I think the Old Town section of the Silicon Valley Station module is just about finished. Still a little to do on the end which matches up with the middle section of the module, but I have to complete the park which crosses the junction, still. Here is a wide angle shot, looking down the main street We have some freight action, plus a classic Santa Fe Super Chief in the station A shot looking into the A&W. This does light up (didn't connect power for these shots), and those are classic A&W menus!
Waiting for the bus and, the rear area of the A&W This is the first group of Downtown Deco. The parents in town are none too pleased that the Coco Club is still operating, right next to the A&W and the next group
Grossman's Deli is in the middle of this block (great pastrami on rye, with a Dr Brown's Cream Soda or even Cel-Ray tonic for the old timers!) And here is the bar at the far end of the block. The policeman is making friends, and the dog in the pickup is jealous. (ok - don't know why I skipped a shot of the hotel -- just did) Here's the back alleyway
And, to top of this photo shoot, a shot across the top, towards the tracks This basically completes my pre-show work spurt. Couple little detail items for the station itself are in the works (bike/bike rack; and (if I am really efficient) trash cans). Amazing what one can get done with a week and a half of vacation.
That's just wrong Rick !!!! :crying: It took me 2 days but I finally got a 'Hack Track' installed in Lucky Penny Yard......woooohoooo !!!!
Looks fantastic, inspiring, and certainly humbling.... On detailing the back alley, it needs one key element. Dumpsters.
Here you are, Mike. Not the greatest photo, just iPad, but dog peeing on fence, with very distraught cat looking on
It has been nearly three months since I posted to this thread, wow! Not much modelling done, but here's a status report on project I've been working on The Silicon Valley Station module was originally constructed with Bullfrog controls, manually operated under the layout. This has worked well for the past year's shows, but as more folks have joined the group, and scenery "gets in the way" of seeing the switch position, I decided to add electronic switch control, with a panel that displays the current positions of each of the four turnouts -- plus adding signals on the layout, so the engineers operating the trains will know when it is safe to proceed. As a reminder, here are the Bullfrog controls, on the underside of one end of the module. They are inexpensive to build, and very simple. A microswitch is included to allow for proper frog powering My first task was designing the control panel. I used a small Radio Shack project box, 4 pushbuttons, 8 bi-color LEDs, and 2 Cat-5 Keystone jacks. The LEDs light red/green to show which leg of each switch is selected The Cat 5 jacks are color coded, blue and yellow, which plug into the control board mounted below the center section of the module (next post) Here's the inside of the box (sort of a mess, but hey, it isn't supposed to be looked at or opened)
Here is the control module, underneath the station itself. It is Team Digital SRC-16, which allows both DCC control and local push button operation of the switches, plus providing outputs for LEDs and, of course, driving the Tortoise Switch Machines, via the Moto-D board mounted along side. I programmed the SRC-16 using Decoder Pro. I take the flat ribbon cable output and input, and feed into a surface mount keystone box, with 2 jacks, color coded blue and yellow, just like the jacks on control box. Of course, my wife says this is to know how to plug the red and green cables in The control box will mount, via velcro, to either side of the module (to the operator side, at shows). I got the Tortoises installed (no photos), made sure they were working smoothly, powered up the board, and everything worked as it should.
I have also added track signals at each switch. Along the freight bypass, there is a standard searchlight signal (SP style, before UP got around to changing everything out here), and a trackside dwarf at each exit of the station proper, where the tracks merge. Here's looking at the signals on the industry side of the module. Each signal shows red or green, depending on if that track has the points on the approaching switch for it.
