered hopper.  The photo's are clear enough to see all the important markings and I think these will make their appearance on the layout soon.

  The Gondola, not sure of the proto at the moment but it was part of the series82000-82134 and am assuming either black or freight car brown.  I'll check in to that.  Build date is 1958

The second is the PS2 two bay hopper and this is a match for the Kadee and others.  The series this belonged to was 81800-81839 with a build date of 1961.

Both of these cars would have roamed most of Mexico before having their markings updated, but given I'm modeling the mid 70's I don't see why I couldn't drop a few of these in as is.

Below are a couple of shots of my newly minted MGRS PS2.  Decals were made on my Alps printer and applied to a undec Kadee HO car.  I posed it in the spur track in the old oil field.  I kept it cleaner than I normally would given the date these ran.  They would have appeared slightly messed up but not trashed. :)

Motive power comes to Los Robles

There's not a lot of info on FUS diesels on line but enough to create a nice model.  I had a few extra Bachmann S4s in SP and since I was narrowing the focus on my PE plans...they became available.  FUS didn't use Alco S4s but did have a pair of S6s.  I'm less concerned about being a purist and more about getting things moving so this fudge is acceptable for me.  I know there are some conversions out there and when things are settled a bit more, may look that direction for a proper Alco S6.  I stripped the SP Tiger Stripes off and repainted using Tamyia acrylic paint pre weathered.  Decals I drew up on Corell and printed on my Alps and then did a final weathering using some oils and acrylics.  When you are weathering something you are putting decals on I find it best to pre weather the car as much as you can before adding the markings.  Unless you trim right up to the image you run the risk of the clear carrier boarders being picked out by the application of paint over them.  In this case, I trimmed the black lines up to the color, weathered the whole car, a final coat of gloss clear and applied the numbers and the FUS logo.  That was then sealed again using gloss coat with a final flat coat to finish. Then I did a very light overspray of very thin tan acrylic paint to blend making sure not to accent decal boarders.  Its a few extra steps, but the end result is rewarding.

I still need to paint the interior part of the shell black, remove the side windows and make sun shades for the cab windows.  The railing should really be orange with black fixtures, so I ordered some of the right color from Bachmann that will be applied later.  The engineering plastic used here will not allow paint to stick, but if pressed you can use something like the Pactra or Testers paint made for the inside of Lucite clear RC race cars.  That stuff sticks to anything and remains flexable.  Acrylics, Lacquers and even enamels will get brittle with time and any flexing will flake the paint off.  This paint, when applied as directed with an even coat encapsulates the part and flexes with it.  I have a couple of locos Ive used this on, especially the white safety railing for steps and ladders with no chipping at all.