Thanks, Wyatt. "If you build it, they will come." And soon there will be a modular group around your parts Had a friend from Canada passing though the area who wanted to see the Shoofly (he's modeling the Tehachapi Loop in N in his garage) for some oak tree research. As it was a rockin' California spring day of a sunny 70 degrees, was able to get some photos of the Shoofly in the sunlight: Those are Mark W's (CG N Scale) ventilated boxcars with Panamint's California archbars and Woodbeam trucks on 'em. What was that little yellow thing next to the vineyard? A very cool piece of modeling by Mr. David K. Smith of NZT Products with amazing detail (even has the levers in front of the driver's seat) Personally, I think it makes the scene: Thanks for looking.
Free-moN: At Home & On The Road At last week's WGH, a couple asked me what variety the grapes were. I said Pinot Noir. They then gave us their card. They own a winery and tasting room! (M C has the card, I think)
This is quite possibly the most realistic model railroad scene I have ever seen! I lighting on your amazing scenery work is just spectacular!! I can almost feel the heat of the sunlight, and hear the insects buzzing around in the grass! Wonderful work.
I started with the 1/4" bolt in a t-nut, but that is a PITA. We've found that the Rockler Leg Levelers, while $17 per set of 4, are worth their weight in gold in terms of leveling ease: The bases do take a true 2"x2" footprint, thus the cleats around the 2"x2"s (which are really 1 1/2"s). Warning: there are cheaper immatation leg levelers out there on the interweb that look a lot like the Rockler ones, but The Voice of Experience says "You get what you pay for"
Yup. Next step is to add some dirt and track marks around it, kinda like: But more "churned" and with clumpier dirt. Thanks for reminding me!
We have a winner! Model railroading has been won. Good game everyone. Seriously, M.C., this is a fabulous scene, as I am sure you don't need me to tell you. Your work often comes up in conversations among the PNW FreemoN folks. I am just blown away by this work here. That boxcab looks fabulous. I got a little hosed up trying to make my OA speeder and put it on hold during the boxcab challenge. Maybe I need to dial it back a bit and make a foobie boxcab for the Tillamook & Astoria with a chassis I understand better, such as the Kato 11-106/107/108 types. Adam
Nope: went nuts with the t-nuts, and then straight to the Rockler leg levelers. How much wood would a wood nut nut if a wood nut could nut wood? Adam: if you don't need to "see though" your speeder, you might want to think about a Bmann 44-tonner chassis. In addition to being a better mech than the Kato Kritter, it has the decoder and lighting already installed. So same price (when all added up), but much less time and argh!
The B-mann 44-tonner is too big for the speeder, by a significant chunk. The PNW-FreemoN group is making its debut public appearance at Meet-N-March on March 30, and after that the roller coaster of show dates (On30 and N) will subside for a short while so maybe I'll have time to get after my little projects again. Part of my issue with the speeder is I was trying to get really fancy with the lights (prototype has several small lights on it) but maybe I just need to simplify. A 44-tonner would be a good mech for my future foobie boxcab.
If that were the case, there'd be nothing left of this field, where dozens of Cats were rolling around... http://www.flickr.com/photos/dscn8785/4465751492/in/photostream/ Just sayin'...
I hope this doesn't qualify as hijacking the thread, but I've been using insert nuts (a.k.a. threaded inserts) and eyebolts for levelers for quite a while. With the insert nuts, I can get away with using one-by lumber for the legs: It's a lot easier to stick a screwdriver through the eyebolt to turn it, than it is to get an open-ended wrench onto a bolt-head on the floor. Herr Fujiwara's commercial levelers, of course, are probably even easier, but require beefier legs.
Lol those are old timers with years of experience though. The kids working for the vineyard probably don't have nearly as much experience working the levers.
Today being a sunny 80 degrees and needing some phresh photos for some projects I'm working on, I took the Shoofly in Sonoma module up to the Open Space next to my old elementary school, set it up on a fire trail, and tried to get some natural backdrop along with the sunlight. Not the greatest location as I had to shoot everything between the sign at the left and the school at the right. Really I should have slogged the module to the next ridge (you can just see the top of the trail on the left in the distance) but there was no way I was going to carry everything that far (the car is parked immediately to the right). So I made do. A few turned out pretty well, but I need to save those, so here are the rejects: The last two you can really see why it's important to get higher up so you can cut off the nearer hills and just include the distant ones (and even those are a little "big" for the pictures). It would have also been easier if I could have tilted the module towards the camera a little, but it was tricky enough setting it up on a slanted dirt fire trail. Then the wind started to pick up and started rocking the module. So that was that. Of course, if I ever took the time to figure out GIMP I could just take the photos from Open Space and cut them behind the photos of the module out in front of my garage Thanks for looking.
