12/17/09 More odds and ends

Well I got to thinking that Red Wing Milling’s smokestack would look great if it actually smoked. In that spirit I went down to the nearest hobby shop and procured a seuthe smoke unit and installed it. This required some careful dis-assembly but the end result was terrific. The smoke adds a nice bit of realism to the scene.

 While I was at the hobby shop I also picked up this Woodland Scenics Vehicles Scene.

 For my last trick I put some cornerstone Prebuilt track bumpers on my sidings. You don’t often find these in the real world, but on a model railroad, it’s always a good idea to have something keeping your trains from hitting the floor. Out of the box these things are kind of lame. A quick shot of weathwash however made all the difference.

What a complete pain in the ass this project turned out to be! I started out by placing the poles and then affixing black thread to them. Simple right? Wrong! At first I thought I could get away with simply wrapping the thread around the support arms but it quickly became apparent that some type of adhesive would be required. I chose CA Glue. This worked great for a while until I started getting the occasional pole on which the glue simply reused to adhere. It took two weeks but I finally got it done and I have to say the wires do look awesome.

As you can see, I only put two wires per arm instead of four. Given the frustration involved with this project I’m more than willing to give a nod to selective compression.

12/15/09 My Problem Child

  I know this layout is supposed to depict the South Carolina up country but, growing up on Long Island, I have a certain affection for the old LI Double R. In that spirit, I order this Atlas LIRR Fairbanks-Morse H16-44. Let me tell you, there are cursed objects in this world and the afore-mentioned locomotive is one of them. First after patiently waiting the three days for the locomotive to ship, I get a package slip in my mailbox. Just my luck the post office isn’t open on the weekends and I have to go out of town on Monday. The next day arrives and there’s another slip waiting for me informing me my package is in the rental office. I get there literally two minutes after closing only to be told “it’s in there on the floor but there’s an alarm, we can’t go back and get it.” Annoying but nothing I can do. I get home early, get the engine, put it on the tracks and it ran for a few minutes then came to a dead stop. I gave it a nudge, nothing. Turned out one of it’s trucks is binding. That was it; I hit the ceiling! I now had a defective engine and no way to return it before my business trip.   

At any rate after a week and a half I still don’t have a running locomotive.

As for my snail-like progress on the layout, like I said, I’ve been busy. But I have been slogging through the utility pole project as much as patience allows.

11/30/09 Yeah, I’m still alive

Boy do I have all kind of excuses for my recent layout building inactivity. First off, I had a FAM trip to Myrtle Beach for the better part of a week at the beginning of the month. Then I met a girl and went out with her a few times and then there was Thanksgiving. So yeah, not much time for trains. But I have made some small progress on installing the utility poles and wires. I’ll have some pics when it’s all done.

11/6/09 Let there be (even more) light!

I made another spur of the moment trips to Hobby Lobby today and once again found train stuff marked down. In that spirit I snapped up two packs of Model Power streetlights.  One pack was Y-shaped double lights while the other was gooseneck lights. My initial reaction to the Y-shaped lights was “are they sure these are N Scale and not HO?” They’re up to the second floor of Coverall Paints but they are still a nice bit of detailing on the lower level. They went in without any real difficulty. I just punched a hole in the foam board, ran the wire and glued them down with FTG.

With that out of the way, I turned to the goosenecks. I put them on the upper level along the road that ruins along the back of the town. That’s when the real fun started. First I added length to the supplied wires. It’s much easier to do this at the workbench than in situ. Next it was the same procedure of punch hole, run wire, glue lamp. Now the one problem with this arrangement is the upper-level wiring is enclosed in a two-inch compartment. I had to fumble around and find the end of the wires in said compartment. 

When I finally got them hooked up and tested them, they stayed lit for about two seconds, then darkness. My layout was hit with a blackout. It was obvious my MRC throttle pack wasn’t up to the task of powering all those lights.  At first I thought about dividing the lights between two trainset power packs. However I quickly discarded that idea. In search of a real solution I decided to go poke through my G-Scale gear and my Aristocraft 4-amp power supply and controller. At first I hooked up just the power supply but the lights were “turn night into day birght.” So I took the controller and hooked the lights up to the  DC terminals. I tell you this thing powers all my lights without breaking a sweat and I can dim them or shut them off completely now too. 

                                                     Now That's a power supply:

Now it was at this point I noticed only two out of three streetlights were lit. I opened up the access panel and was horrified by what I saw. The insulation on the recalcitrant lamp’s wires was burnt off. There was also a scorch mark on the foam board. I decided to cut my loses and remove the lamp. I’ll gladly trade a lamp for not burning down the apartment building any day of the week. 

11/5/09 More weathering and a repaint

 

I seemed to have developed a real penchant chalk weathering and as such decided that my AHM warehouse looked a little too pristine. I already hit this one with weather wash a while back but it faded. I applied a second coat and then the chalk. The result was years of industrial grunge in mere minutes.  

While I was at it, I brushed chalks onto the parking lots around the upper level industrial area. Now I really should have quit while I was ahead. But then I got to notice my DPM Bruce’s Bakery. I decided I just couldn’t live with that crazy paint scheme any more. As such I got out my trustee Testors enamel and had at it. Believe painting it the first time was a total bitch. The second time? The description isn’t fit for print.

                                                                        Before:

                                                                         After:

11/3/09 Weathered Red Wing Milling again

Before:

 After:

 After my previous success with chalk weathering I decided to go ahead and do a more thorough job on Red Wing Milling. When I first put the kit together I gave it the usual coat of weatherwash, a shot of Dullcoat and called it day. Problem was I painted the building with Testors Enamel and weatherwash tends to bead up on enamel paint, leaving you with a bunch of black blotches. After deciding I’d had enough of my half-assed weathering job, I grabbed my chalks and had at it. What a difference!