So, have you given any thought to your holiday layouts yet? I have! I started last May! [(-D] Here are a few of the things I’ve done and as always, SHOW US YOUR WORK! [:D]
Disneyland: Autopia.
Disneyland: New Orleans Square.
Disneyland: Temple of the Forbidden Eye and Jungle Cruise improvements.
Disneyland: New fully lighted Main Street Station.
Postwar layout: New lighted sign for Howard Johnson’s.
The sign is printed on vellum and resides in a “holder” made of a heavy card backing cut to shape and trimmed with 65lb card painted with acrylics. The “light bulbs” on the arrow are glass seed beads.
Remember, you heard it here first! [;)] The holidays are on their way! [(-D]
I always wanted to make the “lost safari” scene but never had the space. Originally I built the Temple at the size the kit was designed for. But it was just too big. This time I reduced it by approx. 40% which not only gave me something closer to O gauge but gave me more real estate around it to work with.
On the right you can see my attempt at Spanish Moss. I made it from cotton balls based on an article I remembered about Cypress Trees in an old issue of MR. However instead of carving “Cypress knees” out of wood, the trees here were made using my hot glue over steel technique. As are the figures of (not)Indiana Jones and his helpers.
Forgot to mention the “light fixtures” I put down the station platform ceiling. I cut faceted plastic beads in half and bored out a bit of the inside to let a 12 to 16v g.o.w. bulb fit.
You are very ingenious in the way you can take everyday materials and make them work on your structures, such as the light fixture above. I would have never thought of your solution for the light fixture that you described in your last post. You must have picked up some machine shop skills somewhere along the way.
My church is having a Polar Express and Craft Event in December and we will have a number of train layouts. I am building a small layout for it using O track. Will probably run my pre-war American Flyer O loco.
Besides the new HoJo sign, I also made an A&P sign for the K-Lineville super market…
A light-up Sinclair sign for the K-Lineville gas station…
And a pair of lighted trees for the apartment house. General Electric has been using trees of this design for many years at their Nela Park facility on the east side of Cleveland, not far from where the NYC Collinwood roundhouse once stood.
I found a nice photo on the net of this type of tree at a pior year’s display and did a bit of photo editing to get just the tree I wanted the right size which I then printed on cardstock. These trees have a large bulb in the center of a reflective ring. To simulate that look, I punched small holes where the bulbs were on the photos and over the hole I glued clear glass seed beads. The rest of the tree is just cardstock painted black. Since this experiment worked well, I now know how to add a lot of light to Main Street USA…next year. [:D]
I added popsicle stick ties to both the S and O rights of way.
They may be ridiculously tall, but I love using 54mm figures with this layout. Here are 3 Boy Scouts sitting at the campfire listening to a presentation by the local OA group.
My church is having a Polar Express and Craft Event in December and we will have a number of train layouts. I am building a small layout for it using O track. Will probably run my pre-war American Flyer O loco.
