Lighting and interiors galore!

So this trip home I got the chance to add an interior to the gas station, at least the office.

Durkee Road also had a street light added.

Promptly followed by an entry light (a surface mount led which needs to be dimmed a bit!) and another street light.

And I couldn't resist having RG 5371 give a photo op at the grade crossing!

A not likely noticed update is that a voltage regulator was added to the primary module, with plans on doing the same for the other. Next update will likely be in mid August. Stay safe over the summer!

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!

Another not too exciting month...

This time was again, not very exciting. Mostly got the room cleaned up...

Anyways, I finally got the other two Digitrax panels mounted and mostly hooked up. One of the panels isn't hooked up to the track yet but that really should be fairly quick.

I did finally finish getting the interior of the gas station painted well enough that the black isn't really showing through. Next time, I get to reassemble it! (Sorry no pictures this time, again!)

I got some more LEDs in. I doubt I'll need to order any more any time soon! I did also get some fiber optic cable (.75mm). Might just have to do some experimenting!

The other project that got started is a rotary car dump! This thing is gonna be big, too! The current design is calling for it to be able to dump two cars at a time! The only thing really close is a Walthers kit that is out of production, the Walthers paper mill version, or a custom version! I'm going the custom version for both the length issue and the durability issue. Online research turned up that despite the Walthers kit being designed to be motorized, it just doesn't hold up well to extensive use. The other issue is that due to the kit being made out of plastic, it doesn't have the weight behind it to run very well. Hopefully this works out well! And yes, I found a few options for WORKING rotary couplers!

Next time won't be until Christmas that I get home but it's doubtful that I'll get anything done. Maybe I can make it to the Gadison Pacific's swap in January!

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!

Lighting issues...

Well I did do work on the modules in July but didn’t get around to posting anything until now.

Right before I posted last time, I discovered that, to my dismay, that despite the plastic being so thick and being painted on the outside, that there was still light showing though. The amount wasn’t very substantial. Wasn’t remotely noticeable with the lights on. It honestly was only kind of noticeable, from the right angles, with the lights off. So my gamble earlier didn’t pay off. The real reason I didn’t want to paint the walls the standard black is that I in fact, want them white, or at least white with grease and other grime on the walls that one expects to see in a shop.

Now that they are painted black, I tried using a heavy white paint called Gheso. Unfortunately I think that mine has been sitting around a little too long, since it really isn’t mixing up all that well. Guess I’ll have to get some newer stuff when I get back in town.

Other work that I did this time was painting the track, which always is a pain. I’ve yet to test the track power but should be fine due to the soldered rail joints.

The previous time, I actually worked for the first time with the rubber rock molds and casting material that Woodland Scenics makes.Wasn’t too happy that the casting material didn’t set up quite right for the entire mold, but in turn, I got a number of smaller rocks to play around with. Might just have to make a few more to scatter around still!

Durning the process of blending the casts in, I decided that this material should also work for getting the "abandoned barn's" foundation blended into the surrounding area.

The challenge is that I haven't both finished it, or even truly finish the concept in my head yet. I know that the tractor that is shown in pieces, will be put back together and put into one side or the other, considering it has two bays. I also know that I want to add some lighting into it to. I still like calling it abandoned, despite the fact that it is only really neglected. The other thing I've been thinking about doing is adding a small camera to the bay that looks out toward the tracks. Since it is a module where others are supposed to get to see it, might just be fun! Maybe one of these times I will finally finish it...

I'm not sure I'll get all that much time to work on them this next time I'm home. We'll just have to see!

Lighting the gas station!

As I said in my last post, I said I did the night lighting on the Flagstaff club layout. Using that experience, I'm playing around with a new method.

So here's the gas station in question. Made by City Classics, it is fairly plain, just like a standard Design Preservation Model (DPM). So if one is observant, you'll note the fuel island missing its pumps. Those are a later project since I'm hoping on putting a few lights in those just to give it a little more character.

The building came with an insert for the store, which isn't awesome but certainly a good starting point. The bad thing about this kit though is that the floor didn't come leveled out with the rest of it on the outside. In other words, one had to add their own material inside the building to get it to where the "concrete" indicates it should be. In my case, I chose a wood floor, really due to that being what I had on hand.

Lights in real buildings are, for the most part, mounted on or near the ceiling. Now getting lights to stay in place can be tricky on even a permanent layout can be difficult. Remember that these are modules. They are intended to be moved from location to location, so there are many more forces in play here. Most layouts don't have to worry about keeping EVERYTHING in place in the event that it gets moved. I get to make sure I can shake it, while it is even upside down, and nothing moves or comes free. Ok, the roofs of the buildings will come off... The buildings don't! (or at least soon enough) So that means I can't just cram the bulb into the spot and quickly get the roof into place while hoping nothing's moved. Hopefully the answer are those two beams now installed in the building.  a few more zip ties and things might even look nice!

And now for the lights!

Guess this means I get to put stuff inside now! That'll be next month's project!