Hi, all this fine weather has been keeping me away from my Layout on away days, country and coast - gotta take your chance while you can.
Working on the Track along the wall-grade, getting things into place before ‘final-fix’ of Cork, followed by Track.
The Embankment is 4" wide and the Trackcentre is 2-1/2" from Backscene.
For the Yard Lead, I had to resort to using one Atlas #513 R22" set-track, so as to kick the #536 R24" to meet-up with the R24" centreline I had drawn, at the Tee-pin by the red marker pin.
This leads onto the Cross-over that gives access to the Yard from this direction.
The large gap between ply Insert.2 and the original baseboard was a later and regrettable error of judgement, originally I had cut the wood very accurately.
Before the Track is laid, I need to repaint all the ‘Backscene’ light blue, get the Cork in place with ‘Decorators Caulk’ and repaint all the grey areas before using Textured Spray-paint to give a general ‘ground of Ballast’ appearance - as described by Tim Garland in MR August 2024
I can’t get the spray-paint types as used by Tim on his ‘Seaboard Central’, but I think I will be ok with what I can get, over here.
Paul.
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Laid down more grass mat sections. The layout is almost completely covered now. An upcoming project will be adding tunnel sections to transition behind a long, flat, static scenery background section. This will give the illusion that the train is not running in a more circular fashion around the layout.
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I completed my river bike trail (less signage and grade crossing lights).
It needs a little better paint verigation, but I’m calling it open for use.
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Looks excellent! What did you use for the bike trail?
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Fine play sand, actually. I spread it out evenly with a plastic spreader I made, wet it with isopropanol, glued it in place with dilute white glue, and painted with different shades of grey latex paint. Much like ballasting.
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My latest finished project is the lighting of this:
This pavilion started life as pieces of a couple of Model Power station platforms (made for them by Pola). The bases were cut down and glued together longways. Otherwise they are stock. I have some 3D printed picnic tables that I need to install as well. The lighting shows better in this image:
The lighting is Woodland Scenics JP nano lights in orange. My cell phone filtered the orange to yellow for some reason. (It looks more impressive in person.)
The fence is also a recent project. It is done with .062" rod for the posts and .035" rod for the rail. I still have two more sections that need to be built to complete the fence.
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A new Kato Unitrack in N scale.
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Very nice. What road will you be running?
Rich
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Primarily, Norfolk Southern with CSX and BNSF mixed in.
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Nice !
Keep those photos coming.
Rich
Theblayout looks great! Nice work on that helix. Looking forward to seeing it progress!
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I added two Scale Sound Systems speakers in separate enclosures to each of my HO scale Rapido E8s yesterday. Big difference and much improvement, especially to this Amtrak unit (Phase I scheme) that had a speaker enclosure from the factory that was much smaller than the stock enclosure in my other E8 (Amtrak Phase II scheme).
DFF
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Ive done a LOT of decal prep work this weekend! I have decals ready to be sent for print for (2) PS-1 50’ boxcars, (2) PS 5344 Incentive Per Diem boxcars, a GP7, a GP9, and an HO scale Thrall 2743 gondola I’m making for a friend who models a more modern era.
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A little more work on the river and bridges. Waiting for electronics to arrive.
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Before sending these decals off for print, I decided to add one more locomotive set to the sheet - My B&CCS Bicentennial unit! While working on the decal set, I decided she needed a patriotic logo to fit her scheme better than the typical logo, so I recolored the logo to Red, White, and Blue, and added 13 stars around the central diamond. Here is her completed scheme and new logo!
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As I am getting more practice and confident in doing decoder and speaker installs/replacements I have recently converted a very old Atlas/Kato yellow box RS3 to DCC utilizing a Decoder Buddy Mini and a Soundtraxx Econami 21 pin decoder and a ESU 50321 sugar cube speaker. With that success, while searching online for something, I stumbled upon a NOS RS3 for $54 all in. So of course I had to do it! Just today, utilizing a spare ESU 50321 sugar cube speaker, I updated an old Walthers Proto 2K SW1200 speaker. The original was very crackly right out of the box, so 12 years later it finally sounds great. Of course I didn’t think to take any pics during these project but I will in the future.
Regards, Chris
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I’m working on the section of my HOn3 railroad that contains the roundhouse and turntable. I’m attaching the remote manual ground throws and wiring. Plenty more to do.
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Looks great James! Welcome back to the forums!
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Just waiting on some Z leds for ditchlights/headlights then put in window glass,shes close!
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Welcome back on board, Jim.
