Tonight was our best imitation of paste, tape and bale wire. Lots of glue, spackle and foam shavings. Ed was busy wiring up the coal scale. I continued my work from last week, closing up gaps along the fascia in the lower staging and return loops sections of the railroad. As for Doug, Rey and Scott, they were working on putting in our steel grade crossings and shaping the roads to fit. It doesn't look like much here, but these projects are very time consuming, so more progress than it might otherwise seem. I'm off for the next two weeks, so check back then for more updates.
Well, I'm back from vacation and was very eager to see what the fellas had in store for me. Ed has just about completed the install of the Franklin Coal field weigh scales. He spent the evening dialing in the sensor by running a couple of cars across the infrared beam. That triggers the mechanism to provide a randomly selected weight for the car. You set the parameters for the weight. Once the weight appears on the screen, there is a few second delay before a buzzer sounds advising the operator that the next car can go across the scale. Doug and Scott pretty much wrapped up the roads in Maple Valley and Renton, respectively. In Maple Valley we went with concrete roads. In Renton it is all asphalt. The rail crossings turned out fabulous. As I mentioned before there is much more work than you'd think. Here is a shot from last week of the spackle needed to cover the crossing. The amount of sanding and vacuuming to get these crossings smooth is ridiculous. But the finished product is worth it. Wain and I spent the entire evening in the Southwest corner working on the scheme for the area around South Seattle Yard and specifically the Black River Junction wye. There aren't any progress pictures just yet, but this area will be really cool once all these plans come together. That's it for tonight, cya next week.
Michael, let me know when you finish the Boeing plant and I will crawl in and shoot some rivets. Haha. Worked for Boeing 24 years mostly as a structure mechanic. Joe
Here's a quick update from last night. Wain brought over some structures he wanted to part with, so the crew spent a while walking the layout and placing structures where they might fit. Here are some of those. New structures at Edwards & Bradford: A new home along the right of way. Merchant row in Maple Valley: Scott continued his work on the roads in Renton. Specifically working on equalizing the grade and assuring proper scale width of the road. I really like how this grade crossing is turning out. Doug was busy putting down scenery in Maple Valley. He started with sand in several places and used ballast for shoulders. I spent the evening closing more gaps between the fascia and the subroadbed. Some tight spaces for sure but it needs to be done. The new photo backdrop for this area is on its way from Trainjunkies.com so this has to get done. Reynold was busy at the modeling desk with cabooses. He's detailing several of them. That's it for now, thanks for checking in.
Not much happening in my area, thankfully. It is mostly in a couple of east side of the State major population areas. We have also lost a bunch of small businesses. We are heavily tourism dependent, (summer is the Park. Winter= skiing), so if this continues, it could become disastrous. My job, I hope, will continue.
Last night's work session included a great deal of progress. Doug is wrapping up Maple Valley with more sand and dirt and greenery. Scott decided he didn't like the horizontal road surfaces in Renton, so he redid them. I'm now concerned this will never get done.... Reynold decided to weather some boxcars, and rework the couplers. I started the evening working on reballasting the track detector area. After these surfaces dry, I'll redo the landforms and put in control boxes. After that I took out all the trees along the right-of-way between Black River Jct and the North wall. This is just one box, all the pine trees are in another one. This is in preparation for our new photo backdrop. Then I started caulking all the exposed seams so that when we scenic the area nothing goes to the floor. Weird seeing it without trees. I profusely apologized to Doug for having to take the trees out after all the work he did to put them there, but it's better than breaking them. That was all she wrote last night. More next week.
Hey Ken, here's the work Reynold did last week on the caboose. He reworked the couplers on the older cabooses and started some weathering. In addition on the B&O he extended the roof at both ends to match the prototype. The newer Atlas BN still needs new couplers. Amazing stuff. I'm thinking of having him cover the windows of the older BN. Thoughts?
Fun night and good progress last evening. Doug continued making strides in Maple Valley, getting more scenery and sand down to cover the exposed surfaces. As I mentioned last week Scott is obsessed with the horizontal road surface in Renton. As such, he put yet another coat of spackle down after heavy sanding. I spent the evening working on the railroad overpass at Black River Jct. We are going to simulate the overpass using Masonite for the bridge vertical surface and 2x4's for the stantions. Here's a couple of views as we make headway on that. Reynold was building coal hoppers last time I looked, so I'll have to get back in there and take some pics. As for me, I rounded up my next project, finishing the 737s. That's it for last night, cya next week.
