Once again some great images! Garry, nice looking consist. That’s what you’d expect to see on the Burlington back in the day. Robby, great weathering! I like the simple graffiti. It looks like a typical RBOX car I used to “kick” in the B&O yard in Buffalo when I was a conductor there. Curt, those cars are all great. I like to do my wooden reefers in a similar fashion keeping the bright colors while giving them just enough dust and rust for the right look. Grampy, great shot! I really like the depth of the scene. Lee, that’s going to be a great water tower.
Here’s my contribution for the week. This is the first HD shot I’ve decided to publish using my new Iphone:
Those GoPro cams are really neat. I’ve been wanting one of the truck for when we hit the trails, but I never thought about using it on the layout. And a very nice video production you’ve done with it!
This week’s big project here was adding lights so the night is more interesting. I did use blue LED rope lighting for general illumination. I don’t usually shoot night pics with the blue on, but you do get interesting results.
I installed about 80 LEDs for structure lighting and outside lighting so far, extracted from donor Xmas lighting. Cheap and easy, with the intensity toned down, the light even starts acting like it’s from bulbs. Inside lights aren’t quite enough to do anything much beyond “look through the window” type shots, but I also added a few outside lights and have plenty of light to work with. The rest of these shots are taken with ambient light and long manual exposure times (up to 15 seconds. Here’s the Gold Prince shot from the reverse angle with the blue lights off.
The Haymarket Tram is on the other side of the gulch from the Gold Prince. Here’s a pic of its service truck.
The other end of the building shows off the outside lighting well.
In Eureka, the Sunnyside mill looms impressively, even in the dark.
Whether it’s camera angles,or “night” lighting",weathering,or great scenery work,I always pick up ideas from this thread…
I’m working on dwarf signals for the east end of the yard this week.They’re wired in series through the bluepoint switch machines,so a signal can’t show “green” unless that route’s switches are lined all the way to the mainline. I put them on the west end awhile back,and I haven’t run a train into a mis-aligned switch since…I mean…not that I’ve ever done that![:$] 'Still waiting on a few parts,maybe I’ll have something to show next week. Here’s an older picture from the layout.
Last year i built a working coal tipple loader using 2 ball point pen springs glued end to end laying in a soda straw to form an auger to move the coal from the container bin to the chute for the awaiting hopper
Here’s a view of the container bin with the straw and springs laying in the bottom the springs are connected to a low RPM motor on one end and voltage is controlled by the DC variable side of my DC power pack
The container sits inside the Tipple
I added a Cell Phone vibrator to help move the coal down the chute
Using the old Tyco operating coal cars i run live loads from the mine over to the coaling tower
And using the Tyco Trick Track for opening the doors on the bottom of the hopper i dump the coal to a container under the layout
Here’s a video of it in operation
It was a big hit at my open house on the layout tour as people were amazed that an idea so simple could work so well
You’re off to a good start there, SS Express. Just for you, I’ve got this one I happened to take of a bonus feature I can now use after adding the power supply for my structure lighting.
“Sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel…is a train!!”
I have a loop tying together two wyes in a tunnel that provides a continuous run for break in or display trains that is also long enough that it can provide staging for one train. I’ve already got 4 CCTVs/8 cameras and it’s simple enough it didn’t seem like it’s worth adding another when if I could just see where the train was in the tunnel.
I had a LED array from a car license plate holder I’d been thinking what to do with. Suddenly it hit me it’d be perfect in this tunnel, located where the end of the train needs to be to let me still use the wyes at either end, because the tunnel trackage is fairly straight. Bingo! I can now see where the loco is when it moves past the bright spot in the tunnel. It’s actually way brighter than it needs to be, so I’m going to add another resistor to tame it down some more.
In any case, it IS a train at the end of this tunnel, but also just a bright light.
Also good to see James check in. C&O Fan’s coal animation is outstanding! Mike, I love the way you’ve integrated the scenery and backdrop in that part of your layout, it’s rather breathtaking[Y]
Holy cow, I actually never put that connection together, but Man, wow!!! Yeah!!! Dude!!!
I almost was motivated & tempted to put up $12.5 on an Aussie '72 XB Falcon once in the early 90’s…
Those are MAXimus units aren’t they!!!
Almost even in the same paint Schemes! (These are XA’s [4 doors])
Backdrop painting this week on my PC & KC RR (On30). Really out of my comfort zone here. Foreground trees, bushes and other etcs. still to do. Idea is that the background be rather vague and indistinct rather than sharp and detailed so that the trains and accompanying scenes become the focus.
