Scenery

I’ve started the scenery…

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That’s right, I’ve started the scenery. As I was finishing the main street in the New Brighton scene, I realized that before placing buildings the background needed to be in.

Another – if you give a mouse a cookie moment.

As I have mentioned in the past, I’m pretty old school on the basics. For scenery base it is plaster cloth over screen. The only break from the past is that instead of some type of plywood form, I am using black foam core. Why black foam core? Because of a past one off project for a client, I have a foot high stack of 12″ x 18″ black foam core sheets. The plus side is it’s free and easy to cut. Make a mistake, throw it away and try again. Down side is attaching the screen. Glue takes forever and is iffy. Hot glue and foam doesn’t play well together. Ended up taking individual staples from my staple gun and pushing them trough the screen into the foam core. They will hold well enough till the plaster cloth goes on.

I started at the ninety degree corner between the New Brighton scene and the Jackson town scene. My vision is that this will be enough of a view block to separate the two scenes. It is a hill descending from the corner out to the fascia.

Once I established this hill, I worked back to the bridge scene in New Brighton. Below are photos of the progression.

The scenery is started. The outer hill in place.
When finished the hill with scenery in place will be the break between scenes.
The rear scenery land form in place.
First coat of plaster cloth on.

Something that I failed to mention was that the inner section had a retaining wall. What I ended up using for it was a sheet of Department 56 stone cobblestone that I had picked up on discount somewhere.  The scale is a bit big, however to the eye it looks right. Meaning the rivet counters won’t be happy, but everyone else won’t notice.

Gluing the retaining wall to the hill form.
Continuing the retaining wall around the corner.

After the landform behind New Brighton and the retaining wall were in place I headed around the corner. Problem here is that the hill drops to a small river. And you will notice that there is no river cut out of the plywood base. One of those things I figured I would take care later.

So all work has stopped on the basic scenery till I get the river in. Which is a whole new mouse and cookie story. One I will continue in the next post.

Till then, Take care and Happy Railroading…

General

Early August and What I’ve been up to…

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Wow, it’s already August and you’re probably wondering what I’ve been up to.

Looking back, I noticed that I failed to mention that my youngest child, my daughter, is getting married this fall. I have found that as parents of the bride, we are far more involved in wedding planning. I should probably clarify that and say I am more involved. With my sons it was far more easy, what am I wearing and when do I show up. With my daughter it seems to be everything, plus the extras.

Case in point.

My wife was hosting a bridal shower for my daughter, thought that I wouldn’t have any involvement with this. Then one night my wife called me over to her computer and wanted me to see this really cute candy cart she found online. For those who don’t know what a candy cart is, which up to this point included me, it’s a copy of cart that a vender would push around hawking his candy wares with.

Looking at it I said it was cute. She just sat there waiting for it to click. After a minute or so of me looking at the picture and her looking at me, it finally hit home. She wanted one for her party. And she wanted me to make it.

Quick side note. My wife’s friends tell her she is spoiled. And they refer to me as her drive up window. She wants something, she pulls up and orders it. And then I deliver.

So with nothing more than a picture and two weeks time I built her a candy cart. I give you the finished product.

The Candy Cart.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the challenge. Plus you keep mama happy and she doesn’t mind you playing downstairs. The actual wedding is still a month and a half away. I image time downstairs will be hard to come by. More so as we get closer. But I have gotten somethings done and will have an update on those things soon.

Till then, anyone want to buy a slightly used candy cart?

Scenery, Structures

Installing Main Street in New Brighton…

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As well as trying to figure out the yard in New Brighton, I have been also working the other side of the aisle. As I have built the individual blocks for my main street along the berm, I hadn’t actually glued anything down. Because all the buildings are close to done and some waiting final installation for the last details, now was time to get the road in.

I used Walther’s road system (Walthers.com) for the city streets. Mainly because it mates up to the railroad bridge. Plus I figured I wouldn’t be scrimping on width for a city street and the sidewalks work with it. Pretty much a win all the way around. One word of caution, the concrete sections have beveled edges so when glued together give the appearance of individually cast sections. Mix these with asphalt sections, because you have both and aren’t paying attention, and you will have some filling to do to even things out.

I had already made the block sections as I built the buildings, so it was just a matter of gluing these together and down to the plywood. In the past I have used contact cement for this. It will hold anything down, forever. But, you have to wait for it to dry before joining the pieces together and like I said you never get it apart. I now have a new best friend for this job. Canopy glue. The first brand I had was RC56, the current bottle is something56, don’t know the name but they all seem to use 56. So far it is holding beautifully and I haven’t knocked anything loose.

When planned the road the idea was for one complete half plus a partial on the other half. The main reason was so at the intersection of Main street and the street under the railroad bridge, I could have the Walther’s working traffic light without it hanging in space.

Prepping the town for actual road installation.

I glued down the main sections and you can see that there is about a 1 inch strip that I needed to cut and fit. Starting on what would be the north end of the street and working south I started to cut and fit the pieces in place.

I started fitting the outer sections that require a lot of trimming on the north end and worked south.
Working my way south on Main Street. You can see just past the super market where I have cut and fitted the outside road sections and the pieces waiting for their turn.

I just continued down the street till I got to the end where the road T’s.

South end of the main strip in, filled, sanded and ready for paint.

As you can see I was also doing a little filling of cracks and sanding as I went. Now I need to mask off the fascia and surrounding areas and paint the street and sidewalks.

A couple of other things done. after getting the street in I also put in the foundations for the houses on the north end. with these in place I can put in the plaster yards and start the scenery at that end.

Foundations and sidewalks in for the houses.

In addition to those I have finally settled on which buildings will be on the far side of the railroad overpass.

Final buildings chosen for the background. (Far side of the bridges)

On the right side of the street, not that visible, are a bar and a movie theater. They were chosen for this space because they both have one sided Miller Engineering (microstru.com)  signs on them and won’t work else where. And on the left is a Heljan (heljan.dk) building. It was part of a brewery complex, one of those things you pick spur of the moment, that hasn’t found a home yet. The scale looks off to me. Bigger then N scale but smaller then HO scale. In the background it looks right.

And that’s what I’ve got for now, till later…

 

 

 

 

Trackwork

Planning New Brighton Yard…

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One of the things I have been working on is planning the New Brighton Yard. You may have thought that I had it planned out. After all I had the main line in and running through. I also had a number of full industries as well as background buildings set in place. But there was never a full plan.

I knew what I would like to have, but the space just isn’t there. I could get close to what I want but it would mean removing the engine service facility. Which wouldn’t be a deal if I was running diesels and didn’t need to turn them. But I’m not, I’m running steam and you have to be able to turn them around.

Or I could wrap it around the other end but that would cut into the staging yard. Nope, it’s never going to be a full classification yard. With that realization I have been moving ahead with the space.

One of the first things I did was to pull the background buildings out. While they do present switching potential, they use up a lot of space. Both physically and the room you need for the trackage and turnouts to service them. The full industries, the dairy, stockyards, power plant and a as yet to be named industry, will stay.

With the background buildings:

Another view of New Brighton Yard.

And with them pulled:

South end of the yard.

As you can see in the above photo I have my photocopied turnouts set in place for the ladder. Below is a better picture.

Overall view off New Brighton yard with turnouts set in place.

You will also note that there is a double slip switch at either end of the yard. Now I don’t like to use them any more then the real railroads liked to, but they do make other aspects of the yard work. For example, by having the one closest to us in the picture, I am then also able to have a switching yard lead so as not to block the mainline.

As it sits now I believe this is the way the yard will be. Not totally happy with it, (and won’t be till I magically gain more space) but for now it will do. I will probably hold of ballasting the track until I have used the yard for a while, just to make sure it works. Or if some tweaks need to be made.

As far as background, I will be putting in some very shallow non rail served buildings in to serve as a backdrop.

Next is pick up some turnouts and lay some track and see if it will work.

Till next time, Happy Rairoading…

 

 

General

It’s Been Awhile…

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Hello, it’s been awhile and for that I once again have to apologize. I haven’t looked, but I don’t think I’ve gone this long without checking in.

So, what’s been happening you ask. Why this total lack of letting you know what’s been going on. Knowing what was going to be happening the last time I posted, I thought that I would actually have more time to get things done.

First there was work. Two business trips spaced out every other week followed by a quick 5 day vacation that we squeezed in because we realized that we wouldn’t be able to later. And then I had my left knee replaced.

It’s been something that I knew would have to happen one day, you can only get cortisone shots for so long and then it’s time. I seriously started looking into the surgery late last January. That’s when I walked into my LHS (I hadn’t been in there since before Thanksgiving) and noticed a sign on the door with shortened hours due to surgery.

I asked the owner what was up and if he was OK. His response was, yes he’s OK and doing great. Turns out he had his knee done in late November. Two months later, he’s back at work and lovin’ life. Best decision he’s made.

Got me to thinking.

So on my next visit to my doctor I told him I was ready. We set a date in mid May. This got moved to early June as the second work trip popped up. And I started planning on what I could do while recovering.

Turns out I was wrong as to what I could do while recovering. I knew that they wanted you up and moving as soon as possible. It turns out this was about 6 to 8 hours after the surgery. Yup, same day. I thought that I would be able to sit at the workbench and get things done. Turns out that any sitting was in a recliner and I could only stand for so long. You get up and walk, do the exercises and then in the recliner and ice the knee. Rinse and repeat.

Where am I at now? Doing great and lovin’ life. Getting around pretty good. At the two week check up the doctor was very happy with where I’m at. The physical therapy people said I’m ahead of the curve in many areas.

And I’m back downstairs. Working the top is no problem and i have made progress on a few things. Reports to follow soon. Anything that requires working on the floor (ie. working under the layout) is out of the question right now.

Like I said, I’ve got some stuff done and will have a post on that real quick. Thanks for stopping by even though nothing was happening.

Till later…

Benchwork, Trackwork, Wiring / Electronics

Staging Yard wired…

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I also got the staging yard wired up. I know that I may have led you to believe that I had wired this up before when you saw the photo of a switch and LED lit in a previous post. What I had done was a quick hook up with jumper wires in that shot to see if things would work.

The staging yard is eight tracks wide with three to four 3ft sections of flex track per yard track. I wired each section of flex track individually to make sure there would be no dead sections because of a loose rail joiner. In another word there are a lot of wires pulled to the switches. I have a picture of all the wires pulled to a hole in the fascia, but it’s one of those that is sideways and for whatever reason can’t be corrected.

I then installed all the  switches and LED indicators in the fascia and wired those up before mating the fascia to the yard wires.

Back of the yard panel – wired and ready to hooked to the yard.

I should also note that before installing the switches and LED’s that I painted all the fascia panels and used RC striping tape to indicate the track.

I then joined the two and screwed the fascia in place.

Track power switches and indicator LED’s.

Side note: The reason for the oddness in the way the tracks are laid out in the diagram on the fascia is – I had six switches controlling six turnouts, thus when I laid out the track diagram I did it for six tracks. I didn’t figure out till after I drilled the first six holes for switches and LED’s that six turnouts feed into eight tracks. So the above layout is an effort to save the work I had into the fascia.

Along with the track numbers I also added the capacity of each track as measured in forty foot cars as they were most prevalent at the time.

UP-5 panel for the yard and the yard track numbers with track capacity in 40 ft car lengths.

I took the track diagram as far as the New Brighton yard as I have not completely figured it out yet. More on that at a later date. But the track diagram up to that point does include the hidden siding for the power plant. You’ll notice that the tracks for this siding are in yellow. My plan is to have the main in white and the sidings in a different color. At this time most likely in all yellow.

Track diagram of the staging yard on the fascia.
Staging yard lead is in white, the storage tracks for the power plant are in yellow.

Well that’s what I’ve got for now, Till later…

 

 

On The Workbench, Structures

On the Workbench #6…

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While doing the big “cleaning of the workbench” I had to do something with all the kits I had stacked waiting their turn to be put together. Most were either more work then I wanted to do right now or weren’t relevant at this time. There were a handful that didn’t need a lot of work and were relevant, were involved but relevant or just something that sounded like fun.

First were the water towers for the towns of Jackson and Brandon. I had bought these when I was in Milwaukee from the Walther’s store. They were half price so I had picked up two. When I had opened them up when I got home I found that the reason they were half priced was because most of the wire cross bracing between the legs had fallen off. No problem, I cleaned off the old glue, glued back the pieces that were still in the package, cut new wire pieces for those that were missing and painted all the wire pieces silver. Then I added lettering. The finished towers…

Jackson’s water tower repaired and lettered.
Brandon’s water tower repaired and lettered.

Next up was the “Silver Plume Bakery” by Banta Model Works (bantamodelworks.com). My plan is to use it as… a bakery, in the town of Brandon. I got it because finding single story retail kits for a business district is hard. Most are two or more stories high. Not the thing for a small town. Plus the building has character. Being a laser cut kit I kind of expected the thing to fall together as that has been my experience with this type of kit. Not the case here. I would not recommend this kit as I had to do a lot of adjusting, filing and filling, plus a little scratch building to get the kit to work out.

I thought that maybe it was just me or perhaps this one kit, but I was watching Gerry Leone (bonavistarailroad.com) on MR video Plus and he was using the same kit as a hardware store and had different issues, but as troubling. I don’t know if it’s this one kit or their entire line, just be aware that you might have troubles with this line.

That said, I did get it almost all together. I made a counter and a display case for the retail portion of the store as it has huge windows and screams for some type of detain. I went online and found a wallpaper print typical of my time period and printed it out for the store. All that is left is a couple of chairs for the local clientele, lights and something to put in the display case (a picture of bakery delicacies) and then add the roof and it will be ready.

Bakery interior.
The bakery with the interior and wallpaper installed.
Another view.

Last up was a Russell Snowplow, A Walther’s Kit (walthers.com). Pretty straight build, it has a fresh paint job on it. I’m not sure if a will leave it that way and show it receiving maintenance on one of the short tracks in the roundhouse or I will weather it and have it sitting outside waiting for winter. It could come down to how much time I have.

One of the many projects finished.

I have the road name on but have to come up with the other MOW markings.

That’s it for now, Till next time…

 

General

On The Workbench #5…

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For this edition of “On The Workbench” I’m not so much covering what’s happening on the workbench as much as what is happening with the workbench.

For Christmas one of my kids got me a bench top paint rack. Anyone who had seen my workbench would know that I needed one as the paint jars were kind of all over the place. I just didn’t realize that they had been down there and had paid attention to the mess.

Anyways the paint rack needed assembly and had ended up in the to-do pile. Bored, I was looking for something to do and figured I would put it together and see how useful it would be. I don’t know where they got it from, who was the manufacturer or even what country it was from. My guess would be Eastern Europe somewhere and the translation to English was horrendous. Luckily there were pictures and the overall kit was pretty simple and straight forward. Some carpenters glue, masking tape and a couple of clamps and it went together rather well. I don’t have any pictures of it going together.

As every modeler will tell you, no matter how big your workbench is you only ever seem to have 1 to 1 1/2 square feet to work on. In my case my workbench is 2′ x 8′, but I still only have 1sf to work on and the paint rack ended drying on the layout benchwork. Which meant if I wanted to get the paint rack on the bench I was going to have to do some cleaning.

The picture below is a bit misleading as I had done a bunch of cleaning before I took the picture.

Workbench before the purge. This was what I considered extremely cleaned up at the time.
View from the other angle.

So I attacked the workbench. I threw out anything that wasn’t needed or was old. A lot of paint went this way.

By the time I got done there wasn’t a whole lot left on top of the bench. Kind of the point I guess.

The work bench now.
From the other way.

And the paint rack that started it all.

The new paint rack, the reason for the clean up.

It’s a nice little paint rack and getting everything else cleaned up because of it was really nice. Now we’ll see if I can keep it that way.

Next time, more little projects that got done.

Till then, Happy Railroading…

 

General

An Apology or Two…

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I would like to offer an apology or two. First is the length of time since the last time I sat down and updated this site. I would like to say that because of the number of natural disasters that have occurred here in the last month I haven’t been able to write anything. Or because of the zombie apocalypse and all that it entails, I haven’t been able to write. The truth is that yes, the work travel schedule has been something, home 1 week, gone the next and rinse and repeat. I have managed to get quite a bit done downstairs. It’s just that  I get to the end of the day and figure I’ll write the next night. And then I don’t.

Like I said though, I’ve gotten quite a bit done and will start updating real quick.

The second thing I would like to apologize for is the appearance of the site, specifically the sideways photos that have been in several posts.

I didn’t even realize it was happening until a recent trip. I had meant to log in to the backend of the site but ended up signing onto the actual site. Since I was there I figured I would read through the site as you see it. That’s when I came across several photos that were sideways.

This is because I have always viewed the site through the backend or admin side of the site.

I had taken the photos vertically, but as you know the camera records them horizontally. When I download them from the camera, the computer automatically flips them back to vertical. I then move the pictures from my computer to the server hosting the site. Every once and awhile they will show up there back in a horizontal state. I will flip them back to vertical and save them that way. They are then inserted into a post and before I publish I will preview the post (the way you see it) to make sure everything reads and looks well.

Everything was right, including pictures, when I did this. In fact when I saw the problem I logged into the admin side to correct them but there they were in the correct orientation from the admin point of view. I have chatted with WordPress and the web hosting service but they’re not sure why this has happened.

I have replaced the photos that I could with ones I retook horizontally, as pictures still seem to orientate themselves to horizontal no matter what. The few that I can’t retake, I have left until I figure this out and get them right.

I realize there are larger problems in the world then this, but this really bugs the OCD side of me.

Like I said I will have updates real soon on what’s been happening and sorry about how long it’s been since I said hello.

Till later (but not to long), Happy Railroading…

 

 

General

A few of my favorite things…

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As I’ve had a chance to consistently work on the layout for the last month and half, I’ve come to appreciate of few of my latest acquisitions. Or as I said, a few of my favorite things.

First up is the Dremel Multi Max oscillating tool. I originally bought it because of it’s triangular sanding head. Great for getting into nooks and crannys on woodworking projects. But recently I have started to use the saw blade more and more.

Dremel Multi Max oscillating tool.

The fact that you don’t have to drill a starter hole for a jig saw and then worry about the depth of cut is such a relief. As long as the hole is at least an inch wide, you are good to go. A recent example would be the holes for the UP5’s.

Hole cut for the UP5 panel.

It was nice to know that I could cut the hole and not worry about the wiring just behind the fascia. As a side note, Jim Kelly had a write up about oscillating tools in the latest (March 2017) issue of Model Railroader Magazine.

My next greastest find is the “Raskog” three tier cart from Ikea (IKEA.com). Great cart, easy to put together and the quality is far better then I expected, even for Ikea. I have two (bought 1 and then ran out and got another). I currently use one for construction equipment and the other for wiring equipment and supplies. Eventually one will become the scenery cart.

The Ikea Raskog Carts.

I wish I could say that I “discovered” this, but I first heard about it on one of the forums.

Last is rather strange, it is an EYE VAC  floor sweep vacuum cleaner.

The Eye Vac floor sweep vacuum.

I had first run across this at my hair stylist. Seeing it in action, I knew I had to have this for downstairs. Sweep up that which needs to be swept up, get it I’m front of the EYE VAC, the sensor kicks in, the machine turns on for about thirty seconds, boom, the mess is gone. I find myself cleaning up more often simply because it is easy to quickly sweep everything over and make it go away.

So there you have it, three things that are making my life a little easier and more enjoyable. Not saying that you need to get any of these as I don’t know what your hobby budget is, but they should be considered as they make life a little easier.

Till next time, Happy Railroading…

 

 

 

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