Vehicle Bashing and Operating

Following this demonstration, you can take any metal vehicle and damage them to make them look like they are wrecked for an abandoned field. The tools you will need is a dremel tool with a round ball burr bit of a small diameter, some cutters, a needle nose pliers, a hobby knife, a razor saw, and some matches. Using a new international truck, the first step is cutting and removing as much of the fender as you might like.

Next, with the needle nose pliers, bend the front axle up. This will really give the appearance of damage, like the vehicle was in a wreck. With the dremel tool running at a generally high speed, you can begin to remove areas of paint from the truck. With the hobby knife, scratch out the windows so it looks like the windshield was busted out. To create a flat tire, light a match and slightly melt the rubber of the tires with the flame and press it down to flatten the tire on the bottom. The completed damaged vehicle is weathered and painted.

Allen Keller runs the Bluff City Southern layout every other week and operates it by command control. He uses four rotation car cards that have been used for forty some years, routing cars to Bluff City Yard in Memphis to be reclassified and sent out to different branches of the railroad, whether Mississippi, Arkansas or Tennessee. They run using a three schedule system – morning, afternoon, and night time with a fast clock in a three to one ratio. This means an hour on the track is twenty real minutes.

Watch the full video to learn why it’s challenging to create an operating plan, or discover more from Allen Keller’s Great Model Railroad series.