Looks like everyone's having a great weekend so far! I've made a lot of progress this week, and today on the second module to my eventual layout. It's following the same dimensions 2' x 8'. I Have the track layed down and painted, and wired. This portion I'm modeling only has 20 inches of visible track, the rest is in the Proto typical tunnels. I'm having so much fun building this, I really regret not doing this sooner. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
SNE, I admire your vision. You create a perfectly finished scene that's attached to nothing. Then you create the next scene blended perfectly to the first. I'm sure you'll fill in the W-H-O-L-E system in a year or so, and every scene will blend perfectly with its neighbors. Can't wait.
I decided to take a break from all my sound decoder work for a few weeks, so today I started on building one of the two Dairy Queen models I got over the holidays. Not complete, but had to stop due to a strong craving for chocolate dipped soft ice cream
This is a modern DQ Grill & Chill, what was formerly DQ Brazier. Have no idea where I am going to put it, yet.
Well, I hesitate to throw this one in here with all the perfection y'all have in this thread, but here it is with all its warts. It started as a test case of trying different paints and techniques. The gold and white stripes are actually automotive pinstriping. I think I'll try that again with a little more care as to placement. I learned quite a bit about masking and taping. I drilled out the headlight hole and inserted an LED into it instead of leaving the old lens in place. I think I'll drill holes behind the number boards and see how it looks to light them using tiny LED lights, too. Still have to decal the numbers and number board. I think I'll work at printing my own number board decal that should allow the light to show through. It also contains my very first soldered in DCC/sound decoder, and experimentation with bits of leftover plastic windows from other projects. All in all, considering it started life as a throwaway Tyco Santa Fe shell, it's not bad. At least if you don't get very close! And it made a great test bed. I'll be doing experimental weathering on it too, so that should cover some of the painting foibles. .
Max, I think you did a great job. Of course, being a New England Yankee, I have no idea what a Great Northern E (F?) unit should look like, but still.
It does seem to have turned out well, especially considering what you started with. One thing I will note is that the white stripe turned out much less translucent than we often see with decals (esp. when applied over a darker color)
I was surprised at how well the striping did (it's 1/16" from Great Planes), although while it snuggled right down around the rivets on the initial application, it slowly pulled back up. I'll avoid putting striping around things like that, or maybe experiment with heating it as I push it down and hope it will kind of mold itself to the detail. Regarding the white striping - it's just too white, I think. Although, as I alluded to, once it's weathered I think it will come out reasonably ok. .
SP SD45 #8587 crossing Piru Creek with a local consist for work at Finchley and Wilmington on our FreemoN set up.
Here's the little custom painted Atlas Alco S-4 I picked up at the train show in Livingston. Finally got to run it. Smooth as silk.
