Wrightsville Port: N-Scale Waterfront Layout

Nimo Nov 20, 2010

  1. badlandnp

    badlandnp TrainBoard Member

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    Pete, nice looking tugs!

    Kaustav, As always, both inspiring and intriguing! The growing population of the city is indicative of a thriving economy!
     
  2. Nimo

    Nimo TrainBoard Member

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    Very nice tugs Pete - as always, your watercraft models are a great inspiration. :)

    Thanks Alan. :) Yes, it is becoming a little crowded off late isn't it? Think those little humans really seem to be determined to develop their sweet little town into something big. :)
     
  3. Nimo

    Nimo TrainBoard Member

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    Here you go: http://www.all-model-railroading.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?t=6303

    I will take some time out and recreate these threads here. Though AMR was the first forum that I was a part of, it's in archive mode for years and might get shut down at any moment - so it's a good idea to migrate my build threads here.
     
  4. Nimo

    Nimo TrainBoard Member

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    Finally! The town scene in the layout and the approach to the port is now complete. The only addition will be a few lighted cars, and some more figures. Time to shift focus to the boat yard so that I can leave that corner alone!

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  5. Nimo

    Nimo TrainBoard Member

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  6. Nimo

    Nimo TrainBoard Member

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    Well, I have noticed that in N scale, it is a rarity to see lighted vehicles in night scenes, hence naturally that was in my list of to-dos from the very beginning. And I am glad to say, 4 years on, I finally achieved it!

    Vehicles are not new to those who are following the progress - very humble Kato's Toyota Automobile set (http://www.¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤.com/KATO-N-23500-Toyota-Automobiles-6-p/kat-23500.htm), and one of the woodland scenics Bad Boy bikers (http://woodlandscenics.woodlandscenics.com/show/Item/as5344/page/1). And as for equipment - Model Expo drill set (http://www.¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤.com/Model-Expo-MT1041-61-80-Drill-Set-With-4-Mouth-Pin-p/mei-mt1041.htm) and Circuitron 0.04" optic fiber. Plus I used locally available cheap and thin optic fibers (0.5mm dia) for the bike.

    I think the trickiest one was the bike. Those who owned an N scale bike knows that it IS tiny! Moreover, the cheap and fragile local optic fiber kept on breaking or bending resulting in reduced luminosity or no light at all. I actually had ruined the headlight of one of the bikes in the process, the poor tiny 'bad boy' now needs to keep his bike permanently facing the backdrop. The second attempt came out to be satisfactory after a few tweaks.

    The cars were pretty easy - just drill a 0.04" hole so that the optic fibers are snug fit to the hole and then bend them through the car's contour. One difficulty was that the Circuitron optic fiber was pretty strong with a lot of elasticity, so straightening it or bending it was a challenge and it would push the light plastic car out of it's place. little fiddly, but nothing that a good model cement cannot handle!

    So without further introduction - here are the photos:

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    I will have to put a couple more lighted cars in the far right corner of the approach (where the cafe is, and a couple of vehicles in the the main port - that will make the night scenes complete.
     
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  7. BoxcabE50

    BoxcabE50 HOn30 & N Scales Staff Member TrainBoard Supporter

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    There are so few of us who do a detail such as headlights. Amazing how something like this can really bring life to a scene.
     
  8. traingeekboy

    traingeekboy TrainBoard Member

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    I really like the different type of light you use. The houses have more red/yellow look incandescent light. The harbor lights are brilliant blue white. It creates the look of a real place, like when you fly over a city at night. You often see this difference between different use areas. Nice touch!
     
  9. Nimo

    Nimo TrainBoard Member

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    Thanks. :) It wasn't really a planned thing initially - It happened while balancing out availability and need. I didn't get a 360 degree tower floodlight readily available in the market, and incandescent lamps don't give the right tone, so I used white LEDs that were available locally. Used a couple of Brawa tall yard lights, and a couple spot-light as I really liked those models, the tall HO scale white tower lights were through a friend who sourced them from China, the street lights are the humble Model Power ones - used them because... well, they are cheap, and I really couldn't afford 15 dollar a piece street light on my initial days of model railroading. Even for Model Power lamps, there are two variants because I purchased them in different lots and continuous availability was an issue. Inside of the buildings I used leftover incandescent lamps from a burnt rice-bulb chain used for decorations in Christmas and Diwali. In the mix there are very costly Circuitron 1.4mm incandescent bulbs for the warehouse bulbs, lights on two cranes and signals, and I used LEDs in some cranes and buildings whenever the installation was complicated enough to use Incandescent bulbs, or I simply ran out of stock after the LEDs/bulbs were burnt.

    Well, This is the first time I sat down and listed the types of lights I have used, and I never realized that the list is so long! On top of that, I used a combination of different transformers ranging from 3V to 15V for different types of lights (calculating resistance for each different type of light bulb is just too much work) and I use combination of series and parallel to create different load in the same line to bring some variance in lighting.

    In a nutshell, I happen to replicate exactly how we deal with lights in real life, and apparently that works very well for models too!
     
  10. Nimo

    Nimo TrainBoard Member

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    Rail-fanning weekend

    My friend Rahul is no model railroader but he is very keen about photography. So when he visited this last weekend with his DSLR and a 18-55 mm lens, we had lots of fun trying to take night time photos and trying to reveal as much details as possible. I also put my astro-mod (without the IR cut-off filter) to some good use to see how an astro-mod camera handles model photography.

    We had taken a lot of photos and I will be posting some of them over a period of time. For now, here are my picks:


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  11. BoxcabE50

    BoxcabE50 HOn30 & N Scales Staff Member TrainBoard Supporter

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    Amazing how much potential has been packed into the space available.
     
  12. John Moore

    John Moore TrainBoard Supporter

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    Very nice level of detail in this small space without overcrowding it. You have a nice balance going there. I still am messing with the use of solar cells and lighting as I have time. But I think my earlier experiments with some cheap garden lights have potential for lighting with minimal wiring.
     
  13. Nimo

    Nimo TrainBoard Member

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    Thanks Ken. :) Well the credit actually goes to Ian Rice for designing such an incredible layout plan, but yes, so far I am happy with my contribution too! :)

    Thanks John. :) For building lights, the options are wide open, as the size of the bulb really doesn't matter. what was challenging for me was making/sourcing scale street lights at a reasonable cost. The Model Power ones might be of good quality at a reasonable cost, but they surely are not true to scale even to comparable degree. When I wanted to build my own, I found that for N scale, only option is to custom build lights using circuitron miniature bulbs. They are like gems, and just like gems they are costly! I actually had it easy because given I am building a port bigger bulbs/LEDs on a tall stick can pass for tower lights. If I was modeling just a town, it would have been a nightmare!
     
  14. longislandloco

    longislandloco TrainBoard Member

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    Nice layout!
     
  15. Nimo

    Nimo TrainBoard Member

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    Thank you! Glad you like it. :)
     
  16. Nimo

    Nimo TrainBoard Member

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    More photos from the Photo Marathon

    So here goes the second lot. There should be another post later this week once I sort the rest of the photos, and before I turn my focus in to building something and getting something really useful done!



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  17. Nimo

    Nimo TrainBoard Member

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    I finally forced myself to take some time out to engage in another intricate project. It's going to be 5 years in this November that I started with this layout, and now I really want to see this finished as early as possible. Well the fact that I have been saying that for last 3 years sort of indicates how realistic that is going to be! :)

    Anyway, so among the major items that are still pending, I thought of taking up the grain facility as the first one - it's already half done, and is actually the biggest of all the facilities, so finishing it will be a major milestone.

    So as you have been seeing for last about 3 years, the silos and the elevator tower is already in place, so is the small pneumatic unloader. To refresh your memories, here is the build description of the unloader:

    Now, given the extremely constricted space available and the fact that the rail line goes in between the unloader and the elevator/silo, I decided to approach the model in a little different way - simulate the elevator tower just for the output to barge and hopper cars, and use conveyors for input to the silos.

    This required a High Angle Conveyor, or commonly known as HAC. The operation can be visualized as the barges bringing in the grain will be unloaded by the pneumatic unloader, place on a horizontal open conveyor that takes it to HAC, HAC lifts it to the required height, and then another low angle usual conveyor takes it to the silos turning it nearly 180 degrees. The elevator mechanism required for loading barges and hoppers can be imagined to be inside the elevator tower.

    Now leaving the technical pieces aside, here are some photos of the progress so far. Due to lack of time, I am not taking photos of each step, only building milestones. Here are a few photos of the HAC progress so far.

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    Materials are primarily styrene sheets (Yes, a change in my approach from paper for once) and left over runner material from my old trestle kit - after all, I had to use some scrap material to do justice to my approach!
     
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  18. badlandnp

    badlandnp TrainBoard Member

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    Kaustav- Glad to see you post and that the creative juices are still circulating! The grain conveyor looks intricatr and 'right.' Nicely thought out, as usual.

    One thing tho', you should realize by now that you will never truly be done with the layout! ;):rolleyes: It seems that there is always something to redo because our skill level got better, or it just doesn't look right, or .....?
     
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  19. BoxcabE50

    BoxcabE50 HOn30 & N Scales Staff Member TrainBoard Supporter

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    I like this (right side) rusty little crane. If you have time, could we see a couple of close in views of it?
     
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  20. Nimo

    Nimo TrainBoard Member

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    Thanks. :) The 'creative juices' are the adrenaline for the lazy bums like me! The brain keeps running, the body doesn't want to, so what do you do? You sit and make a model! As for the layout not reaching completion, that's one step further - that is, when I feel lazy even to make a model - that's lazy-square for you! And there is another problem - distraction!

    I really need to finish all the major components of this layout and call it 'finished' - I have a HO project lined up for which I have already spent quite a few hundred dollars and a few more hundred pending - so that has to start. There is a strong itch to get in to HOn30 to be able to model Darjeeling Himalayan Railway as there are a few more guys here who showed interest to take a modular approach and build something together. Couple of weeks back I visited a local car model shop and unexpectedly found a couple of fantastic Mamoli wood ship kits - and I eventually spent over 350 dollars on that impulse buy. and there is a half done diorama that is sitting there winking at me every day. And on top of those I gotta keep the job that pays for all this. Oh! I am in trouble! :(
     

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