Ace-Garageguy

Published top speed was about 110 MPH.

Unless the look you're going for is a backyard latex paint job done with a roller...

That's the plan. Since the new place has decent sized shop buildings for real cars separate from the house, at least part of the attached garage will house a train layout. In particular, I want to model a smokestack-America-era steel mill...

I agree. Early gasser rules allowed chopped tops anyway (though I don't know if it was still NHRA-legal in '65), so it's fine by me. For that matter, I'm pretty certain this kit is supposed to represent a "nostalgia" gasser and not a historical period-correct class runner, so why not?

Fine looking models. Especially appealing to me as I have a real '63 Dynamic 88 convertible (identical body style to yours, minus the Starfire side trim), the car I drove in high school, awaiting restomodding.

It's called a "centipede" tender. Like all tenders for steam locomotives, it carried the water and coal or oil fuel the engine ran on. NYC used the same general design of centipede tenders with the same wheel arrangement as Union Pacific (and other railroads) used for its Challengers and Big Boys (though only UP used Big Boys), but NYC's could scoop water from between the rails to give the locomotive more range between stops. Quoting from O Gauge Railroader Online Forum: "They could hold more weight in water or fuel or both and distribute that weight over more axles to maintain lower axle loadings. The New York Central tenders, which utilized water scoops for taking water on the fly, had very large coal bunkers to enable Harmon, NY to Chicago, IL or Harmon, NY to Mattoon, IN (St. Louis Line) with one stop for coal at Wayneport, NY near Rochester. Another advantage of the NYC tenders was their long rear overhang and shorter relative wheelbase allowed the locomotives equipped with them to be turned on 100 foot turntables. The UP tenders were more conventionally balanced between coal bunker and water cistern compartments." Quoting further from the same source: "With a rigid 5 axle wheelbase that was cast integral with the frame, it saved weight vs a similar size tender with swivel trucks and this weight savings translated into an increase in weight efficiency vs payload. The rigid wheelbase might have resulted in better tracking and ride at high speeds vs a swivel truck tender. (edit:...though it also made them more prone to derail on tight radius turns in yards...) With overflow control, water could be scooped from track pans at 80 mph. Previous 12 wheel tenders with water scoops were limited to 45 mph. When the Niagaras (a different locomotive than we're discussing here) were built, the use of this tender resulted in a loco and tender wheelbase of 97'-2-1/2", so the engine would fit on a 100 ft turntable, which were available at several locations on the NYC main line." Below is a non-streamlined Hudson pulling a "centipede" tender on the NYC. The tender behind my new streamlined Hudson isn't exactly correct for the NYC. It looks more like the tenders seen behind UP's Big Boys, below.

Far as I can tell so far, nobody's getting out of here alive anyway.

Great to see this one back in progress. Looking really great too.

Finally, after years of looking, I scored an AHM / Rivarossi New York Central Henry Dreyfus-designed streamlined 4-6-4 J-3a "Hudson" locomotive. The one I've been after all this time is very special, as it has Scullin drivers and a centipede tender (most of these are not so equipped). I think this is one of the most beautiful machines ever made by man, right up there with the Pennsy S1 and T1 locomotives, the Lockheed Constellation, the Convair B-58 "Hustler" bomber, the 1953 Raymond Loewy-designed Studebaker, and the '55-'57 Thunderbirds. The model was produced from 1972 through 1981, and sold for right at $200 at the end of the run. Mine has a retail sticker of $179.95, so the price I paid for this NOS piece seems reasonable. It has no indication it's ever been run. Though there are the inevitable minor accuracy shortcomings, it's a great looking model, captures the look of the real one very well, and I'm happy.

Looks great. Makes a gorgeous ragtop. Rumor has it that the factory actually built two convertibles for internal evaluation. Some years back, there were photos circulating of a car that was supposedly one of them, very rough, but with top bows and workmanship that were far and away better than what you'd expect from most customizers.

Correct. Although "black mold" can cause health issues, it's hardly deadly, especially if you don't breathe much in. I have personal experience with several buildings being infested with the stuff...one of which I'm living in now, after I decontaminated it. I've been here for six years and I've yet to wake up dead.

All your extra effort really paid off. This is one of the best renditions of the real car I've ever seen. In particular, your narrowing of the axles to get the stance right, and the replacement of the pleated upholstery really make a huge difference. The improvement from the engine swap goes without saying. Very nice work, sir.

Looks good, and they'll be getting my money... ...but the top looks slightly chopped to me. Anybody else see it?

I admittedly don't know much about this kind of racing, but it's been my impression over the years that the guts of the cars haven't changed that much for decades. Assuming that, these books might be of some value to you:

Very interesting. A few years back I bought an as-new first generation Unimat (1960s vintage), and have been happy with its capability to do fine work...especially after several upgrades. There's a sizable Unimat users community, and lotsa parts and accessories still available as NOS. My other lathe is a 12 inch gap-bed unit I bought back in '96. Sometimes I think I'd like another unit sized between the two, but so far they've managed to handle everything I've asked.

You never previously stated "I never go into the WIP section of the forum" as far as I'm aware, so any "surmise" I may or may not have made was based on available information. And the topic, if I'm not mistaken, is OLD THREADs. Nowhere is it stated what particular kinds of old threads we're allowed to discuss.

My old man introduced me to building models. The first two of his that really grabbed me were a large-scale sticks-and-tissue glow-plug-engined control-line flying Beechcraft Staggerwing, and a plastic P-47 he brush-painted yellow (very well, too) to look like a trainer. I don't know if there ever really was such a bird, but this is what he built, pretty much. I don't know what happened to the Jug, but I still have the remains of the Beech...though the glue has mostly let go and it's going back to being a pile of sticks. When he was working for Martin (aircraft), he also built a couple of Revell Seamasters, one in gray as-molded, and one painted blue. I still have the gray one too. He wasn't much interested in cars or trains, but I was, and graduated from a Lionel tinplate set to scale HO when I was around 11, and that's when I began to get into scratchbuilding...but it's not easy without the proper tools. The first car model I can recall "building" was the old Revell 1/25 wagon when I was 7 or 8 or 9, and made an awful mess of the woodgrain paint. I'd built aircraft and ships previously, some OK for a kid, but with the then-inevitable glooey fingerprints, etc. The AMT '40 Ford Tudor was the first car I did that I made into decent model, and I built lotsa kits from AMT and Revell for a few years there. I also remember well when AMT rattlecan lacquers changed everything. I won a couple of contests with a Revell '56 Ford pickup and an AMT '62 Chevy Apache when I was in jr. high, but my model-building began to taper off then, though I built and raced slot-cars for a few years...one with a fabricated sheet-styrene monocoque chassis (insanely light and fast, but insanely fragile too), and another with a tilt-wing that moved up and down in reaction to motor torque (I made the first wing from brass sheet, and though it did seem to help with braking in a straight line, it also raised the center of mass so high the poor little car would fall over in a fast turn; my first applied lesson in vehicle dynamics). The last static car model I finished in high-school was an altered-wheelbase '55 Nomad with a blown 409 and a tilt nose. By that time I'd amassed a pretty decent stash of car and train models, and when more adult interests like real cars and girls began to intrude, I kept everything because I still really loved the hobby. Somewhere in the early '70s, when I'd be away for periods of time, my betrothed neglected to pay the bill on a 10X20 foot storage unit, and everything got gone...along with a nice collection of 356 Porsche parts and shop equipment. She also sold my Corvairs, a '58 Ghia, and an Isetta for pretty much scrap value at her mother's insistence. End of that relationship. In the interim years I built engineering and presentation models occasionally, related to work projects, but didn't return seriously to hobby modeling until around 2005.

There are also widespread problems with 3D-printed parts deteriorating in a variety of ways, from warping to developing surface stickiness. There's a whole lotta stuff getting made everywhere with no long-term testing having been done, or the thought that it might be nice to sell stuff that will last a while even occurring to the dwerps. There were, of course, problems with some resin parts in the past too, when idiots either couldn't read the mixing instructions or just didn't think careful handling and following correct procedures was important. Human nature doesn't really change much over time.

OMG!!! Racing a blimp!!! OMG!!! OMG!!!

I wouldn't be surprised. Anyone who's bought plastic consumer or industrial goods in the last few decades (EDIT: and who's been kinda paying attention) has surely seen deterioration to the point of brittleness, breakage, or crumbling...even when said goods have been stored in their original packaging away from light and heat. While plastic exposed to high temperatures (like under a car's hood) or prolonged and frequent UV (like car interior parts) can be expected to become brittle or crack, items that have never been used should reasonably be expected to remain as-new indefinitely. Unfortunately this is not always the case these days. Early plastics based on cellulose ("acetate") are notorious for shrinking, warping, or turning to dust, but they were largely abandoned by the early '60s in favor of much more stable petroleum-based materials. There are some 60+ year old kits that are getting brittle now, but it's not a universal problem. (I like your "solitude" quote, too.)

There are some of us who have ongoing builds from a decade or more back, that have been patiently waiting on the shelf for the muse to return...or to just have enough respite from real-life to get any significant modeling done. Like me. And I enjoy seeing other folks make an occasional spurt of progress...or sometimes even complete...a project that's been dormant "too long".

Two things you can always count on to be on-the-job 24/7...rust and Karens.

Whenever I feel like it, when I'm not doing something else.

Mmmmm...little omelets.

100% agreement. Good information has value indefinitely. Newer / more recent / current info has no more intrinsic value just because it's hot-hip-and-happenin' today. And the fact is that there's more quality and knowledge in the best of the old threads than we usually see here lately. But then again, maybe I find value in older info because my attention span is somewhat longer than a goldfish's. Many, if not most, questions modelers have asked recently have already been answered here in depth, especially tech questions about 1:1 vehicles and traditional modeling materials like plastic glues and lacquer and enamel paints. The validity and truth of those answers won't diminish with time...and when new or updated info becomes available, like the reissue of a long-dead kit, or the deterioration of the performance of the dandy new-and-improved version of a particular material (PlastiKote primers for instance), it makes sense in some cases to tack the new info on to the end of an old thread, rather than acting like the wheel has just been invented.