I made an attempt to add lighting under the eaves of the station and along the platform. I must stress "attempt"... With everything non-essential in lockdown, such as my favorite electronics shop, I rummaged around in my LED lighting storage bins and found some unused LED tape. Normally, at 12 volts, it's insanely bright and not appropriate for my application. But, with some experimenting, I found that a 2.2 kOhm resistor in series lowered the brightness to an acceptable level. So far, so good. But threading that tape through the eaves supports was like trying to convince a nervous snake to lie straight and still. Several attempts later, I pulled it all out (gently) and put the LED lights back in the bin, and the depot building back in its assigned place on the layout. Drat... So I will have to wait patiently until the new lockdown is over on February 8th (hopefully!). I'll get some discrete LEDs and hide those under the eaves. No nervous snakes.
I have a bunch of containers for my intermodal trains and I've been working on those. Several of them are permanently mated to one another for use in the well cars and are ready for weathering. The first step in that process is applying clear coat, so I sprayed a lot of flat clear. This covered hopper needed new couplers and metal wheels, so I swapped them out then applied the flat clear. It was pretty cold at the time so I held it over my space heater to flash off the solvent. That's something I've done hundreds of times with rarely a problem, but this time it was a problem. One of the corner ladders got too hot and curled up. I removed the melted parts then rummaged through my parts to see what could be used to fix it. A spare part from a Tangent 4740 kit, some Tichy ladder rungs, some Evergreen channel cut into two different sizes of angle and a bit of styrene rod did the trick. I didn't get the paint color exactly right, but I might use that to my advantage and weather the replaced parts as a repair.
McCall is in Idaho about 2 hours North of Boise on the shores of Payette Lake. It's in the Payette National Forest and is technically part of the Rocky Mountains. There was about 2 feet of packed snow on the ground, but the roads were well plowed and very nice.
Search Amazon: winsome halifax storage/organization, 7 drawer, white So as not to hijack this thread, send a direct message if you want more information. Stay safe,
Looked a little like the 80's in the photos. I liked heading to Ponderosa Park for XC skiing back then. Never had problems with crowds except during Winter Carnival. Stay safe,
I didn't get much done but the paneling is hung. I need a sheet of drywall for a couple spots then attack the ceiling. Ugh! I have more lights on the way but will wait until I know exactly where they all need to go before breaking them open. So close yet so far from beginning the layout project.
I didn't get everything done. I was carrying something upstairs when my right knee told me it was a stupid thing to do. I can get down stairs, but coming up... I have more sanding to do, but there's still a gap between the roadbed and the track in places. I'm done with the spackle. I'm going to try 3x5 cards next. I also have a puzzling problem around the mountain where the grade seems to be much more than 3%. Need to sand all the spackle away and try something else. Getting this railroad to its final, glue-me-down point is exhausting. Ambition has its drawbacks. Everything on hold until my knee says it's okay with steps. Sent from my SM-N950U1 using Tapatalk
