Part 5 - Then I decided it was finally time to unbox my trees. As you can see, I had plenty of peanuts too. - Before After Oddly enough and no idea how they ended up there, I found these random items in the bottom f the tree box. And then one last milestone for the weekend. When I was working on my previous layout I bought a gallon of Elmar's glue. Yesterday, I refilled my two glue bottles with the last of that gallon. And that's it for the weekend.
https://www.cedarleafcustomdecals.com/CustomDecalsx.html Stan's a great guy, don't know if he can make N scale decals, I know he makes G scale and 1: scale. Don
Well, it was another one of those I spent a lot of time working in the train room but didn't make as much progress as I thought I did. Started out hitting the bottle …………..……………….. of water Yep, that's right, I finally made the first pour of water into the creek late morning on Saturday. The stuff does not dry in 24 hours like it says on the bottle but it will dry clear in a few days. This was the scene 30 hours after the pour. It's definitely going to require a second layer which means I will have to pick or order another bottle of the stuff. What is baffling is that the level of the pour dropped some but I have no leaks that I can find. My guess is it may have leaked out between the foam sheets and the glue holding them together contained the material enough that it never made it to a place to be seen. Since it didn't get on the bookshelf or floor, I'm all good.
Next up was to clean up the ground foam I put down last weekend. This little section between the drive area and tracks turned out okay. In this area, added a little more but not sure what else is going there so holding back a little. And here in this area past the green lawn of the soon to be cemetery, I added some and at some point, trees will follow.
From there, I did a little painting and then headed to the work bench. Some fencing for the cemetery And the new storage tanks. On the work bench, I started with finishing cutting out the rest of my curves so that I can store them flat until needed.
Following the curves, I finished up the lowboy trailer (intermixed with the new project which I will cover after this one) Got the trailer painted and the wheels ready. Next up, glued on the wheels and applied safety striping and mud flaps. And there you have it, a brand new lowboy trailer all ready to deliver a brand new Cat 315CL to a work site. I do see a couple of minor touch ups that I need to do now that I am looking at the pictures. It's amazing what we don't see in person that pics can reveal
Yet another work bench project that has been sitting in the wings for a while now was actually a pretty simple one. We start with this lovely old ConCor autorack that originally came with horn hook couplers. Here we see it with the M/T trucks and couplers already applied. The next step in the upgrade is to replace the solid plastic side panels with etched metal panels. These are from JnJ and are getting hard to find since they are no longer producing them. I know others have made these replacement panels as well. So we start with removing the roof. It just simple pops off. Then pop all the side panels off. There are four little tabs that hold each panel on. I used my fingernail to pry each one loose. Took all of 2 minutes to remove the 18 panels. I got a little ahead of my self and separated the JnJ etched panes as seen here. Continues in next post...…..
.......Continued from previous post. Since you can see through the panels in places, yellow didn't exactly fit the bill. I also discovered I need some new brushes but since I was this far in, I improvised and applied some black paint using a toothpick (I know, I know, I hear the groans out there) Once the paint was dry and I had filed the burs off the panes, it was time to start applying them. Side one.. and side two. The roof was snapped back on and she was ready to roll. Now this car will get added to the list of cars to weather to finish off the look of the car. All in all, I have maybe an hour total invested in this car. A nice easy upgrade that really changes the look and makes these old ConCor rack looks so much better when running with M/T and Red Caboose racks. I'll be honest with you guys, I've done a dozen or so of these and by the time you buy the rack, the M/T trucks and couplers, and the panels, you have just as much invested in these ConCor racks as you do if you had purchased the M/T or Red Caboose ones. Still though, it's a fun project and now it and the lowboy trailer are off my workbench.
Back over on the layout, some fencing for the cemetery was started (and tombstones are in transit). The first section of parking lot behind the buildings was put down. Signs and curbs still to go. Some pipe got delivered but the off load crew did a horrible job of stacking it and "claim" they will be back to fix it soon. And the last thing I noticed before bed time was that one of the locals dropped off some two bay hoppers at Medusa Cement. Thanks for following along with all the fun. Hope you all are staying safe and healthy. Until next time.
Thanks Hemi! It really is just that easy. I did a few where I actually cut out about 90% of the sections behind each panel but what I found was that unless you backlit the rack, you couldn't tell any difference than if the background was just painted black.
Help!?!? I picked up some W/S steel grade crossings. They look cool but are a little narrow for my roads. So, here is my dilemma. Do I do a double set like below or should I cult one section in half and do a 1 1/2 section crossing. I can't decide so I am looking for some opinions on what would look better?
1.5. Extending beyond the road's edges doesn't make sense. Think about it in real life. Extending it beyond the road's edges only encourage drivers to go off the road. if you want to maintain the center gap line, cut 1/4 from each so you can have symmetry.
ok after seeing all your post now im getting motivated to work on the layout.like your ballast i use kato track too so now i see how it looks i think work will start tomorrow
Thanks MK. Went with the narrower crossing and was able to make 3 out of the set of 4. Now I will need to get one more set to do one other crossing. Next up, I will have to add the roads here.
Here is some other fun from the weekend. Early this past week, got a package that made it though quarantine successfully and put most of it to good use. Item one was some fence for what will be the small scrap yard. here we see it in place and some improvisation to hold it straight while the glue dries. Also aged a base coat of dirt to the area. After the glue dried, The fence looked good. I swept the excess dirt up into a pile so it can be recouped. I also placed a small tin shack that was in the weeks deliveries. From there, I moved on to adding some metal wheels to 3 reefer cars and placed the recently finished lowboy trailer on the road in front of the cars. Then I decided to attack something that had been bugging me. The wiring under the layout is getting to be a mess since I can't get down there to organize it. I took a section of old hardwood floor, put some hooks on it and hung it from some eye hooks that were close to the front of the layout. Here we see the work in progress where I had already added some of the terminal blocks to it. That is a big first step to organizing it all. All the wire have a label on the somewhere. Next I will need to make some labels for the terminal blocks.
Along the back side of town, there is just a section of track that is set to look like another rail line passing through. When the scenic divide is in place, you will only see a small section from the front. Since it would be visible from the side, I added some shrubs and trees to hide the ends and hel with the allusion that the rail continues on. Here we see each end. I also did some work on the parking lots by adding the small curbs at the front of each parking spot. Forgot to go back and get a shot after the glue dried but turned out pretty good. On the other parking lot, I printed the stripes for the spaces a little two short so will have to reprint that tis week and go from there. In the mean time, I did at least get a feel for how it will look. The next project talked was the cemetery by the church. Finished the fencing and installed two packs of grave markers. Think I will need one more set to finish it. I like how it looks so far. Is really taking on a good look.
