The JACALAR RR

Thanks Mike and Mark! I always love how it all "comes together" after agonizing over the parts.

Possible. Will have to see, since at the immediate front of layout I don't want too much sitting there where I may "catch" a building or tree with my arm when reaching. But, I don't just want an empty field or lot, either... Oh well, since I still have a LOT to do in this area, not like I have to finalize it now.

 

Installing the Gulf Station

The Gulf station is a Miller Engineering / Micro Structures brass kit which I put together last summer. It is lit using the electro-luminescent panels that he also uses for his animated billboards. The current issue of N-Scale Magazine has an article about Loren Perry's "Skid Row", and he makes extensive use of these.

During my installation, I damaged the decal on the street sign for the station. You can see the damage clearly. Does anyone have any spare Gulf round decals (I'll also see if I can get a new decal sheet from Miller Eng).

The roof signs were particularly difficult, since, in N scale, the slot for the left hand sign is directly through the ceiling of the waiting room. This would put an ugly cable right in those huge picture windows! So, I built the platforms for the roof signs, using scrap sheet styrene, painted flat black. Also, rather than use the connectors provided by Miller Engineering from their power source, and attached 30 AWG wire to the leads, and ran all the wires to a central distribution point in the back of the garage, which then has a mini-connector, the same I used on the other buildings, whose mate is wired to the Miller Eng power supply.

Here's a look at the station at night. I plan to add some customers and a bench in the waiting room, and a car and some racks into the garage (at some point). You can see the power cable inside the garage.



Close up at dusk. The extra wires off to the right will be hidden in the foam, and used to power the signage in the diner next door (still to be built)



Wider angle of installed station

 

The town of Cherylton on New Year's Day, 2012. There's an SP Overnight Express Freight, pulled by an A-B-A string of F3 Black Widows on the mainline, while a Western Pacific RDC is at the Cherylton depot, bringing the commuters home from the city.

 

JACALAR New Year's video

Here's a new video I created for the New Year, with the SP Daylight taking a trip around all the new additions to the layout since my last video of it (a full year)

[video=youtube_share;rB50JsIxnhE]http://youtu.be/rB50JsIxnhE[/video]

 

Awesome Rick!!

 

Thanks all. I'm going to take a slight break from the scenery work, and do some more running and photos / video the couple weeks. This was quite a push, and I actually got done what I set out to do this break.

 

Your video has convinced me that the next passenger train of mine to get passengers is going to be my Daylight. Beautiful trains!

 

It is my all time favorite train on my layout, with my all time favorite loco. Looks fantastic and very distinctive. Will look great running along your Pinole shore, with people looking out at San Pablo Bay.

 

Inside the tunnel, the curve is the 481mm 19" radius track. On the trestle itself, I dropped to the 381mm 15" radius track. I kept the wider radius in the tunnel to ensure no problems in there (even though the entire mountain top comes off), which necessitated the tighter curve on the bridge. On the bridge, I actually cut and pulled most of the roadbed off of two Unitrack pieces, and fed the rails into the ties of Micro Engineering bridge flex track. This kept the radius on the bridge exactly at 15 inches, and the rails at the ends still connected with unijoiners, the unitrack alloy, and yet used the ties for bridge.

 

Yep - that vantage point really highlights the issue, with nothing below the cars. If I had taken the video perpendicular to the bridge (looking up the creek), it is barely noticeable.

 

Very busy electricians

The Cherylton electricians and builders were extremely busy the last couple days, installing new signs for the Drug Store and the Bar. These are animated neon signs (understand they are the rage in all the big cities).

Here's a shot down the street, showing both. There has also been quite an uptick in truck traffic on the roads!



As it started to get dark, was able to get pictures of the signs individually

Here's the drug store -- the lights blink to point at the store itself!


And here's the bar's sign. Here, the letters spell out the word "B A R" in sequence, also highlighting Mr O'Malley's name first, and then the billiards sign. Something is wrong with the sign, though, the "B" flickers




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These are both Miller Engineering signs, and there are 46 different chase patterns that can be selected, including the "flickering" letter, to simulate a malfunctioning sign. Once it gets darker, I'll see how well I can capture the signs with video, and post.

These were very easy to install. The bar sign I cut a slit into the building about 1/3 of the way in, and slid the sign into the slit. Used 0.010" x 0.060" inch styrene strips to hide my cut on the front of the building, giving it the look of painted 2x8s framing the sign.

The drug store sign I mounted on the outside rear of the building. Because that model is so shallow, and I have put the interior in, I chose to put the controls for the sign in the building behind the drug store.

The modeling for the day finished early (this should probably go in the "don't try this again thread") -- don't try picking up your new Chopper II with your finger under the blade. Luckily, we had a Mickey Mouse Band-Aid to make my hand feel better :tb-biggrin: