Building a layout for a client in his 3rd-floor game room based on Monticello, NY in late 1950’s/early 60’s:
The dude’s mainly interested in turning the layout on and watching the trains go (in between playing pinball, bowling or the racing video game).
Originally wanted the Lionel of his youth, but I talked him “down” to HO.
Especially as I could come out only 7’ into the room.
After a month or so of benchwork and a week of cork/track laying & wiring, we finally got some trains rolling!
You’ll notice in the video that the risers are clamped on.
Once I got the trains running, I watched their action and adjusted the risers to create a smooth grade before screwing in place.
A few little tweaks in the track are needed–the BLI steamer definitely prefers one track to the other–but otherwise it’s finishing the sidings and then off to the scenicking!
Miles the Weathering Man and I are splitting up the building of structures to speed things along, but hopefully we’ll have lovely and LED-lit scenery installed in the next month or two.
Back to the workbench!
Maybe you could remove the symbols used in the title and replace with words, so your title makes sense. For some reason some &”#$@ symbols change into nonsense, when used in teh title ofa thread here on the good ole Model Railroader Forum.
Yes, some browser seem to convert anything other than letters and numbers to the HTML codes when posting, so there are the codes for a ’ in there. ' is the code for ’
What’s nuts is it only happens on the thread title, not in the body. So it has to be a forum software bug.
Dude said he ran both trains all weekend, all ran fine, then late Sunday night the FT just stopped on a curve.
It would go when prodded but had issues.
Turning over the A unit, I saw one of the pickup wire connected to the rear truck had popped off:
[in yellow circle]
So I guess I get to learn how to take an HO InterMountain FT apart
But at least the dude didn’t try to fix it himself.
Today continued working on the industrial peninsula:
& finished laying track for the engine service/programming track & staging yard throat (far rear).
While fleshing out the peninsula, realized could have a nifty trestle-over-culvert-outflow scene, which is why I left a gap and put the ply on the bottom:
Might end up filling the gully with bushes, but at least there’s some variation there.
Above photo also shows how I started building up the ramp to the coal trestle.
Will have sanded cork, then some cribbing, then actual trestle bents, w
Will be modeling only the main street in Monticello (Broadway).
The grocer will be one corner of the strip.
The warehouse flats will be on a semi-street behind to give illusion of a larger town.
All those windows are real pane in the glass.
Experimented with acrylic / spray combo on the back of the Downtown Deco warehouse kit:
Wash, spray, more wash while spray still wet creates that splotched effect.
Might try it on the front of a smaller warehouse flat later.
Sanded down the start of the ramp for the coal trestle:
Started blocking out the Industrial Nub:
A large garment factory will be on the right, with the back cut away to a detailed interior.
You’re a busy man. Thanks for sharing another interesting build thread. LEDs are fun, unless given too much juice, then some really stinky smoke comes out of em’. Is the layout you were building for Dwight’s family complete?
Dwight’s layout is on hold for a bit while I build some structure kits and refurbish/bash a 90’ turntable.
Almost done, so should be back to finish it up before summer.
Cut a large piece of 1/16" styrene to act as road / building base (outlined in Sharpie), then secured to the top piece of 1" pink foam:
I used Loctite Foamboard PL300, because it says that it’s “foam safe” and caulk takes a week to cure under a surface as spread out as this.
After a day, however, it seemed that the Loctite didn’t have enough “oomph” to securely secure the styrene to the pink foam, so I squirted some caulk around the edges (filling in about 1"-2"). After a day it seems pretty secure.
This piece needs to be removable so I can transport to Miles’ workshop in Oakland, as he’ll be building and detailing most of the structures and street textures along Broadway, and then we’ll transport it over to the layout.
The three of us create an equilateral triangle of 30 minute drives (traffic depending).
I’m doing a few structures myself, including the Walthers truss bridge kit:
My favorite go-to spray paint was Floquil’s Grimy Black: it was dark, grey, warm, and thin enough for detail to pop through.
I didn’t like that it was an expensive little can.
I found a similar dark grey auto primer (Rustoleum) but it was too thick, and it never seem to fully dry.
But I’m happy to announce the Second Coming of Grimy Black:
About $5 a can at Lowes.
Careful when selecting from the rack: it looks like a flat black but it’s called “Blindfold”:
M.C., Nice lighting effects, what size LEDs? Yeah, the Rustoleum Dark Grey Automobile primer says fast drying on the can, three days later still degassing, thanks for the Valspar tip.
Had to replace a support with a longer one and with the end cut at a more acute angle.
Groovy thing about open-grid benchwork: easy to adjust as you go!
More foam, more woodputty:
Will sand down & paint when I get back from watching USWNT vs Mexico down in La La Land on Sunday.
Have also found that it’s a good idea to caulk & seal around any area that will have a water scene, as the Magic Water seems to find every seam and spill onto the floor:
Started in on carving the foam.
Thought I’d try the Mark Watson technique of using a wire wheel in a driver to speed up the carving.
I may be dumb, but I’m not stoopid: I wore a mask & safety goggles, got a thin plastic paint drop and covered myself and the section I was going to wire wheel.
It did protect the room from the pink fuzz, but not me & my driver:
Imagine my t-shirt, arms, & head coated with pink fuzz just like that driver.
Tried to hold just the driver under the plastic, but the wire wheel just got up and whipped the plastic into a pile.
I’m sure I could construct a simple framework that would hold the plastic up & away from the drill:
But I’ll just go back to hacking away with the utility knife & forming tool.
Started filling in a lot of gaps with foam, with the idea of plastering on some Sculptamold later to patch any cracks:
I’ve about given up soldering the small LEDs and will just use the larger ones from now on:
You can see (or imagine) the small LED below the larger on and between the wires.
The small LEDs just don’t give out enough light for the layout room to justify me going nuts trying to solder the little buggers.
Small ones better for some N scale buildings anyway.
On the layout, started filling in some gaps with cardboard strips hot glued to fascia & ply:
Then covering with some extra-wide & cross-wove fiberglass tape I found at Lowes:
