Sorry to hear that, Owen! None of my layout is within16 feet of the furnace, so I should be fine... I hope!
Well the inspector left a half hour ago. Extruded Aluminum is alright, but I will need to put something on top of it to deaden the noise. Gluing the track directly will work. I still will not not be able to loop around the furnace and over the water tank, did not get a good reason, but thats out. Thats alright, it was a snow day here so I played hookie and reworked the plan, good to go now and on with the rest of the benchwork.
This is what I have come up with after the my uninvited Guests left the party for good. Thanks to them I will have a removable shelf to the Furnace room, thats fine not much need to get in there every day. I will call it my once in a while removable shelf/duckunder. I plan to start the bench work Thurdsday night starting over my work areas. A plan is a guideline and I am sure changes will pop up as we move along.
That's a sweet plan, if switching is your thing! Nothing new from me, until I get my order from Tony's Train Xchange. Once that gets here, I'll wire up my reversing loops, wyes, and power districts.
Great looking plan Owen, a real rail empire for sure:thumbs_up: . Looks great Michael, love the lights. Not much happening on my layout at the momment. This weekend Tina Maree wants me to make some shelves for the laundry. I will get some extra wood and make some shelves for the train room at the same time. It will be a big help not having crap lying around under the layout and getting in my way all the time:angry: So I guess any work on the layout will be spent cleaning up and tidying things away. Cheers, Ken.
Thanks Cleggie, That stuff under the layout, over the layout, and around the layout, is for me is a major project. We've accumulated (Sharon and I being packrats) a ton of "crap" in twenty years. Devesting ourselves of the stuff (our current project) frees up our creative potential. My first project on this layout (after building Sharon a studio), was to build shelving under the layout footprint. I started schetching in the sky-line on my back-drop this evening. Photos to follow. Michael
Back-drop progress Roughed in the distant hills. I'm working on the mid-distant hills. I don't know if the little boxes are going to be effective, representing house cover hills of S.F.
The Shelving is just a series of boxes made from 3/4 in. ply. with a shelf across the middle, and a 3/8" plywood back. They typically measure 48" L x 38" H x 18" deep. The set on a 2x4 frame about 6" high.
Progress on the Kellar Branch Peoria Hgts Houses: The first shows what the last house, parking lot and road looked like on Valentine's Day. I repainted the roads and parking lot, added trees to the last 2 houses.
More pics of Kellar Branch Peoria Heights houses and businesses at the end of the block. I also painted the roads and added some grass near the railroad crossing at the other end of the row of houses. This next pic is of the hardware store and trophy shop next to the tracks where Glen Avenue crosses the 3 yard tracks of the Kellar Branch Peoria Heights Pabst Plant. Looks like I still have a lot of white showing through...time to plant some more grass...and I'll try to get some crossing gates and road stripes by my next progress report. You'll note that that brown Ford Fairlane just barely made it over the crossing before the train got there! This is the restaurant and shops at the opposite end of the row of houses from the hardware and trophy stores. Vonachen's Old Place is designed like a RR depot with Railroadiana decor plus an LGB looping around the main dining room on a shelf near the ceiling. At the prototype, there is a dining car and observation car redecorated and modified to seat diners; but on my layout, selective compression necessitated only one car instead of two, and my rendition of the depot is a little closer to typical depots in our area than the prototype (which looks more like a ranch house that has been worked over to resemble a depot). Selective compression also reduced the number of shops, but I made sure to include the signature wooden watering tank in the parking lot. I'll probably not replace the cardboard mockup of the shops for a long time. I'll clean up the building a little, finish the concrete pad the rail car sits on, paint some road stripes and get started on the grass trees and cardboard mockups of a gas station on the other side of the road.
Dave: That is a great job on the roads! Did you just paint them? Did you spackle and sand them, too? It is an amazing change if you just painted them. Maybe roadway markings next. Nice restaurant depot idea, too.
Owen, thats unfortunate that you had trouble with the uninvited guests. I do like your revision though. Jeff
Flash: Thanks. The roads by Vonachen’s Old Place (VOP) were made with several layers of spackling compound. I had a lot of cracking at the other end of the row of houses when I put the spackling compound on too thick. Then I sanded and painted the roads. Last week on the other end of the row of houses, I painted the roads with Woodland Scenics Concrete (C1217) but it was too tan and shiny for my preference, so I repainted with Plaid's Apple Barrel Colors, Pewter Grey (20580). This color is also a little shiny, but not as bad and is only noticeable from a few angles. I’m going to keep looking for better (flatter) road colors…I might try some dull coat to see if that helps, too. I want to put down some road stripes, install crossing gates, and fine tune the crossings themselves. I might also try some type of combination colors to simulate the different color of the road in the main lanes and the color of the road on the shoulder before the grass starts. This first pic shows the roads and the parking lot for the VOP restaurant and Junction City Shops before painting (and I think before sanding, too). This second pic shows--just barely--where the spackling had cracked and I tried to mend it. The paler gray tracery at the left by the aisle and in the middle between the aisle and track are more noticeable on the layout than in the pic. They look a little like cracks in a road. (Go figure!mg
I do about the same thing for roads, but they don't look that good. I think I need to sand them more before painting. I also use the artist's acrylics, but I use 3-4 similar shades of gray to get a mix. "Pewter" is one. "Sandstone" gives a gray-sand color. I like "twill," too.
Michael, I love the backdrops. I need to do the same when I work up the courage. Nice houses ppuin. Looks like everybody is making progress. These pics were taken Thursday night. Since then the rock work has been extended to the cut which is about 6-1/2' completed. Still have about 2-1/2' to go.
Michael: The hillside houses look great! Using that square stick end as a stamp was a great idea! Like Mopman, I've always been a little apprehensive about painting a backdrop. I've just used picures of structures for my background tree flats. In this diorama pic, there is 6 inches from the track centerline to the blue sky backdrop. In your pics, one was titled, "Done for the day" and shows the lights across the top. Is that cellophane draped just under the lights? Is it to tint the lights a little more yellow? Is it fireproof? Or is it just an optical illusion caused by the camera's depth of field making it look like the cellophane (clear packing tape??) is close to the lightbulbs when, in fact, it isn't that close?
