Missing the little things. By that I mean that for all the work that I have done I still haven’t gotten to the little things. The details that make and finish a scene.
This became apparent back when I was laying down the first ballast around the peninsula. I had gotten the ballast down and smoothed out and stood back to inspect it for any irregularity’s. Just for fun I grabbed a track gang figure set I had and set them into place as if they too were inspecting the ballast job.
Looking southbound, ballast in waiting for glue.Looking northbound past the farm, ballast awaiting glue.Ballast down, awaiting approval before applying glue.
I have found that as I had planned the layout I foresaw the different scenes but not really the backdrop scenes. So as I have finished the different areas and towns I have filled in the basics in the foreground but have not done the area by the backdrop. And because the background scenes aren’t done, I haven’t wanted to finish the scenes in the foreground because they would be prone to damage as I reach across it to finish the back sections.
A few examples…
Overall station scene put in place.Make up of the track cleaning train.Basic scenery done up to Main Street in Jackson.
So….
The only scene finished front to back is the farmhouse scene, though no figures and the rest of the details need to be placed. Otherwise all the towns have foreground scenery and buildings but little along the backdrop. The exception would be the town of Jackson where I have the backdrop buildings done. Just need to be lit. Although I came across the Roomettes website and now thinking about interiors for some of the buildings. The hill scene/view block between Jackson and the downtown New Brighton scene has basic ground cover down but is awaiting trees. As is the pasture scene for the farm.
Which got me to thinking. Last fall I bought a Scenics Express Supertrees starter set. I watched a video on working with the set. The first thing they suggested was spraying the trunks with Rust Oleum Camouflage brown paint. Being as it was a bit too cold to spray outside and although I have the spray booth, I prefer not to spray oil based paints inside, I figured I would wait for spring.
Well, the temperature outside is warm enough now. And it’s something I can accomplish outside (remember the demon puppy). So one of the next things up will be to do the trees. And then start finishing the various scenes around the layout.
I also will be ordering a couple sets of the Roomette interior sets. When received will give you a run down on the product.
Long story short. I need to start finishing things before moving on. Which is actually a good thing to realize as I keep looking at the upper level and thinking of all the great scenes to come.
February 9th, 2021. That’s the day the new puppy came home. Since that time I have spent maybe a total of an hour downstairs. And that was staging and taking pictures for the last several posts.
It’s funny how the mind erases things that are somewhat unpleasant. I don’t remember either of our last two dogs being this much work. I only seem to remember the positive things. But this little hellion is something else. When she’s awake you have to have one eye on her at all times. And when she’s asleep is when I can get things done for work and around the house. Basically, my model time is now keeping track of the puppy time.
But, things are improving. She’s now housebroken, so there is no more mad dashes to get her out. And for the most part she is self entertaining and will play with her toys or our older dog. But you still have to watch her as she will suddenly disappear and will inevitably find something that she shouldn’t be in.
The funny thing is I swore that our older dog was the last. But then Covid hit and we stopped going to the dog park almost daily. That was something we had been doing for almost six years and she had become very social as we had a regular group of people/dogs that we would walk with everyday. Without the daily park visits she became noticeably lonely.
So, in a moment of madness (or perhaps too many adult beverages) the decision to get one more dog was made.
The reason I even bring this up is because I am quickly running out of things to post about. But like I said, things are improving and I find more time to get extra things done. Unfortunately, most of those things are outside as the weather improves. This also works out as the dogs can be outside and I don’t have to worry too much about what the little one is getting into.
But, as I said things are improving with more time for things I want to do. I’m sure that by the time it gets to hot to enjoyably be outside I will be able to get back downstairs. Till then please be patient, I do have content that I want to share with you.
The pup…
The new pup, first day home.Recent picture, they grow quickly.This pretty much sums up where we all rank in her world.
Like I said, I have things to share. Please continue to stop by for projects and thoughts.
This is my first DCC conversion as opposed to my first decoder install as the early Athearn, Bachmann and LifeLike engines came DCC ready. All you had to do was pop out the jumper plug and add the decoder. All were without sound. Ah yes, a project for another day.
As I had mentioned before the test subject is a Athearn Blue Box SD 40-2. I also had mentioned that I had started this project about 10 years ago. Not much was really accomplished, I had gotten a couple of things for the conversion and started working on the shell.
What I had accomplished at that time was cutting out the front radiator fan and fitting a winterization hatch to it. Not sure of the brand but it has an etched metal grill. Perfect for a speaker to be mounted under it. I also had built the baffle for the speaker. Again not sure of the brand of speaker, though I suspect it is from Sountraxx. In addition to the speaker the other purchase at the time was a better motor than the stock Athearn. It is from Accurate Lighting and a quick web search shows that you can still get them from HobbyLinc.com.
The Accurate Lighting motor upgrade, I had picked up two of these.
The speaker baffle and winterization hatch.
Baffle and hole for the speaker, will be covered by the winterization hatch.Speaker installed into baffle.Hole cut for the speaker, speaker installed.Winterization hatch installed over speaker.
Once I do the final install on the speaker I will close up the enclosure. Also the four wires on the motor are for a an install on a standard DC locomotive, one pair to each truck. I will clip one set when hooking up.
Having the motor in place and the speaker ready to install the next step was to get power from the tracks. Using wire on hand, I soldered wires directly to the trucks. Red to the high side, this would be the one on the BB Athearn that had the metal bar running across the top of the motor and black to the low side on top of the truck.
The trucks wired for pickup, unfortunately the wire was to brittle and already had broken off the top of the right truck.
Unfortunately the scrounged wire was too brittle. A little handling and one broke off right away. So, off to the internet, specifically Amazon where I found a very flexible 28 gauge wire. Unsoldered the old and installed the new.
Trucks wired motor installed, ready to start the final hookup.
Let there be light…
Part of the conversion was adding new lights to the engine. I believe one of the reasons I had not gone much further with the project was that I needed to add new lights to the engine. The old Athearn incandescent bulbs were to big and I knew that even smaller incandescent bulbs ran hot, so clearance was needed as to not melt the plastic of the cab.
Well in the time between then and now, LED’s have really come into their own. I stumbled across LighthouseLED’s. Their selection is quite complete. Everything from 5mm down to pico size bulbs. Didn’t even know there was a pico size LED. And you can get any of them prewired with a resistor. Saves a lot of time and frustration. My first order included a white SMD LED mounted on a small resistor board with leads. It was hard to tell the size of the board from their diagram. It turned out to be about 1/4″ by 3/8″ (sorry, didn’t feel like running down and measuring). Which meant the it would show if using to light the front headlight. But it fit in perfectly to the rear of the engine for the rear light.
LED board with resistor installed for the rear light.Rear light lit.
For the front I ordered a prewired 3mm bulb. I made a bracket out of styrene to hold it up in the headlight/number board housing. Still working on fit, will get you a couple of photos when placed. In addition I ordered some prewired pico sized bulbs that are amber. These are for the beacon on the cab roof. My thought was that when I got the bulb I would drill out the beacon and slide it in. Turns out I didn’t need to as Details West had already done this.
Thought I was going to have to drill these out. Luckily they are already cored.The unlit pico sized LED for the roof beacon.The amber pico sized LED for the roof beacon.The pico sized LED in the strobe housing.
The decoder that I’m using is a Sountraxx Econami ECO-PNP. I chose this one primarily based on price and basic functions. It has standard motor functions, sound and front and rear lights. In addition it has several extra programmable functions. One of which is a Strato-Light beacon function. I have to image the decoder will make the beacon flash like the original. My dilemma now in seeing the size of the pico LED’s is do I want to add front wheel slip lights and step lights. Or keep it simple for first install and go with what I planned.
At this point I think I’m going to go with simple. I have all the parts ready to install. Just a little afraid after reading posts of people whose installs didn’t go as planned. But I’m ready to muscle past that, as I’m really wanting to see a diesel with a flashing beacon, something that doesn’t seem to be on many factory diesels.
As of now that’s where I’m at, will update in the near future.
