By now the weekend is a recent memory, time to review and see how we did. It's time for Weekend Modeling Accomplishments. Saturday I owed Angela a dinner to a nice steak house for her birthday so on the way we went to my not so local hobby shop. I was hopping to get the Walthers 2013 N & Z catalog but it turned out he did not carry it. I did spend some time looking over decoders for the future switch to DCC. Sunday was spent at home, around 6:00 when I got up, I could see a little bit of snow just barely covering the landscape. They had predicted a snowpocolips here in Illinois and I laughed a bit. Two hours later, round two came in. It sure reminded me of winter in NH because this snow was wet and heavy unlike what we usually get here. It is still snowing now and we have over a foot of snow, everything is shut down. Over a foot may not sound like a lot for those who live out in the north east or west, but for our climate, a respectable amont and our biggest snow amount of the year, and it's spring! During all of this, I managed to get the dull cote on the Rock Island unit done and some assembly. I then realized I did not have all the numbers I needed to complete the number boards, ARGH! So that project is on hold. Not as much done as I wanted this weekend. So how about you? Did the sudden snow of spring help you to stay indoors and get some projects done? Any open houses, club shows or operation sessions? What ever you did model railroad wise, let us know. A picture or two is always appreciated. We'll all come back on Friday the 29th and do it all over again. Until then... ​High Greens!
Trains turned out to be my primary activity for the whole weekend. We got a respite from the bad weather, so I made it to the Local Hardware Store, the Local Hobby Shop and an open house at a not-so-local club. Not exciting at all, but I needed some barrier strips for wiring and hinges for the drop-down shelf the carfloat will sit on. Saturday, I cleaned up a lot of wiring beneath Mooseport, so that the connections to the carfloat apron would all go to screw terminals in case it needs to be removed. Both Tortoises are now wired up to an NCE Switchit stationary decoder, and the wye turnout approach to the apron has a powered frog. Then, I began doing carpentry. The apron sits on a fixed extension off the original benchwork, and the carfloat shelf is now attached to the end of that with hinges: And then, in the raised position: There's also a hinged leg assembly to hold the shelf up. The gap between the layout section on the left and the shelf against the right wall is very narrow, so I needed to make the carfloat removeable and the shelf foldable so that I could reach the back parts of the layout. Next, I put a piece of pink foam, not yet cut to size, on the shelf and put the carfloat on top for the picture session. I posed a couple of stock cars for this photo: There's still much work to be done. The alignment of approach track, apron and carfloat needs to be cleaned up so the cars will roll easily. Then, there's scenery, as all that pink foam must be hidden beneath either ground cover or Envirotex water, but the project is getting close now. And finally, although I did a bit more work on those Tichy flat cars, they still await the brake lines before they get painted.
Everything went well with the NMRA division that had their meeting at my club on Saturday. Yesterday I was at the show in Kingston NY with my club and our T-Trak layout. Quite a turnout and the place was mobbed most of the day. Sorry, I was too busy to get any pictures
I started on the fourth structure (or not-quite-structure as the case may be) for my N scale Hollywood backlot false front western town. This one will be the first that is an actual building rather than just a false front. It is a my freelance design for a movie set building representing a frontier town LIVERY STABLE. The front of the building is an old time board-and-batten false front, but behind the front is an actual building. However, it is not a "period" frontier building. It has a "practical" interior (movie set term for usable), stable facility housed in a corrugated metal pole barn shed, hidden behind the false front. I studied photos of western town sets from the 1950s MGM back lot, 1970s Universal City Studios, Old Tucson and Alamo Village, Bracketville Texas, and based my livery stable front mostly on the Universal example. After drawing a rough scale drawing, I laud out the front and cut it out on 1/16th inch board-and-batten wood sheet. Wish I could have gottn something thinner. I will want to want to add scale 2x4 framing on the back side, visible from the "backstage" view of the movieset structure. I used period photos and scale drawings and stables from Library of Congress Historic American Buildings Survey, and advertisements for full-size pre-fab and "kit" barns and sheds to lay out the back side. I draw a layout of the pole framing on graph paper, painted bamboo skewers as creosoted poles and glued the ends of them down on the drawing, OUTSIDE the area of finished framing. When that is set, I glue cross members on top of that and then cut the whole assembly loose from the paper. I surveyed my stash of figures of found a few N Bachmann scale horses- they all seem to be modeled as trotting- not very appropriate for horses tied up at a hitching rail in a frontier town. I found some more appropriate horses on eBay and ordered them. Found a few unpainted figures that might become cowboys, and some to represent the camera and production crew. It will take some ingenuity to build an N scale model of a Mitchell 35mm camera and other production equipment. Maybe I should make a thread about this multi-part project.
Didn't accomplish much, beyond researching some detail parts for a slowly ongoing HOn30 critter bash.
Thanks! It's a complete coincidence that this is coming together right now and Walthers has announced another production run of the carfloat, apron and tugboat kits. It's been several years since these kits were last available, and a very long time since the run before that, so anyone who is interested would be advised to order while they're still in stock. I plan to get another float, so that I can use them as cassettes.
