Oh boy! The weekend! Happy New Year everybody!!! [yeah][8D][:D]
I posted these in the first midweek photo fun thread (the one that got buried almost immediately…). The backdrop on the Seneca Lake, Ontario, and Western has been underway for a couple of weeks now and is gradually finding its way to its home behind the layout.
The before…
and a couple of the After:
An early August thunderstorm brews in the Finger Lakes…
I have done some additional blending (to hide seams) and a bit more work on the project since these were taken last Tuesday. Some more photos can be seen here: http://home.rochester.rr.com/howmus/BackdropWeb/
Very impressive, Grant. May I ask what materials you used on your steam?
Nothing too impressive from me this week. But I did get my display shelves up recently. Cost of materials, $7. And I get the ability to display 4 large engines + 2 small ones.
It has been a while since I have posted any pictures. Here are my latest efforts.
This is the good old Walthers New River Mine in HO. It is my first effort with the airbrush and I am quite happy with the result. The structure is being used to model the White City, IL mine that had a similar building but with a mine head structure on the outside. The mine head gear is scratch built. The wheel at the top was a real challenge and cut out of sheet styrene with nylon thread as the spokes. I was never able to find anything ready made that did the job.
Been working on mountain building. Using the natural method. Been in the volcanic stage, that is throwing up huge piles of raw rock(foam). Next will be the weather stage where my steak knife will be the wind and the rain to wear them down to look like a mountain as we know them. Then things will grow, thanks to WS. The prototype is the tunnel north of Two Harbors.
Also started to work on the mine for Mt Redikulus. That is a few months off seeing its time to go south.
here what i tried this week about a month ago there was a posting of a site to download printable containers and make them out of cardstock.
this is my first atempt I think the next one i’m going to do in color.
I spent today shopping at two LHS’s and converting my Amtrak passenger fleet to knuckle couplers (GOSH I HATE MY DECISIONS WHEN I WAS YOUNGER!). I also put the (partial) ATSF passenger train on the layout for a test run with some of my dad’s CBQ cars creating a BNSF business train which is what the pictures are of.
Theres the view of the whole train from the front (and on the tracks).
This is the view of the train in the station.
Here is the Trainline ATSF Dash 8 I’m using as the power for my ATSF train (for now anyway).
Finally we have the cars of the train. The first one is a Walthers baggage, second is an Athearn RTR diner, the third is a Walthers CBQ lounge car, and finally there is a KATO CBQ corrugated business car.
More good news is that my mom got a 5.2 MP digital camera for christmas, so I may borrow it to get clearer pictures than my 1.2 MP camera for the forum.
I’ve been workin on the rr all day for the past 4 days. Heres a summary of what i’ve done:
This is the heart of the project. The goal was to move a branchline junction from being at elevation 0 to elevation 3.5 in. The slope has to get to 6 inches isn some 8 feet, so this change was crucial to removing the notorious 10% grade. Also, the junction is now on my outer loop, instead of the inner. This will greatly intensify operations.
This is Block Tunnel. I named it this because the ground above it (which is the branchline Junction) is supported by wooden blocks. Using these worked out extremely well. The track shown here is at elevation 0. This track used to lead up the branchline After going underneath the outer loop from the inner loop. This track is now part of the staging.
Staging. I used the space underneath the branchline slope to add staging. The track above is supported by U supports. One of the really nice things about the staging is that it connects the two loops, so it works bidirectionally while allowing me tow operate a single train over the better part of both loops when I want to run continuos operation. It basically replaces one of the crossovers.
The 0-8-0 rests at the new station. I decided to pull up my 3 track yard. I replaced it with a backshop/engine house/metal industry and a station track that also works as a storage track when the switcher can’t deal with certain cars for a moment. This gives me a very consolidated operation with lots of stuff going on in very little space. This was also my first time laying cork roadbed and flextrack. It came out great!
well im ticked now, my dad has this nice camera, but i cant upload pics cause the file sizes are too big. ill have to find our old one. i didnt really get many train gifts for xmas beside my giant pack of roadbed and track. but i got a bunch of money,
i got an athearn prr GP35, NS GP40-2, atlas turntable( i plan to make it look better), my digitrax zephyer, xuron track cutters, decoder, and a bunch of other stuff. i also got a TON of work done on my layout. i hope to have pics up soon.
Andrew - you might try http://www.railimages.com for your pictures. They use some file-size reduction software for big pictures. Also, you can use image-editing software, probably the stuff that came with the camera, to reduce the size of the image, or you can probably change a setting on the camera to reduce the picture size.
Theres the view of the whole train from the front (and on the tracks).
This is the view of the train in the station.
Here is the Trainline ATSF Dash 8 I’m using as the power for my ATSF train (for now anyway).
Finally we have the cars of the train. The first one is a Walthers baggage, second is an Athearn RTR diner, the third is a Walthers CBQ lounge car, and finally there is a KATO CBQ corrugated business car.
