The work week after a big show is always long for me but we have finally made it to Friday which means it's time for Weekend Modeling Plans! Through out the evenings this past week, I have been working on my Maywood Station T-Trak module so I would like to continue that by finishing up the painting of the street lines and the scenery around the station itself. Two more modules will be built to bracket the main module and these need to be started soon. My goal is to have all three completely done by Milwaukee Trainfest. The other big project will be a bit of shop re-arrangement. After some time with a tape measure, I found I would gain a bit more space if I simply switched the location of my office desk and workshop table. I hope to do that quick switch on Saturday. Last but not least, if I have time, I have a locomotive that needs to enter the shops. The B&M GP9 that can be seen in my signature below needs to be updated to DCC. The frame is the original late 1990's release and as such is not DCC ready. It was easier for me to find a newer DCC friendly frame with the newer scale speed motor and sell the shell that came with it than mill the old one. So I'll switch out frames and add the decoder for it and program it and the first DCC locomotive for the B&M layout will be done. Speaking of the layout, it is not dead. I use it everyday in proto operations. After using it every day for four months straight, I know what I have done wrong and what needs to be changed so soon I hope to start working on that again. So how about you? Who is off to a train show this weekend? How many plan to do some DCC work or perhaps some track work? Whatever you plan on doing this weekend, let us know. We'll meet back here on Monday, (gasp!), July 1st! Until then, beat the heat and work on some train stuff and... High Greens!
It will be family reunion week for me. After almost two weeks of batching it, wife Penny will return from her visit to her parents in Florida, and daughter Annie is coming home for the weekend as well. So, I'll probably celebrate too much and not make any progress on my weight loss program. I hope to get some train stuff done, though. I've got another half-dozen cars de-wheeled in preparation for truck painting and replacement of plastic wheels with metal. The Great Outdoor Paintshop looks to be wet, but if I get a few dry hours I'll hopefully get to that. In any case, I'd like to get the track layed down for the tannery and Railway Express depot. It's very straightforward, with just one turnout and Tortoise to get down, and nothing tricky about the track at all. I'd like to start putting together a few of the tannery kit's walls, too.
I started this Frisco water tank a couple of days ago and should finish it this weekend. Not the prettiest but I'm building my layout without using structure kits.
Now that I have completed rehabilitating the CREOSOTE TREATMENT PLANT from my old N layout and posting it on “that auction site,” I can get back to working on my Hollywood backlot falsefront western town. I have built a hotel, bank, general store, cafe and livery stable, and a few cowboy and horse figures. Now I think I need a saloon and a sheriff’s office/jail to round out the elements that frequently appear in western films. Oh, and an N scale camera, lighting and sound crew.
