The weekend has just pulled out of the station, how did you do with your goals? Not much for me. The high heat on Saturday led the club to cancel our Saturday work on the yard module. I did manage to get a few hours in Sunday, cleaning and organizing. I swapped a Z scale coupler for a broken N scale one on my Intermountain B&M F2 and ran it on the layout. I think eventually I'll need to break down and paint up some B&M passenger cars. That was it for me. How did you fare? Did you beat the heat and get track work or wiring done? How about some scratch building? Let us know what you accomplished and maybe with a picture or two. We'll get back and do it all over again on Friday July 13th. ​High Greens!
I started my weekend out by painting my scenery base with a heavy layer of paint and applying a combination of three shakers of ground foam. One shaker has yellow grass, one had burn green grass and one had a combination of dark green, burnt green and yellow. No real pattern or process, try trying to get the spring time look of fields that have some winter burnt grass but fresh green grass starting to pop out in places. Obviously the paint was too thick in places and soaked the foam in, so I still have touch up work to do next weekend. I also scraped up enough detail parts from my parts box to start on my Athearn GP7 fleet. Still need mu hoses and cut levers, etc but it was a start.
One thing that has been holding up progress on my layout is the attic access door which is in the closet in my layout room. This closet is where I plan to install a Helix to reach the proposed upper level of the layout. This weekend I fabricated a new insulated door to be installed today in the hallway, freeing up the closet for the Helix. I also assembled one of the middle modules for my T-Trak yard.
After all these weeks working on structures and cobblestones, I'm finally getting back to "nature." I added foam scraps, plaster cloth and Gypsolite to the barren gap between the scrapyard and Mooseport. Once the Gypsolite hardens up, it will get some paint and then ground foam. I had a skim coat of Gypsolite on most of that area, but it was on a thin sheet of Masonite covering the subway station beneath, and I found it was fragile enough that it was all cracking and lifting, so I broke it up, swept up the pieces and vacuumed the base. Hopefully, the plaster cloth will give it a better base and it will stay put this time. The camera is back from its trip to Florida, so... As you can see, there's still work to be done. I'm exploring options for a static grass machine, either buying or building, so I'll be experimenting with that over the next few weeks.
