Excellent detail on the trash cans and especially the dumpsters. Great paint work as well. What method are you using? With such small items, they generally come out looking like globs if brush painted, regardless of what paint you use. At least that’s my experience.
Thank you for the compliments! I'm just using the "smallest brush I can find" method, and using cheap, craft store acrylic paints, both flat and gloss. The dumpsters and trailer were primed with Tamiya Fine Surface Primer first, the bins were not primed. I DO use a magnifying desk lamp for some of the fine detail work and paint borders. I think it also helps that I didn't zoom in QUITE so much this time. A little closer zoom reveals the "globs" effect you mention. But if they look okay from this distance, then with the naked eye they are completely acceptable to me!
The U.P. now has windows in all the window frames. I used Donut wraps that you use to get your donuts out of the donut case. These wraps are very thin, and does a good job of imitating window blinds. All the roof details are now installed. Lastly all the signs are now glued into place, and pretty much like you see in the original hotel that was located in Salt Lake City, Utah. I was over Robert’s house yesterday and he worked on printing the signs. Very Interesting how advertisements in the 20’s and 30’s would not pass in today’s market. We found baby posters that would have a saying “Gee, Dad, you get the best of everything, even Marlboro’s”. Other posters would be Doctors or Dentists promoting the benefits of cigarettes! How things have changed! Still waiting for my furniture from Shapeways and Outland Models to complete the interior. Also waiting for the emergency staircase from Z&US Models. Anway the U.P. Hotel model is pretty well complete!
Believe it or not, THIS U-Haul signpost, is the most frustrating and difficult model I have ever tried to build. I went through 7 full build attempts and almost 40 LED's destroyed over 2 full days just to get this single light post to actually light up. It has five 0402 sized LED's wired in series because I just could not wire them with resistors in parallel. It just got too lumpy, and I want a finescale appearance. So there is a drawback to having 5 LED's in series, it don't run off 12V, won't even slightly glow. I used a large 12V boost converter with a trim pot to adjust the voltage up to 13.5 volts before the lights would start to glow, but they did glow. So I ordered the smallest 5-28V boost converters I could find off Amazon, which when they arrive will be modified into a base for this signpost. Yes I plan on using the boost converter itself as the sign base and solder the posts to it, then figure out a magnetic mounting for it, and hide the board into scenery base somehow. So here is the surviving signpost before I apply the signs. You can see how thin it is and those 0402 LED's were soldered to tiny pieces of precise length cut .008" diameter wire wrap wires in series from one cavity to the next cavity. There are 2 wires in each channel that was engraved 10 thousandths of an inch deep on each of the two plastic sign pieces, then they were held in place by an intricate balance on small tools while UV resin was brushed over the wires, led's, and inside the channels, before the top layer was carefully sandwiched on top. Then small smooth jaw alligator clips held the assembly flat while I exposed it to UV light, which cured everything hard into one piece. This was super challenging, words just cannot describe how frustrating this was. The sign is 77 thousandths of an inch thick and the posts are 30 thousandths in diameter. I don't think I will ever attempt to do a signpost like this, wired in series, again: This is the boost converter I ordered to drive the sign and use as a base:
I attached the U-Haul sign printouts, and painted the edges black, then shot the whole thing with clear gloss to seal it in. I have to wait for the boost converter to arrive before I can continue with this model, so I will go back to painting all my tractors and lawn mowers:
It amazes me what you are able to accomplish in Z scale, and the determination that you will go through to get something working correctly. The sign looks great and the right proportion! A unlit sign would look great as well. You certainly push the limits in Z scale that no one else does!
Robert, you probably shouldn't share with us the words you were thinking as you agonized your way through this project. You might consider adding another foot note to your posts........"The difficult will take all day........the impossible will take just a little longer" You are the master of 'incredible,' no doubt about that.
An unlit sign only takes a few minutes to make, super easy. But going for the wired one, that was tough. Soldering wires on 0402 sized LED's and bending them to fit was a nightmare. The actual solder pads are about 1/2 a millimeter x 1/4 a millimeter, and the LED is tiny:
That match picture is the craziest perspective shot! Wow! Now that U.P building looks great…painted great…but really looks great planted in the layout! It is as it was supposed to be in life one impressive building nice!
These were wired, it's just that I had to de-solder a wire off each adjacent LED, and solder the previous LED's Cathode wire to the next LED's Anode. Rinse and repeat till I get to LED 5, and then feed the last Anode wire through the channel and out of the assembly. Every channel has 2 wires, one stacked on top of the other and those get sandwiched between a mirror image etched .030" thick sheet of plastic. And that's after painting the channels full of slippery UV resin. A delicate task not to be repeated. I have to devise another way to illuminate such a thin sign next time. Maybe I'll use Electroluminescence tech to this type of sign next time.
I still have the EL Experimenter Kit from Miller I got a while back, but I still haven't done anything with it. But, at some point I'll probably run into some situations where it'll be appropriate. It looks easier than daisy chaining a bunch of 0402s.
Nothing at all like the lighting that Robert is dealing with, but also working on lighting myself. Playing around with exterior lighting arrangements for the future railroad museum display yard. I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing here, so any thoughts are welcome. These lights are mostly listed as N scale on the auction site (from China), with a few listed as N/Z, but they'll work for my purposes, though I AM burying the taller ones down into the layout foam so the overall heights will match, as you can see with the ONE that is actually installed at top right. Unfortunately, that means I have to clip off the nicely molded existing base on all of the tall lights, and recreate something similar where the pole actually meets the ground now. You can see some of my cut styrene in the bottom right for such purpose. Definitely a work in progress.