Since my excommunication around mid-August I haven’t been able to post any ‘progress reports’. One on-going improvement I was working on was to add more lighting and details to the stoves and blast furnace of my steel mill area:
I added the red/yellow signals so the ‘tap master’ can communicate with the switching crews to indicate which track can be pulled from under the cast house floor.
Also a few additional light fixtures. I first built this blast furnace in 1996 and it has pretty much been collecting dust ever since. I found some beautiful 3D printed details and this motivated me to make the improvements.
Working on a Z scale coffee table layout for the holidays… but I don’t think I’m going to make my wife’s deadline before company comes to stay. Have the ski hill figured out and just finished the boggie wheels for the ski lift. I’ve made a gearbox and have the lift running, still need to attach the gondolas. I’m now 3D printing people and skiers to put into scene but that has required me to learn modeling software for animation… one thing after another. Still need to plant many more trees.
Don’t have any pictures but I have five for this winter. The first is probably the most involved: kitbashing three Athearn bay window caboose to approximate the ribside caboose of the Milwaukee for a local museum display. I figure that there aren’t going to be many people who will know the exact rivets and the caboose will be at a three foot or so distance.
Second is another museum project involving an Athearn cupola caboose. A quick repaint and lettering is all that’s involved with this.
Three and four are 40’ and 50’ boxcars to be lettered for the SP&S. My local library was able to get me some images of them I couldn’t find elsewhere. (Thank you to the Seattle, WA, library as well as that where the images came from.) They are Athearn units that will need new doors to fit the prototype.
Five is a GP9 that will become another NP unit for my layout. I have lines on getting the needed detail parts for it as my budget permits.
Ed, thanks for starting the new topic. Hopefully we’ll be able to do some catching up with all the layout work news we’ve missed out on.
A while back a friend brought me a large box of N cars that he picked up at a second-hand store. The cars were old with the old-style N couplers. One new project is to replace all the couplers on some of the cars. Slow going for old clumsy fingers working on small parts.
After tearing out the old layout, progress has been slow. This week I’ve put in some new track for a small locomotive yard.
Finally setting up an Excel spreadsheet of all of my engines and lubricating them one by one. Somewhat tedious but those that have not run in a while are not happy campers when I test them. I suspect that some of my Life Like/Walthers diesels will require replacement of cracked gears.
FRRYKid, for the hoop itself I used .022 coated wire made for grab irons and what. It comes green and you can bend it a buncha times without it breaking (let me know if you want me to send you the contact for the eBay vendor I bought from). I wrapped the wire around a small paint brush handle that looked about the right diameter, then painted it brown acrylic and highlighted it with bright rust color. Epoxy to affix to the wooden backboard did not work (I may have mixed it badly) so I tried super glue, which did the job. The torn netting is just some tiny lengths of the thinnest grey sewing thread I could find. I piled the scraps all together in an attempt at a collapsed lattice pattern and doused them with gorilla glue. It became a mess, but a mess was sort of what I was after. It doesn’t look realistic super close-up, but it gives the effect of dilapidation at a distance.
Also, Busch makes a fenced streetball court with two hoops and some figures (product number 1057), which you see around sometimes. I dislike the plasticky look of a lot of ready-made products, and if I can make something myself that looks less shiny and more “used” I will often try. Also, my layout is sometime around 1957, so I didn’t want a modern looking backboard. I don’t know when the red square appeared on backboards, but in all the images I could find the red lines were absent and the backboard itself was rectangular, not the familiar rounded shape we have now. That’s another reason I went rogue.
@crossthedog I might have to look for that Busch kit. I model the 1970s and looking to detail a school yard. The area in question is fairly close to edge of the layout (about a foot).
I know that technically there are rules against appearing to promote products here. Not sure how rigid Firecrown will be about this, but until I have a feel for that, I could try to message you privately because I see that kit available in several places right now. Or you could just search in the usual auction place and etc.
FRRYKid, I think I messaged you privately, but who knows? I may have posted a note to the IRS for all I know. It’ll be a while before I get used to this new website, or trust it to do what I think it should do.
Almost done. I need to finalize the underbrush under the trees and find something to trash up the apartment building’s driveway with, but I won’t pay $12 and shipping for a pair of garbage cans so I’ll have to see what I can come up with.
When I was a young lad (10-11 years of age) to earn some pocket money plus holiday money I did jobs in two public houses (ale houses). The job entailed sorting empty bottles to go back to their respective breweries etc… One of the places the bottles were returned to was Hey & Humphries of Leeds.
Why different breweries had their ale bottled there was a mystery to me, but I wasn’t really concerned at the time. I needed money to travel to St Malo, France plus saving for other expenditure.
Anyway, on my layout I wanted a small factory called Hey & Humphreys (Bottlers).
I have a small collection brewery wagons that deliver ale to be bottled. Different breweries giving variety to running operations. Peak Ales the most recent addition. (A rare model as only a few were made.)
The latest project has been adding Tortoise machines to this stupid Shinohara double crossover at the west end of the yards. When I built the benchwork I intended to NOT power turnouts here, so I made it REALLY narrow. I finally got the mechanicals done (after 3 days and a LOT of bad language) and now I’m working on the electrical.
Started my sd70m-2 CN GT heritage,most of the details are on i can before primer/paint from trainworx/blma/tichy TINY brass wire! Paint and decals are coming in the mail. This is a n scale kato unit mix mash of sd70-2 parts i had from the bazzilion projects i have going.
Cast House Signals by Edmund, on Flickr
Behind the Stoves Night by Edmund, on Flickr
Stoves Backside by Edmund, on Flickr
