That really does look just like lots of the areas I chase trains through. One of my favorite effects is placing the tracks way at the back of a scene and having a lot of stuff at the front, and this scene is a perfect execution of that technique. Jamie
I love the detailing of the trees and neighborhood next to the tracks. I seen that the WYE's railfan spot is currently being patroled, thus running everybody off. What type of trees did you use?
Mostly Scenic Express Supertrees. I'll use a few puffballs in the back or middle to take up some space. To make an equivalent case of Supertrees in puffballs on armatures would take maybe 25 or 30 hours easy. Plus the Supertrees look so much better than I can do with puffballs. You talkin' the Salisbury Wye? Yeah, I saw that NS cops were running everyone off and writing some trespassing tickets.
I worked this week on the Winston Salem Southbound's South Fork Viaduct. Although not exactly to scale, and the ground is mostly grassy, I am pretty happy with it so far.
Thanks all. Because of it's location, I could only get a couple of pictures from the highway and on max zoom. I did find 1 from Scott Ridenhour.
More scenery. Had to finally stop and clean up some. I had a mess everywhere. Also started some scratchbuilding. This wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. So far. I did make 1 rather large mistake. They have 1 track under roof, 1 out. I made both under. I think it's gonna have to stay that way. I really don't want to tempt fate. I also have to make the building triangular to fit into the space I have.
Looks good- two tracks means they can do double loading/unloading with a steel ramp between adjacent cars. What is that facility? Jamie
Just an quick update for anyone that is interested. In the last month, I've done almost no work. I had to clean up for the Rail Run at the middle of February and didn't want to mess anything up; so I tried hard not to do anything destructive. Two weeks later was my normal Ops Session. 3 days before the start the external hard drive I kept all my train stuff on died. I had no schedule and no train orders printed. After trying for several hours, I finally got it to where I could run a CHKDSK and retrieved everything except the latest schedule. I had been rearranging some pairings and tried to recreate it on Friday before the Saturday session. The session went well and I only missed 2 trains. After some prodding, I agreed to work Linwood Yard. It was the first time I ever really worked a spot on one of my own sessions, and I had a lot of fun. Tiring, but fun. Now that I have 2 months until the next session, I'm going wide open (yeah, right). Reworked some track on the WSS to remove a set of crossovers in PPG I didn't need. Am going to add a set of crossovers just out of Charlotte staging so that outbounds can go around the local working near there. Have started doing some finish ballasting in the Linwood yard area and scenicking the hump. Good or bad, my process thru this whole thing had been to work the whole layout in phases. Get down the track and ballast, but don't worry about a missed ballast spot. General wooded scenery then come back and fill in some more here and there. Not spending a lot of time on the detail of any one area. That will come later. Am ready to go back and touch up some ballasting here and there. I've replaced all the twin coils on the hump with Tortoises and was in the process of hooking up my Team Digital SMD82 which allows you to program routes. That way you can press 1 button and it will move multiple Tortoises on the hump. I accidentally hooked up 10v to a 5v terminal and had to send it back for repairs. Will post pics when there's something worth seeing. KB
Wow, I really didn't realize it had been so long since I posted an update. I have installed the Team Digital SMD82 in the hump yard and there are now 8 sub-mini pushbuttons, 1 for each class track. Simply push whichever track you want in to and the Tortoises are set according to the routes in the SMD board. The first pics are from work completed today where I ripped up some track and replaced with new track including a set of crossovers requested by the regular Dispatchers. I also added and extra industry called Mineral Research Corp. The second set is where I have worked on an area that used to be called Maybelle Bulk Transfer and now is called Southeast Fleet Services. I know they do some work offloading High Fructose Corn Syrup and other bulk goods. Still have to set the buildings and more. Before......... After......... Before......... After.........
Once again I apologize for not keeping posts up to date. I've done so little work lately that I didn't think there was anything noteworthy. I participated in the NC Rail Run last September. It is an 8 layout tour over 3 days with operations at each layout. For info on this year's event see the blog at: NC RailRun 2011 After the end of the NC Rail Run in September, I closed the doors on the train room and pretty much did nothing except for the November and January Ops sessions. I then got the idea to expand the area over Charlotte Yard. I added onto the benchwork there and expanded the Thomasville Beltway. There will be 2 sections to the Beltway track, one here and the other on the opposite side of the pit. While I was working on the Beltway extension, I added a farmhouse and scenery to the curve between Bowers and Lake.
