Seemed like a quick evening tonight but in hindsight we did quite a lot. Scott and Doug did a lot of mainline, concrete tie ballast tonight. So much so, that we only have about 7 feet of mainline left, so kudos to those two for all the hard work. As you can see from the above, after a few minutes you can tell what areas missed out on wet water and glue, they're quite obvious. Later in the evening I came through and tried to get everything an even coat. Scott also added concrete channels on either side of the ballasted bridge. Here he is giving it a shot of paint. And from another view: As for me, I spent most of the evening in Black Diamond. Made more tweaks to shoulder and median areas and added the green buffer for our city park scene. It's under all the paint bottles. As for the weights and gallon paint can, well I added a second foundation to City Hall and in the process the new fixture seemed to cup at the ends. My solution was to put it in place and heavily weigh it down to see if it would conform to the building site. We'll see. Earlier in the evening I primed all the parts for the Shell Station. By evening's end I had the parts painted yellow and dark red per the instructions. Here's the priming stage: I'll try and get more pics of the parts with their final colors tomorrow. Until then, thanks for checking in.
Before hitting the road for the day, sauntered out to the RGW to check out progress from last night. Here are some pics. The city park grass: Miscellaneous buffer improvements: Getting rid of spackle around crossings and drainage pipe: This process involves cleaning out as much spackle as possible, laying in new ballast and then replacing the tiny rocks that have come dislodged. It's a frustrating job dealing with such tiny materials, they do have a mind of their own, trust me. There are four of these to do, so I'll take them one at a time.
Finally got a few minutes in the train room, pretty much just long enough to pull all the painted parts off the tape and lay them back down on the plans. I'm pretty happy about the colors and the coverage. Here's how things look so far: There's so much more red to paint, mostly accents and trim. All of the pieces shown below get the bottom 3/8 inch painted red. The 3/32 pieces are corner posts. The red will be around the bottom of the model. Once I get the bottom trim painted, I think I'll decide if more pieces need the red for the building to look right. We'll see. I'm just really getting started on this kit but I am really enjoying it thus far.
Finished painting the trim dark red and while a couple of small "bleeds" need attention, I am very pleased with the result. The next step is to sand the mating surfaces and start the build. That's later tonight or tomorrow.
Just a quick update from tonight's work party. Ed returned from the NMRA Convention with news of purchases he made at the national train show, so much so, he had to ship it home separately. Reynold spent the evening working on and weathering boxcars. Scott and Doug did more work on ballast. I'd include pics, but frankly you could scroll back a few posts and see similar shots. Wain was out in my garage working on our Megapoints modules. Eventually they will control all of our yard routes and turnouts. I started the evening by working on the rock walls, essentially where I left off last week. I was pleased to get them all finished. I also started to determine the layout of the roads in Black Diamond. Here I used masking tape to lay out the locations of the crosswalks. I also received my order of Woodland Scenics premium trees today, these will go in and around Black Diamond. Oaks and Maples in this order. Still looking for suitable red leaf maples. Well, that's it for now, thanks for checking in.
Those are nice tree's' some of the best out their. I like to mix a few of them with cheaper ones and get a good effect. I use a lot from Grand Central Gems' they make a nice tree for good value. Plus JTT also.
It might seem surprising, but I sure miss some of the greenery from that area. Alders, Rocky Mountain/"vine" maples, Doug Fir, and more. I am certainly watching with great interest, what gets recreated here!
Meet them? You are vastly exceeding them! Truly, you are building a dream layout. And that it happens to be situated in what was almost my "back yard", is a bonus. The scenes are matches for memories, even if not exact locations. For me, your layout is the quality of a current day G&D or V&O, and more. I am avidly following this journey.
Quick update on the Shell Station build. I was able to fit and glue all the window assemblies tonight. I have found a few irregularities in the materials, but a little trimming, sanding and such is all it takes to work them out. I will have to add some filler material to the two outer door frames as they are not as tall as the rest of that assembly; but that too should be an easy fix. So far so good.
Tonight's work party had some cool progress. Wain, with the help of email instructions from Dave Fenton (Megapoints owner) was able to get the Megapoints components to switch a tortoise switch machine and change the color of our two-way LEDs. This was a very cool moment! Lots of high fives. Lots. Doug and Scott completed the south wall ballast project and it looks spectacular. It eclipses (shameless pun) my expectations from when we designed the layout back in 2005. A long wait for sure, but well worth it. Ed began the next phase of our yard lighting project. We wanted to test the coverage of the lights to see how close or far apart we needed them to be. We determined about 18 inches is a good distance and still get good light dispersion. Here is the same shot adding our blue corner lights for effect. I spent the evening working on crosswalks in Black Diamond. I stopped by the town this weekend and measured up a couple of random crosswalks. The painted lines are 2ft x 8ft and are 4ft apart. It was a quick fabrication to cut the pattern in .010 styrene. Then you just tape it down where you want the crosswalk. Using the Woodland Scenics white pavement pen I traced the outline and then filled in the center. I really like the result, but determined that with the ink still wet, even the slightest movement of the template distorted the box. So for the rest of the crosswalks I traced the outline and will let that dry overnight before coming back and filling in the center. We ended the evening in the garage huddled around the workbench to have Wain give us a demonstration of the Megapoints system. More high fives. Thanks for checking in.
Another great night in the books for the RGW Crew. Scott and Doug did some touch-up on the ballast along the south wall and it's looking really good over there. Later they teamed up with Ed to start installing our tower lighting in Renton Yard. One change from last week, we went with 24 inch spacing, up from 18. The dispersion wasn't affected and the locations when using 24 vs 18 put some of the lights directly over key switching junctions. It was an easy call. I finished up the crosswalks in Black Diamond. I had one mishap with the paint pen, the nozzle got clogged up and paint streamed out all over my road surface. After several colorful epithets, I decided to switch to acrylic paint to fill in the rectangles. I am pleased how that turned out. In the garage, Wain brought over a sample yard panel, in this case Franklin Yard. It includes one of our newly arrived push button switches. He went to work wiring it up for our first full test of the Megapoints system. Here are two shots of how it looked prior to the test. Here, however is the moment of truth: A massive success by any measure. Now we get to complete three panels, and wire up 73 tortoise switch machines. Yup 73. More on that later..... Much later... Thanks for checking in.
