Another weekend is in the books. Did you get everything done that you set out to do? Like I had said Friday, my weekend was spent in St. Louis for Soccer. It was a good weekend, the weather got increasingly better and the teams did good. Somehow I did get some modeling done, albeit just a tiny bit. Saturday night, Angela and I went to Union Station and I saw how they transformed this beautiful structure to a mall. I'm not a big fan of malls, but I guess it is a better fate than a wrecking ball. We went to the Hard Rock Cafe for dinner and I actually picked up a few parts for my T-Trak module there. What is it? I'll explain and show latter. Hopefully I can get this done in two weeks. Shot some pictures of a few trains on the way home yesterday and all around had a good weekend. So how about you? Did you have any shows or open houses to go to? How about track work or scenery? Any DCC installations or detail work? Whatever you did this weekend, we want to know, with pictures if you have them. We'll all get together again on Friday the 26th and do it all over again. Until then... ​High Greens!
Had pretty good weekend. Got more accomplished than I had planned, probably the first time ever. On Friday morning, I painted the cloudy skies for the backdrop: Saturday morning, I began working on a retaining wall to hold back embankment along the main track at the US 33 overpass. I had spare parts from an old Walthers kit and glued them together.Painted silver and weathered. Wood posts weathered with an india ink wash and glued together. Still more scenic work to do in this area. Sunday morning before churchin' I got my first layer of mountains painted on the back drop. Just a mix of gray, brown and black until I got the color I wanted. Decided this was close enough. I need to mix up a dark and subdued shade of green to dabble in places for the pine tree (hemlock, evergreen, etc) clusters. Time to develop some background buildings and flats for when the backdrop is completed next weekend (hopefully).
We had social engagements over the weekend. With company coming over, I cleaned up the train room and the layout. I never did get to cleaning the track, though. About the only "progress" I made was drilling holes for track pickup power for the Adlake lanterns I'll be putting in a caboose. My decals are still in transit, but I got my packages of unpainted figures. Better than I'd expected, actually. I may not have to put them all inside buildings after all.
I knocked out two quick passenger car projects over the weekend. Modified a Kato sleeping car to better represent the prototype. Removed all the lettering and re-decaled it. Removed the silver separator stripes from right below the roof line and right above the trucks. Removed the skirts and re-detailed the underbody appliances. I kit bashed parts from two old Rivarossi cars to create a heavyweight Baggage/RPO car.
My club had our modular HO layout at a show in Kingston NY yesterday. We also brought along a Lionel and a G scale layout, both running Thomas and friends for the kids.
Took time out from "higher priority" projects to start on my 1st laser-cut N scale structure. It's fun, looking fantastic. But I wonder if I will be able to modify/ customize. bash these easily as much as I usually do to kits without defeating the purpose of the laser-cit construction...
I finally got all the Atlas code 55 switches for you yard ladder soldered together and ready for installation. Look about 2 weeks of temporary set-up, running cars through and then rearranging to get a set that works for me in the space available. Next up, securing flextrack to roadbed.
