The JACALAR RR

Jim, the Radical Flats (by King Mills) are great, for limited space backdrops. I put my tracks up near the backdrop for maximum bench utilization, which resulted in no room to use anything but flats. The photo quality is great, and they work fine in photos, but you can tell you are looking at a picture when working on the layout. I do like them a lot, and they are quick and easy.

 

Thanks Jerry - it is amazing how much and how little progress gets made. "All" this progress is still in the first 12 to 15 square feet. There is a lot more to go. The rest of the yard should actually go reasonably quickly, now that I have the soldering and ballasting techniques down, but there is still a lot of track finishing to do. I had only done every 6 foot feeder drops originally, and now I am doing the every section, where practical route (a couple have gone undone, like those that were completely over the subway cutouts, or the few over the major wood bracing of the bench in the corner).

After I get the yard done, I'll finally swing back to the other turnaround area, which will be the mountains. My original plan was to be working on that area first, but somehow I just distracted myself into completing the yard (and getting all those cool signals installed).

 

The bar now has a sign

Been a busy weekend, family-wise, so not much time for working on the layout. Did get a sign made for the bar, and the street in front of it complete (sidewalks are just sitting in place, and still need the curbs painted).



I put some beer signs in the windows, but really don't like how they turned out. I tried reverse printing on clear label. I guess making decals is the only way, but decals and I have a long-standing mutually assured destruction pact.

The street is simply a piece of styrene cut to fit. I painted it a mix of oily-black with some light gray, then sprayed with DullCoat to give it a "fresh asphalt" look. The sidewalks are Bar Mills laser cuts.

 

Thanks Mark. That was one of the things I very much wanted, a populated world for my layout, where people are doing what they would, near and around trains. I don't have ANY train personnel, yet, but have lots of "civilians" to spread around.

When I started this, last year, I had never done anything like this, and had never felt comfortable doing model work. Heck, I still have a hard time cutting a straight line! But that is what is so much fun about creating this world, lines don't have to be straight.

 

You betcha.

I'm going to have to see if I can find any more of these boys at the GTE next weekend in San Jose, along with workers for the RR. If not, the WS econo packs look like good deals.

 

A little more progress

Made a bit more progress on the back corner scene:

Wide angle view, showing the cut out flats on the left. I have them floating, so that I will visually extend the new parking lot up to them, for forced perspective. The warehouse/window flat on the right was for a "how does this look". I don't like...

As can be seen, I have put foliage above the retaining wall, sidewalks are all laid, and a gravel parking lot has been made.







I didn't put the boys back out, yet, and as I finish this, will also put a guardrail along the road. Don't want to do that quite yet, as I don't want to be handling the scene too much with something as fine as the guard rail.

The entire scene lifts out from behind the retaining wall. It sits on a two inch piece of foam that fits snugly into that back corner.

 

They are actually reduced scale! Some of the Radical Flats are reduced, specifically to seem farther away. It took me about three times through the packets to realize that, even though the pages were even labeled that way laugh:

The "behind" flats on the windows are also reduced scale, adding to the depth perception.

 

More great progress!

 

A website for the JACALAR

I've started creating a website/blog for the JACALAR. Still under construction, as I plan to add lots of the photos already contained in this thread, but thought I would share at this time. Comments and suggestions are welcome. Of course, when push comes to shove, working on the layout takes precedence.

I bought one of the "headless" Windows Home Server machines, primarily to do automated backups on the growing number of PCs in the house, and when I realized that it had a full ISS server on it, figured why not!

 

A bit more progress today, after getting back from the GTE in San Jose

I painted the extension of the lot onto the backdrop. I need to fix the extension of the sidewalk on the left side, didn't get the angles quite right. I like the two new flat additions in the back corner, and think the brick wall next to the hardware store works



You can also see some more detailing completed. Lamp posts, a mailbox, trees in the back corner.





I really like this last shot. May still need to darken up the painted lot -- in the photo the difference is much more apparent than just looking at it (surface differences and light reflection - yeah, I know the physics).

 

Nothing really good at the GTE. Always nice to see the N-track and Z layouts, but, as I was going in at 10:30, some guy was leaving and tried to tell me not to even bother. But, I had already paid my $8 parking, so....

Hmmm - an alley. OK that works :tb-biggrin: