Little news...

Well last time back at home, I didn't really get that much done. Most of the work was done on standardizing the fleet, and let's face it, I wasn't home for very long. I did get the farmhouse lit up though with the porch attatched. The porch lights are even dimmed down to a reasonable level now!

Now those LEDs are a little on the large side but not too bad in person. I did weather another car, along with adding graffiti to it. Here is a couple of pictures of it at the grade crossing at Durkee Road, which happens to be the real point these modules are based on!

Of note, I will be both changing the scenery to that more like the scenery to around the gas station and adding street lights to the main drag. The lights have been purchased and are waiting on, from the photo above's perspective, the left side's sidewalk to be completed. An idea I'm toying around with is having a SWIFT driver stuck making a left turn from the side street onto the main drag with their hazard lights on due to not being able to make the turn in the amount of space provided. Might just have to get the WOodland Scenics police offices there too! And if you're asking, "Why a SWIFT truck?" I Sure Wish I Finished Training! (and that's one of the nice acronyms!)

More scenery!

Alright, again it’s been busy. That being said, this update from work done over the winter holidays was only captured on my camera phone, so please pardon the quality ahead of time.

That being said, great progress was made around the gas station and across the tracks from it. The basic earth colored ground foam was applied to both sides. On top of that I’m applying another color of ground foam. I think it is yellow grass, but seeing as I’m in LA as I am typing this, I really can’t check this.

The other big news is that I’ve started to ballast the main! If one looks closely, they might just notice that I didn’t ballast all the way to the end of the module. The reason behind it is that the FreeMo standard requires one to use fine light grey ballast. I’ve not been to big of a fan of this, so in order to keep some level of uniformity, these modules will have the standard on the very end, while having my 50/50 mix of light grey and medium grey for the rest. As the matte medium was setting, I realized that it was fairly hard to actually see any difference of the color on its own. Maybe it will show up more with the non-mixed ballast is applied. Of note, I discovered the hard way that the matte medium that I got needed to be diluted 50/50 with water. I may get to do some more clean-up when I get back...

Staying along to Main Street, I wasn’t really sure what to do with the remaining space beside the lone DPM model. The answer... another DPM kit!

Now I couldn’t decide wether or not to make this int a small park, farmers market, or who knows what. Just for some reason, this kit caught my eye, and the preview picture even shows it next to the existing building! Interestingly, the reverse is not true!

Moving all the way down to the farmhouse area, a bit of progress was made. got the earth ground foam down, some of it applied to hill, and even a few trees made up! I even added lights to the front porch! I did try using Hobb-e-tack for the figures, but will likely change that to some regular glue. The reason behind that is just spending a single night on its side caused some of the figures to shift or even fall off! Not good!

Maybe I’ll be able to get things looking even better next time!

New update

So when I was home this last time, I didn't do too much to the modules. The focus this time was the car fleet standardization. I thought I was for the most part standardized but quickly discovered flaws in several cars. Most commonly, the car was too heavy. There were a couple that had couplers off of the correct height but not many. The challenge is that I only go through a small portion of my fleet!

I did a small amount of painting on the rural side with the farmhouse.

I forgot to take pictures though! Hopefully, I will do an update, for a change, while I'm at home! And this time, take pictures!