Thanks buddy! I have actually seen those sight holes for aiming the signals, at the time I wasn't sure if that was what they were, but a friend confirmed shortly thereafter.
Haven't done much to the layout in a couple of weeks. I got a session ran in January, I got the signals installed afterwards, got the workbench cleared off and that's been about all. This past week has been extremely cold and my basement ain't the warmest place in the house, so I have kind of avoided it and stayed upstairs trying to get through tax season. However I have an order coming from Showcase Miniatures soon for an upcoming project. It's only a small side project, but I'm looking forward to it. For a while now, I've been thinking about getting some MOW vehicles on the layout to add to the Ruston depot scene and the engine facility in the yard and recently picked up a couple of the other MOW vehicles from Showcase while visiting Spring Creek Hobbies. I'm planning to kitbash a MOW truck that seemed to be a very common during my era. Showcase has quite a bit of bits and pieces in several builders packs and I think I can make this happen easily enough. Debbie has been real helpful when I contacted her about parts. The hard part will be to make some door decals for those trucks. No one makes any, but Fusion Decals offers custom decals, if I can get them made to their requirements.
An update on the Bog water. I did the final (2nd) pour 8 weeks ago on Jan 15. Since then I've worked on the depot, the crossing bucks, and installed the signals, all with in weeks of the bog. The last time I worked on the layout was Jan 21 as I was getting ready for the Op session on the 27th. In that time I hadn't paid much attention to the bog, other than a passing glance. Just before then I noticed that some areas of the bog was turning much lighter than I had wanted and figured that "It is what it will be" and I'd just live with it. Since then it's been awfully cold around here and one night in Feb it hit -19° and my basement gets cold in the winter time. So I haven't been down there very much since. Today it hit 70°. With that and that I finished my taxes today, I went down to make up a mental list of things that I need to wrap up and a list of what I want to work on next. As I walked past the bog I noticed that it was a much darker brown! Here's a shot about a week after the pour. It's kind of hard to see, but the far right end of the bog looked as light brown as some of the spots around the banks, but it was fully light brown in that area. Here's a shot I took tonight. As you can see, it has that rich Coffee brown color, which is what I was shooting for. So it seems that the Liquitex Pouring Medium just took some time to properly cure. I will definitely be using this again for my water scenes.
Really, really nice. So the key is the temp drops to -19 and your away from it for a month BTW, is that an N Scale boat and dock? If so from where? And can we see a close up photo please?
Thank you sir! I'm not 100% certain, but it sure seems to be leaning that way??? I had picked up a WS set of "Family Fishing" mainly for the boat. The dock will serve as a placeholder for now unless I can weather good enough to use.[/QUOTE] https://www.amazon.com/Woodland-Sce...pcontext&ref_=fplfs&psc=1&smid=A2E137HZ093DQ5
Looks like you nailed it spot on there Allen. The boat looks cool. How do you like it? If you replace the dock, what are you thinking of going with?
Thanks Rich! The boat is OK, typical WS quality. With some weathering it'll probably pass? For the dock, I was thinking of using strip styrene?
I finally drug myself downstairs over the weekend. It's been well over a month since I last worked on anything. I removed two of the ISE sensors I installed for the Ruston crossing, grabbed the other two I had and sent all four into ISE to have them reprogram them for a 2 second delay instead of the stock 5 second delay after soldering the jumper. One of them was inside the depot, so while I had it removed from the scene, I forced myself to create some town signs for it. These were printed on white paper and glued to a strip of .020" styrene and glued to the building. Also added a decal of the shield herald on the parking lot side. Then I started to weather the roof by using a method Boomer calls "Stain Painting" with acrylics. Next I need to apply some Pan Pastels to building so as to add some age.
Like Joe said, that weathered roof looks great on that building along with the overall weathering. I'm not sure if it really needs more but I have no doubt that you will take it to another level of cool! Looking forward to seeing how it turns out when done.
Thanks. Yeah I don't plan on making it look dilapidated, but I do plan to add some dust and dirt to the brick pad and lower side walls. I may add an overall black wash to see what that might look like. I need to see about making the white woodwork look aged. I got a little ahead of myself when I painted the windows and door. I should have painted them with a grayish/brownish color first them applied a chipping solution and then painted the off white on them. So now I'll just add a grayish wash to them. Also thought about putting on a light filter of green on the roof to resemble a small amount of moss? We'll see where the brush takes me.
