@Hancock52 It took me 16 long, long,, years of going to the Academy of Motion Picture Art Library to find the name of that old RKO movie, LOL. At that time they only had microfiche. You found it in a single afternoon with a Google search. Yes, the movie is Sea Devils and the person that build the boat was Vernon L. Walker. Vernon is the same guy that build the movie props for RKO's 1933 King Kong.
I passed on getting the Coast Guard cutter "Taro" because it was a smaller movie prop at only 4 feet long. I went for the 8 foot long yacht called Mona. The Mona was sank at the end of Sea Devils during the climax when the hero went down the the ship (yacht). The movie's scrip only gets 3 1/2 stars but the quality of Vernon's special effects for this RKO movie gets 10 stars. Over his career he was nominated 4 times in Special Effects for an Academy Award.
Back to trains... My grandfather put in sealed bid on a large pile of trains in an old warehouse at Paramount in 1988. He won the bid and the trains were delivered (still in a pile). As he dug through those old RKO and Paramount movie props from the 30's, 40's and 50's he found they gave him more that just the trains. There were three silver B-36 bombers with 9 foot wing spans (I found out much later these were from the Jimmy Steward movie "Strategic Air Command"). His plan was to sell all the trains so he put an add in the local paper and got a great response from collectors. He was not happy the black steam engines went first without the cars. Eventually he sold all the box cars but it took months. These trains were all hand made with tiny nails and wood. They were larger than G scale and I remember they looked like British trains to me. Most had evidence of being blown up in the 1940's war movies. Only the three bombers and two boats were still left over at the end. He gave me the Mona if I promised to restore it. The Mona had a lot of water damage and was wired for 120 volts to power the interior lights. It did not have a motor or RC because back then they used divers under the boat to move it around. At 214-lbs it looked real good in the water on the flooded sound stage's ocean scene during the final ship wreck. It took twenty years to restore but I finally finished it. Unfortunately my grandfather passed away before it was done. The Mona sits on a shelf behind me as I type this.
Back to trains... nope, I don't have more modeling experience. The first time I used Micro filler was for restoring the Mona. The second time was for The Little Nugget. I was hoping someone would jump in and give some better modeling advice than I had. I have heard there are other types of fillers out there but since I still new to the model train hobby and have not used any others I could not give a personal recommendation. Thank you for jumping in with helpful advice!
